Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Kings 17:1
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.
Ch. 2Ki 17:1-6. Reign of Hoshea king of Israel. Shalmaneser invades Israel, imprisons Hoshea and carries the people captive (Not in Chronicles)
1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz began Hoshea to reign ] This is one more evidence that there is error in the chronological statements. In 2Ki 15:30 Hoshea is said to have begun to reign in the twentieth year of Jotham. As in 2Ki 15:33 Jotham’s reign is stated to have been only sixteen years, the two statements are contradictory. Moreover we find that Pekah was not slain in Jotham’s reign, but was an active monarch in the days of Ahaz. The reconciliation of the various statements is full of difficulty. See chronological notice.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
In the twelfth year – Compare 2Ki 15:30 note. The history of the kingdom of Israel is in this chapter brought to a close.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Ki 17:1-8
In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea.
Aspects of a corrupt nation
Hoshea, the king here mentioned, was the nineteenth and last king of Israel. He lived about 720 years or more b.c. After a reign of nine years his subjects were carded away captive to Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end.
I. As an unfortunate inheritor of wrong.
Upon Hoshea and his age there came down the corrupting influence of no less than nineteen princes, all of whom were steeped in wickedness and fanatical idolatry. The whole nation had become completely immoral and idolatrous. It is one of not only the commonest but the most perplexing facts in history that one generation comes to inherit, to a great extent, the character of its predecessor. Though the bodies of our predecessors are mouldering in the dust they are still here in their thought and influences. This is an undoubted fact. It serves to explain three things–
1. The vital connection between all the members of the race. Though men are countless in number, and ever multiplying, humanity is one.
2. The immense difficulty in improving the moral condition of the race. There have been men in every age and land who have striven even unto blood to improve the race. Those of us who have lived longest in the world, looked deepest into its moral heart, and laboured most zealously and persistently for its improvement, feel like Sisyphus, in ancient fable, struggling to roll a large stone to the top of a mountain, which, as soon as we think some progress has been made, rolls back to its old position, and that with greater impetuosity.
3. The absolute need of superhuman agency spiritually to redeem the race. Philosophy shows that a bad world cannot improve itself, cannot make itself good. Bad men can neither hell? themselves, merely, or help others. If the world is to be improved, thoughts and influences from superhuman regions must be injected into its heart.
II. As a guilty worker of wrong.–Hoshea and his people were not only the inheritors of the corruptions of past generations, but they themselves became agents in propagating and perpetuating the wickedness. So that while they were the inheritors of a corrupt past, they were at the same time guilty agents in a wicked present. Strong as is the influence of the past upon us, it is not strong enough to coerce us into wrong.
III. As a terrible victim of wrong. What was the judicial outcome of all this wickedness? Retribution came, stern, rigorous, and crushing. (David Thomas, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XVII
Hoshea’s wicked reign, 1, 2.
Shalmaneser comes up against him, makes him tributary, and
then casts him into prison, 3, 4.
He besieges Samaria three years; and at last takes it, and
carries Israel captive into Assyria, and places them in
different cities of the Assyrians and Medes, 5, 6.
The reason why Israel was thus afflicted; their idolatry,
obstinacy, divination, c., 7-18.
Judah copies the misconduct of Israel, 19.
The Lord rejects all the seed of Israel, 20-23.
The king of Assyria brings different nations and places them
in Samaria, and the cities from which the Israelites had been
led away into captivity, 24.
Many of these strange people are destroyed by lions, 25.
The king of Assyria sends back some of the Israelitish priests
to teach these nations the worship of Jehovah which worship
they incorporate with their own idolatry, 26-33.
