1 Kings 16:23-24
He bought the hill Samaria of Shemer
A capital begins as a property transaction, and the city keeps the name of the man who sold the ground.
Places of the Bible
Samaria
A capital bought for two talents of silver, and the last thing recorded about it is a list of who was moved in.
Omri buys the hill from a man called Shemer and builds a city on it and names it after the seller. It becomes the capital of the northern kingdom for two centuries, and every king of Israel after him rules from it. Ahab builds a house of ivory there and an altar for Baal in a house he builds for Baal in Samaria, which the account records in the same sentence as his marriage.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Samaria
- 01
- 02
1 Kings 16:29-33
He reared up an altar for Baal
The account lists the marriage, the temple and the grove in one breath, and says he did more to provoke than all the kings before him.
- 03
2 Kings 6:24-31
An ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver
The siege reaches the point where two women make an agreement about their children. The king tears his clothes and the people see sackcloth underneath.
- 04
2 Kings 7:3-9
We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings
Four lepers reason their way out of a siege, find the camp abandoned, and stop looting long enough to decide silence would be wrong.
- 05
2 Kings 17:6-23
Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight
The fall is written as a reckoning rather than a battle. The chapter lists the warnings, the prophets sent, and what was done anyway.
Why it matters
The city’s two most memorable chapters are about hunger and about the end. Besieged by Syria, it starves until an ass’s head sells for eighty pieces of silver and two women agree to eat their sons, and the deliverance comes through four lepers at the gate who find an empty camp and say we do not well, this day is a day of good tidings and we hold our peace. And then 2 Kings 17, which is not a battle but an audit: what Israel did, for how long, after how many prophets, and who the king of Assyria brought in to live in the cities instead.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
