Shalman appears incorrectly in 2 Kings as Shalmaneser. We learn that for some years Hoshea paid tribute to Shalman (eser), but that after this, relying upon the help of the king of Mizrim, he withheld it; the Asshurite king therefore cast him into prison. If the letter of 2 Kings xvii. 4, 5, is correct, this preceded an Asshurite invasion of the land (_i.e._, the Negeb), which ended with a siege of Shimron. The siege lasted three years, at the end of which the king of Asshur took Shimron, and deported a large part of the remaining Israelite population of the Negeb into his own land, filling their place in the Negeb with North Arabian colonists. These new Shimronites are the people who caused the Jews so much trouble in the days of Nehemiah. Thus the two sections of that large part of Israel which had rejected the Davidic Dynasty were all but annihilated, for history can take no further account of the remnants which survived both in northern Israel and in the Negeb, remnants which, though they retained the divine name Yahveh, in their cultus, were in no essential respect different from the non-Israelites with whom they mingled. We do, indeed, gather from 2 Kings xvii. 25-33 that the North Arabian colonists in the Negeb combined the ritual worship of Yahveh with that of their own gods, and we may assume that they learned the “manner” or ceremonial prescriptions of Yahveh, not from a single priest--the sole representative of Israel in the wide land of the Negeb--but from a scanty remnant of Israelites left by the conqueror (compare 2 Kings xxiii. 20). But of what value or significance for the history of Israel or of Israel’s history, is this poor and uninteresting fact? Henceforth the world-historical mission of Israel was confined to that portion of the people which was loyal to the Davidic Dynasty, and in which, thanks to prophets largely drawn from the Negeb (a land of opposites in religion), the elements of progress were still active in spite of great hindrances. LATER FORTUNES OF JUDAH