The state of the Israelites, and strange nations in the land of
Israel, 34-41.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVII
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Quest. How can this be true, seeing it is said that he reigned, or began to reign, in Israel in the twentieth year of Jotham, 2Ki 15:30, which was the fourth year of Ahaz, as was there noted? Answ. He usurped the kingdom in Ahazs fourth year; but either was not owned as king by the generality of the people, or was not accepted and established in his kingdom by the Assyrian, till Ahazs twelfth year; or in his eight first years he was only a tributary prince, and the king of Assyrias viceroy; and after that time he set up for himself, which drew the Assyrian upon him. Nine years, to wit, after his confirmation and peaceable possession of his kingdom; for in all he reigned seventeen or eighteen years, to wit, twelve with Ahaz, who reigned sixteen years, and six with Hezekiah, 2Ki 18:10.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz kingof Judah, began Hoshea . . . to reignThe statement in 2Ki15:30 may be reconciled with the present passage in the followingmanner: Hoshea conspired against Pekah in the twentieth year of thelatter, which was the eighteenth of Jotham’s reign. It was two yearsbefore Hoshea was acknowledged king of Israel, that is, in the fourthof Ahaz, and twentieth of Jotham. In the twelfth year of Ahaz hisreign began to be tranquil and prosperous [CALMET].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
In the tenth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. In this account there is some difficulty, since it was in the twentieth of Jotham, that is, the fourth of Ahaz, that Hosea conspired against Pekah king of Israel, and slew him, when it might be reasonably thought he began his reign: now either there was an interregnum until the twelfth of Ahaz, or Hoshea however was not generally received and acknowledged as king till then, as others think; he being a tributary to the king of Assyria, and a kind of viceroy, is not said to reign until he rebelled against him; after which he reigned nine years, four in the times of Ahaz, and five in the reign of Hezekiah, 2Ki 18:9, in this way the author of the Jewish chronology goes r, in which he is followed by other Jewish writers; and this bids as fair as any to remove the difficulty, unless these nine years refer to the time of his reign before the twelfth of Ahaz; and the sense be, that in the twelfth of Ahaz he had reigned nine year’s; but it is said he “began” to reign then.
r Seder Olam Rabba, c. 22.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Reign of Hoshea King of Israel. – 2Ki 17:1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz began Hoshea to reign. As Hoshea conspired against Pekah, according to 2Ki 15:30, in the fourth year of Ahaz, and after murdering him made himself king, whereas according to the verse before us it was not till the twelfth year of Ahaz that he really became king, his possession of the throne must have been contested for eight years. The earlier commentators and almost all the chronologists have therefore justly assumed that there was en eight years’ anarchy between the death of Pekah and the commencement of Hoshea’s reign. This assumption merits the preference above all the attempts made to remove the discrepancy by alterations of the text, since there is nothing at all surprising in the existence of anarchy at a time when the kingdom was in a state of the greatest inward disturbance and decay. Hoshea reigned nine years, and “did that which was evil in the eyes of Jehovah, though not like the kings of Israel before him” (2Ki 17:2). We are not told in what Hoshea was better than his predecessors, nor can it be determined with any certainty, although the assumption that he allowed his subjects to visit the temple at Jerusalem is a very probable one, inasmuch as, according to 2Ch 30:10., Hezekiah invited to the feast of the Passover, held at Jerusalem, the Israelites from Ephraim and Manasseh as far as to Zebulun, and some individuals from these tribes accepted his invitation. But although Hoshea was better than his predecessors, the judgment of destruction burst upon the sinful kingdom and people in his reign, because he had not truly turned to the Lord; a fact which has been frequently repeated in the history of the world, namely, that the last rulers of a decaying kingdom have not been so bad as their forefathers. “God is accustomed to defer the punishment of the elders in the greatness of His long-suffering, to see whether their descendants will come to repentance; but if this be not the case, although they may not be so bad, the anger of God proceeds at length to visit iniquity (cf. Exo 20:5).” Seb. Schmidt.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Samaria Besieged by the Assyrians; Israel Subdued by Assyria. | B. C. 730. |
1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. 2 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. 3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. 4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. 5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. 6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
We have here the reign and ruin of Hoshea, the last of the kings of Israel, concerning whom observe,
I. That, though he forced his way to the crown by treason and murder (as we read ch. xv. 30), yet he gained not the possession of it till seven or eight years after; for it was in the fourth year of Ahaz that he slew Pekah, but did not himself begin to reign till the twelfth year of Ahaz, v. 1. Whether by the king of Assyria, or by the king of Judah, or by some of his own people, does not appear, but it seems so long he was kept out of the throne he aimed at. Justly were his bad practices thus chastised, and the word of the prophet was thus fulfilled (Hos. x. 3), Now they shall say We have no king, because we feared not the Lord.
