Samaria: the hill city Omri built as the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, and, by extension, the highland district around it and the northern kingdom itself
Samaria begins as a business transaction. Omri bought a hill from a man named Shemer for two talents of silver, built a city on it, and named the city after the man he bought the hill from (1 Kings 16:24). It was a new capital raised on bare ground, the way a ruler builds a seat that belongs to him and to no older tribe, and it held that role for about a century and a half until Assyria besieged it for three years and carried its people away.
Because a capital stands for what it governs, the one name reaches three different distances, and only the sentence tells you which is meant:
- the walled town itself, with its gate where kings sat and grain was sold, its pool, its palace and its royal graves
- the hill country around it and the towns counted with it, which the text calls the cities of Samaria and which later became a province under Assyria and then Persia
- the whole northern kingdom, so that a sentence like "Samaria will be held guilty" is a charge against a nation and not against a set of streets
The prophets lean on the widest reach. Hosea can speak of "the calf of Samaria" even though the calf shrines stood at Bethel and at Dan rather than in the capital, because the name has come to mean the kingdom and the worship its kings sponsored. Isaiah lists Samaria beside Damascus as one more capital Assyria will swallow, then warns Jerusalem that it is next. Ezekiel goes furthest of all, turning the name into a woman: the older sister of Jerusalem, with daughter towns of her own, disgraced, judged, and finally promised a return.
The northern kingdom has three names in these books and they are not interchangeable. Israel (יִשְׂרָאֵל) is its own proper name and the name of the whole people. Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם) calls it after its largest tribe, a family word for a nation. Samaria calls it after the city its kings ruled from, which is why this name in particular carries the court, the politics and the cult.