The Tribes of Israel

THE LOST TRIBES

722 years before the birth of Christ, the armies of the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel (the land of the ten northern tribes) and carried the inhabitants off into captivity. The Kingdom of Judah in the south, was barely spared from the same fate by the strenuous efforts of the prophet Isaiah and their righteous king Hezekiah (and some large-scale, last minute repentance). Little more than 100 years later, the Assyrians, in turn, were conquered by the Babylonians. When their Assyrian overlords were subjugated, however, the Israelite “exiles” did not return as they were, by this time, already lost to history.