II. That, though he was bad, yet not so bad as the kings of Israel had been before him (v. 2), not so devoted to the calves as they had been. One of them (that at Dan), the Jews say, had been, before this, carried away by the king of Assyria in the expedition recorded ch. xv. 29, (to which perhaps the prophet refers, Hos. viii. 5, Thy calf, O Samaria! has cast thee off), which made him put the less confidence in the other. And some say that this Hoshea took off the embargo which the former kings had put their subjects under, forbidding them to go up to Jerusalem to worship, which he permitted those to do that had a mind to it. But what shall we think of this dispensation of providence, that the destruction of the kingdom of Israel should come in the reign of one of the best of its kings? Thy judgments, O God! are a great deep. God would hereby show that in bringing this ruin upon them he designed to punish, 1. Not only the sins of that generation, but of the foregoing ages, and to reckon for the iniquities of their fathers, who had been long in filing the measure and treasuring up wrath against this day of wrath. 2. Not only the sins of their kings, but the sins of the people. If Hoshea was not so bad as the former kings, yet the people were as bad as those that went before them, and it was an aggravation of their badness, and brought ruin the sooner, that their king did not set them so bad an example as the former kings had done, nor hinder them from reforming; he gave them leave to do better, but they did as bad as ever, which laid the blame of their sin and ruin wholly upon themselves.
III. That the destruction came gradually. They were for some time made tributaries before they were made captives to the king of Assyria (v. 3), and, if that less judgment had prevailed to humble and reform them, the greater would have been prevented.
IV. That they brought it upon themselves by the indirect course they took to shake off the yoke of the king of Assyria, v. 4. Had the king and people of Israel applied to God, made their peace with him and their prayers to him, they might have recovered their liberty, ease, and honour; but they withheld their tribute, and trusted to the king of Egypt to assist them in their revolt, which, if it had taken effect, would have been but to change their oppressors. But Egypt became to them the staff of a broken reed. This provoked the king of Assyria to proceed against them with the more severity. Men get nothing by struggling with the net, but entangle themselves the more.
V. That it was an utter destruction that came upon them. 1. The king of Israel was made a prisoner; he was shut up and bound, being, it is probable, taken by surprise, before Samaria was besieged. 2. The land of Israel was made a prey. The army of the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, made themselves master of it (v. 5), and treated the people as traitors to be punished with the sword of justice rather than as fair enemies. 3. The royal city of Israel was besieged, and at length taken. Three years it held out after the country was conquered, and no doubt a great deal of misery was endured at that time which is not particularly recorded; but the brevity of the story, and the passing of this matter over lightly, methinks, intimate that they were abandoned of God and he did not now regard the affliction of Israel, as sometimes as he had done. 4. The people of Israel were carried captives into Assyria, v. 6. The generality of the people, those that were of any note, were forced away into the conqueror’s country, to be slaves and beggars there. (1.) Thus he was pleased to exercise a dominion over them, and to show that they were entirely at his disposal. (2.) By depriving them of their possessions and estates, real and personal, and exposing them to all the hardships and reproaches of a removal to a strange country, under the power of an imperious army, he chastised them for their rebellion and their endeavour to shake off his yoke. (3.) Thus he effectually prevented all such attempts for the future and secured their country to himself. (4.) Thus he got the benefit of their service in his own country, as Pharaoh did that of their fathers; and so this unworthy people were lost as they were found, and ended as they began, in servitude and under oppression. (5.) Thus he made room for those of his own country that had little, and little to do, at home, to settle in a good land, a land flowing with milk and honey. In all these several ways he served himself by this captivity of the ten tribes. We are here told in what places of his kingdom he disposed of them–in Halah and Habor, in places, we may suppose, far distant from each other, lest they should keep up a correspondence, incorporate again, and become formidable. There, we have reason to think, after some time they were so mingled with the nations that they