9. After Samaria’s destruction, how did the situation become most challenging to Jehovah with respect to Jerusalem?

⁹ In 740 B.C.E. Jehovah used the Assyrian World Power as his “ax” to chop down the adulterous, idolatrous “house of Israel.” Its royal residence at Jezreel was emptied, its capital at Samaria was overthrown, the surviving Israelites were carried away into exile in distant provinces of Assyria. (Isa. 10:15)

18. When and how did Jehovah let it be known that the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel was not his people?

¹⁸ Jehovah let it plainly be known that he was no longer the God and spiritual Husband of the apostate “house of Israel.” This Jehovah did when he permitted the capture of Israel’s capital city Samaria by the Assyrians in 740 B.C.E. Thus that “house of Israel” was no longer His people; it was, as he said, Lo-ammi, or, “Not My People.” Like a divorced wife, that people went off into exile in Assyria. That spiritually adulterous “house of Israel” had despised the opportunity offered to it in the Mosaic Law covenant of becoming to Jehovah a “kingdom of priests.”​—Ex. 19:5, 6.