Cuth

Cuth — also spelled Cuthah — is one of five cities of origin from which the king of Assyria drew colonists to repopulate Samaria after he carried Israel into exile. The name appears in both forms within a single chapter of 2 Kings, and the post-exilic memory of the deportation echoes again in Ezra.

A District of Origin for the Samaritan Resettlement

Cuthah is named first as a source-city: "And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in its cities" (2 Kgs 17:24). The transplanted population does not fear Yahweh, suffers a plague of lions, and receives an Israelite priest sent back from exile to teach the law of the land — but each nation continues its inherited gods, "every nation in their cities in which they dwelt" (2 Kgs 17:29).

The Men of Cuth and Nergal

When the foreign gods are catalogued, the variant form of the name appears: "And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima" (2 Kgs 17:30). The same group appears twice in the chapter — as Cuthah on the way in, as Cuth in their religious practice — paired specifically with the god Nergal.

The Echo in Ezra

The opposition that confronts the returning exiles in Ezra reaches back to this resettlement: "and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth" (Ezra 4:10). The transplanted population identifies itself in the letter to Artaxerxes as those whom the Assyrian king deported into Samaria — the same event 2 Kings narrates with Cuth/Cuthah named.