were lost, and the name of Israel was no more in remembrance. Those that forgot God were themselves forgotten; those that studied to be like the nations were buried among them; and those that would not serve God in their own land were made to serve their enemies in a strange land. It is probable that they were the men of honour and estates who were carried captive, and that many of the meaner sort of people were left behind, many of every tribe, who either went over to Judah or became subject to the Assyrian colonies, and their posterity were Galileans or Samaritans. But thus ended Israel as a nation; now they became Lo-ammi–not a people, and Lo-ruhamah–unpitied. Now Canaan spued them out. When we read of their entry under Hoshea the son of Nun who would have thought that such as this should be their exit under Hoshea the son of Elah? Thus Rome’s glory in Augustus sunk, many ages after, in Augustulus. Providence so ordered the eclipsing of the honour of the ten tribes that the honour of Judah (the royal tribe) and Levi (the holy tribe), which yet remained, might shine the brighter. Yet we find a number sealed of every one of the twelve tribes (Rev. vii.) except Dan. James writes to the twelve tribes scattered abroad (Jam. i. 1) and Paul speaks of the twelve tribes which instantly served God day and night (Acts xxvi. 7); so that though we never read of those that were carried captive, nor have any reason to credit the conjecture of some (that they yet remain a distinct body in some remote corner of the world), yet a remnant of them did escape, to keep up the name of Israel, till it came to be worn by the gospel church, the spiritual Israel, in which it will ever remain, Gal. vi. 16.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Second Kings – Chapter 17
Last Days of tweet – Verses 1-6
Hoshea was the last king of the northern kingdom. He was better than the kings of Israel who had preceded him, but was still characterized as “evil in the sight of the Lord.” He was not bad enough to be likened to Jeroboam, which certainly is a slight recommendation of him. However Israel had passed the point of no return in their spiritual relationship. The long threatened judgment of the Lord for their sins was about to fall. Nationally they illustrate the proverb of Solomon, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecc 8:11).
Hoshea’s reign lasted nine years. Like his immediate predecessors it appears that Hoshea was constrained to pay heavy tribute to the Assyrian king to maintain his reign over his kingdom. By this time Tiglath-pileser had passed on, and Shalmaneser was the new king of Assyria. When Hoshea had assassinated Pekah and made himself king Shalmaneser came to insure that the tribute was continued, and Hoshea paid him and became subservient to him.
But Hoshea tired of the tribute and sought a more lenient master by applying to So, the king of Egypt. The kings of Israel and Judah seem always to have favored Egypt over the conquerors from the north. But Egypt was actually threatened also by the mighty powers coming out of the Mesopotamian Valley, and might have helped the Israelite kingdoms out of self interest. But the hopes of Hoshea were frustrated when Shalmaneser learned what he was doing. He came back to Samaria, took Hoshea and shut him up, bound in prison.
The details of Hoshea’s imprisonment are somewhat vague. The Assyrian king besieged Samaria for a period of three years, and it fell to him in the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign. Does the statement concerning Hoshea’s imprisonment relate to the beginning of the siege or to the end? Contextually it seems that he was taken off to prison at the beginning. But since it is said that Hoshea reigned over Israel for nine years, and that the city was taken by Shalmaneser in the ninth year of Hoshea, it seems that he may not have been carted off to prison until the city fell. It makes little difference, of course, for the outcome was the ultimate end of the northern kingdom. Its inhabitants were resettled in far off countries in keeping with the policy of the Assyrian emperors. Some of the places are not clearly identified to which they were carried. Halah and Gozan are thought to have been an area in northeastern Mesopotamia on the Habor River, a tributary of the Euphrates. Media was far across the Tigris to the east. The prediction of Moses, hundreds of years before, as Israel stood poised to enter the promised land, was being fulfilled (De 28:63-68).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE EXTINCTION OF THE ISRAELITISH KINGDOM
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
2Ki. 17:2. Did evil but not as the kings of IsraelScripture merely records the fact, does not explain wherein Hoshea sinned less. But even an abstention from wrong, which others wrought, is noticed by Jehovah, and kept in eternal memory.
