Hoshea

Hoshea served as a trusted advisor to King Pekah of Israel until Assyrian armies tore through the kingdom's eastern lands. In the chaos he turned on his master, assassinating Pekah in his twentieth year of reign during battle and seizing the crown with the blessing of Tiglath-Pileser III. For years he ruled as a client king, paying tribute to Assyria. Then he stopped. Shalmaneser V responded with a siege of Samaria that lasted three years and ended in 722 BCE with the city's fall, the mass deportation of Israelites across the empire, and the extinction of the northern kingdom itself. Hoshea's…