Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Bryant:

On 10/28/07, Bryant J. Williams III <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net> wrote:
> Dear Karl,
>
> No, I am not saying that the writer of Kings and Jeremiah were lying. I am
> saying that the use of "all" is more probably a rhetorical device that has 
> been
> in use since "we were all knee-high to a grasshopper."
>
This is just what I wrote Kevin Riley that the context does not allow.

> It is also evident from the written text that the original Samaritans were a
> mixture of those who remained in the land from the Assyrian Exile and those 
> who
> were brought to the ex-northern kingdom to repopulate the land and 
> intermarried
> with those inhabitants that remained.

There is nothing in the text of 2 Kings 17 that would contradict this.
The belief that all from the land of Samaria were deported is a later
interpretation, it is not in the text.

> ... There would be some left even after the
> three deportations of the Babylonians in 605, 597 and 588 BC. Thus, "all" 
> does
> not mean "everyone was removed and no one remained." It does mean that the
> majority of the population was removed. Some of the population would have
> remained.
>
Both Jeremiah 43 and 2 Kings 25 say that that remaining population
removed itself to Egypt, and both sources say that all went. That is
in contrast with the report about those who were left in Samaria.

> Rev. Bryant J. Williams III

Karl W. Randolph.