2Ki. 17:3. Came up Shalmaneser, king of AssyriaThirsting for conquest, he subdued the king of the ten tribes, and made him tributary. Shalmanesers reign followed Tiglath-pilesers, who died B.C 727. From this Assyrian despot Hoshea after a few years, sought relief by alliance with So, king of Egypt (2Ki. 17:4). This namebecomes by punctuation Seveh, and is recognized as Shebek of the 25th dynasty. This Ethiopian monarch, lord of Upper Egypt, in the year B.C. 725 invaded Lower Egypt, and proved so mighty a conqueror that the small kingdoms which had groaned beneath the despotism or Assyria turned to him for defence and security.
HOMILETICS OF 2Ki. 17:1-6
THE UTTER DOWNFALL OF ISRAEL
I. Was effected notwithstanding the superior capacity and modified idolatry of the ruler.Hoshea did that which was evil, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him (2Ki. 17:2). He did not enforce the edicts of Baal with such determined fanaticism as some of his predecessors. He allowed more liberty in religious worship, and while not approaching the true worship of Jehovah, he did not descend to the abominations of the lowest heathenism. Some have thought that the last king of Israel was the worst; but the history does not favour that view. He was a man of considerable military and political capacity. It is true he reached the throne by violence and bloodshed (chap. 2Ki. 15:30); but the people were weary of national abuses and of the imbecility of their kings, and welcomed the advent of any one who had the courage and vigour to rectify matters. Hoshea yearned for liberty, and his whole reign was spent in repeated efforts to cast off the foreign yoke, to excite a more enterprising national spirit, and to arrest the downward tendency of the kingdom. But no human power could now save Israel. The ablest generalship, the most consummate statesmanship, the cleverest combinations, were all in vain. It was a melancholy sight to see this man grappling with a falling kingdom, whose ruin he was powerless to prevent.
II. Was accomplished notwithstanding the most brave and desperate struggles for continued existence (2Ki. 17:4-5).Hoshea saw the mistake that Menahem and Pckah had made in calling in the assistance of Assyria, and what had been the sad results to the country. He made a bold stand for national freedom. He refused to pay tribute, and prepared to withstand the fury of the great Assyrian power. It is a tribute to the superior diplomacy of Hosea that he succeeded in persuading So, the warrior king of Egypt, that it was their mutual safety to oppose Assyria; and though So was but a fickle colleague, he must have rendered considerable assistance until he was obliged to retire within his own kingdom and defend himself from the common enemy. The fact that Samaria held out for three years against the Assyrian army, with all its formidable appliances for siege and assault, indicates the obstinacy and desperation of the defence. They were the last frantic efforts of despair.
It is remarkable, says Ewald, how strong a resemblance the fall of Samaria bears to the first and second destructions of Jerusalem, in the heroic resistance of its inhabitants.
III. Was associated with scenes of humiliation and suffering (2Ki. 17:5-6). Israel was afflicted with all the terrible consequences of warwar carried on by an enemy who was determined to win. The horrors of the siege of Samaria may be inferred from Isa. 28:1-4; Hos. 10:14; Hos. 13:16; Amo. 6:9-14. Added to the chagrin of defeat, was the degradation of enforced captivity and estrangementtorn from the midst of loved and familiar scenes, and placed in a strange and distant country, subject to the sarcasms and, it may be, cruelty of its inhabitants. The people who had been delivered from Egyptian slavery by the strong arm of Jehovah are again relegated to bondage, because they had abandoned their Deliverer. The punishment for sin is ever attended with suffering and shame.
