In Second Kings, chapter seventeen, verse twenty-four, the King of Assyria imported foreign captives to inhabit the cities of Samaria. The city is the entire northern kingdom to destroy any remaining nationalism. Intermarriage between Israelites not taken to Assyria and foreigners brought to the land of Israel produced the people called the “Samaritans.” The result was a mixture of foreign religious and cultural traditions with Hebrew customs and faith, as in verses twenty-nine to thirty-three. By the New Testament times, however, many Samaritans had left their pagan ways and developed a belief based exclusively on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).
Jesus witnessed to a Samaritan woman, speaking of the incompleteness of Samaritan traditions, as in John twenty-four, verses four through twenty-six. Later, many Samaritans became believers in Christ through the ministry of Phillip, as in Acts eight, verses five to twenty-five.
Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, served and worshipped those they brought with them and which were the work of their own hands, even the communities or those out of the tribes mentioned in Second Kings seventeen, verse twenty-four, these notwithstanding the instructions they had about the worship of the God of Israel, retained and served their deities: and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. As the Israelites had built high villages everywhere for idolatry and put images in them, Second Kings seventeen, verse nine, these Heathens placed their gods there in the room of them, which were as follows.
The Samaritans occupied the country formerly belonging to the tribe of Ephraim and the half-tribe of Manasseh. This region is between Jerusalem and Galilee. So, from one to the other, it was a direct course to pass through Samaria. The capital was Samaria, formerly a large and splendid city. It is about 15 miles northwest of Shechem or Sychar and about 40 miles north of Jerusalem.