IV. Was inevitable, as the opportunity for reformation had passed unimproved.Instruction had been despised, reproof unheeded, the best of prophets ignored, prosperity abused, and repeated overtures of mercy callously spurned. The time for compromise was passed, the opportunity of salvation was sinned away. Nothing remained but to allow the national infatuation to run its course and produce its inevitable results. The nation must reap what it had sown; it had sown the wind, and must reap the whirlwind. A certain king once caused a lamp to be lit in his palace, and a proclamation made throughout his dominion that every rebel who came and tendered his submission before the light burnt out should be forgiven, whatever the nature of his offence; but that those who refused to obey the summons within the required time should be put to death. The lamp of Israels opportunity had long been lit, and the conditions of submission made sufficiently public. When therefore the light became extinct, and Israel refused to return, the threatened punishment must inevitably follow. Shakespeare says truly of opportuity, Who seeks, and will not take when once tis offered, shall never find it more.
LESSONS:
1. It is not in the power of any one man unaided to save a kingdom.
2. National sins involve national ruin.
3. Every nation, as every individual, has ample opportunities for reformation.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2Ki. 17:1-6. A doleful picture of national desolation.
1. Fanatical persistence in the evil that works its ruin (2Ki. 17:2).
2. Vainly seeking the protection of foreign powers (2Ki. 17:3-4).
3. The country overrun and impoverished by hosts of invading foes (2Ki. 17:5).
4. Struggling bravely, but uselessly, against superior numbers (2Ki. 17:5-6).
5. Draughted unresistingly into strange and distant lands (2Ki. 17:16).
6. An imprisoned king and scattered people.
The last king of Israel. I. He did that which was evil, but not as the kings of Israel before him. Though he did not go so far in wickedness as the eighteen kings who preceded him, nevertheless, he did not walk in the way of salvation. Half-way conversion is no conversion. In order to bring back the nation from its wicked ways, he should have been himself devoted to the Lord with all his heart. When people are not fully in earnest in their conversion, then there is no cessation of corruption, whether it be the case of an individual or a state. II. He makes a covenant with the king of Egypt (2Ki. 17:4). By this he showed that his heart was not perfect with God. Egypt, the very power out of whose hand God had wonderfully rescued his people, was to help him against Assyria. But cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm (Jer. 17:5; Hos. 7:11-13). III. He loses his land and his people, and is cast into prison. By conspiracy and murder he had attained to the throne and to the highest pitch of human greatness, but his end was disgrace, misery, and lifelong imprisonment. Upon him who will not be humbled by small evils God sends great and heavy ones.Lange.
2Ki. 17:2. Wickedness
1. May be modified in its enormity.
2. Every modification observed and impartially recorded.
3. Modification does not alter its nature, or escape its punishment.
It looks like the bitter irony of fate that this Hosea, who was to be the last king, was a better one than any of his predecessors. The words of the prophets who had uttered so many and such important truths concerning this kingdom during the last fifty years, many have exercised a powerful influence over him and instilled into him better principles. But they had always predicted its fall as certain; and now the irresistible force of history was to prove that no single man, whatever might be his position and superiority, could be strong enough to delay the ruin of the whole structure, if the right moment for its reformation had passed.Ewald.
2Ki. 17:3. Payment of tribute.
1. A humiliating evidence of subjection (2Ki. 17:3).
2. Chafes the spirit of a liberty-loving people (2Ki. 17:4).
3. Brings disaster if ineffectually resisted (2Ki. 17:4).
2Ki. 17:5. As the end drew near, they gave themselves up to the frantio revellings of despair. At last the city was stormed. With the ferocity common to all the warfare of those times, the infants were hurled down the rocky sides of the hill on which the city stood, or destroyed in their mothers bosoms. Famine and pestilence completed the work of war. The stones of the ruined city were poured down into the rich valley below, and the foundations were laid bare. Palace and hovel alike fell; the statues were broken to pieces; the crown of pride, the glory of Ephraim, was trodden under foot.Stanley.
2Ki. 17:6. The fall of Samaria and Damascus was, according to the prediction of the prophet, synchronous (Isa. 7:7-9); and the devastation both of Syria and Israel was foretold at a time and in circumstances when no human sagacity could have anticipated it (Amos 1).Jamieson.
O terrible examples of vengeance upon that peculiar people whom God had chosen for Himself out of all the world! All the world were witnesses of the favours, of the miraculous deliverances and protections; all the world shall be witnesses of their just confusion. It is not in the power of slight errors to set off that infinite mercy. What was it, O God, what was it that caused Thee to cast off Thine inheritance? What but the same that made Thee cast the angels out of heaveneven their rebellious sins. Those sins dared to emulate the greatness of Thy mercies, no less than they forced the severity of Thy judgments.Bp. Hall.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
III. THE ASSYRIAN DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL AND THE DEPORTATION OF THE TEN TRIBES 17:141
Chapter 17 relates the sad story of how the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrian superpower. After narrating the political facts relating to the reign of the last king of Israel (2Ki. 17:1-6), the author of Kings undertakes a lengthy explanation of why the calamity of captivity befell this portion of Gods covenant people (2Ki. 17:7-23). The author then describes the syncretistic practices of the foreigners who were forced to repopulate Samaria (2Ki. 17:24-41).
A. HOSHEA: THE LAST KING OF ISRAEL 17:16
TRANSLATION
(1) In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; and he reigned for nine years. (2) And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD, only not like the kings of Israel who were before him. (3) Against him Shalmaneser king of Assyria went up, and Hoshea became a servant to him and rendered to him tribute. (4) And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea because he had sent messengers unto So king of Egypt; and he brought no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. (5) And the king of Assyria went up in all the land, and went up to Samaria, and laid siege to it for three years. (6) In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, took Israel captive to Assyria, and made them dwell in Halah, and in Habor by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Nineteenth King of Israel
HOSEA BEN ELAH
732722 B.C.
(Deliverer)
2 Kings 15:30; 17:16
Synchronism
Hoshea 1 = Jotham 20
Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath.
Pro. 29:8
COMMENTS
Hoshea came to the throne in 732 B.C., the twentieth year of Jotham (2Ki. 15:30) and the twelfth year of the coregency of Ahaz (2Ki. 17:1).[590] He reigned for some nine years over the Northern Kingdom (2Ki. 17:1). Like his predecessors, Hoshea did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He continued the apostate calf worship, leaned upon the arm of flesh, and turned a deaf ear to the voice of Gods prophets. But he was not guilty of any special wickedness like some of those who had occupied that throne before him (2Ki. 17:2). When Tiglath-pileser died, Hoshea tried to regain his independence by withholding the annual tribute money. But the new king, Shalmaneser, came up against him and forced him to resume his position of Assyrian tributary.[591] These events probably transpired in the year 727 B.C.
[590] For a discussion of the problem in this synchronism, see the special study at the conclusion of the next chapter.
[591] This may have been the time when Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel in the day of battle (Hos. 10:14), defeating Hoshea near that place and taking the city.
Though forced back into the Assyrian orbit, Hoshea searched for some means by which he might extricate himself. Grasping at straws, he was persuaded to enter alliance with a certain King So of Egypt. This So is probably to be identified with Sibe, a commander of one of the small monarchies of the Egypt delta.[592] King So must have made certain commitments to Hoshea. With this backing the Israelite monarch tried once again to withhold tribute from Shalmaneser. This act of rebellion brought down the wrath of the Assyrian upon Samaria. The text as it stands gives the impression that Hoshea may have gone out to meet Shalmaneser to sue for peace and pardon. He was then arrested and imprisoned (2Ki. 17:4).[593]
[592] J. A. Wilson, So, IDB, vol. R-Z, p. 394. Gray (OTL, p. 642) thinks So is not a person, but a placethe Egyptian capital of this period, Sais. The Hebrew text as it stands suggests that a person is intended.
[593] Others think that 2Ki. 17:4 gives the ultimate result, and 2Ki. 17:5-6 the details of how that result came about.
The king of Assyria came with a vast army to besiege the kingless capital of the country. According to the Hebrew mode of reckoning parts of years as full years, the siege lasted three years. Actually the siege need not have lasted longer than one full year and parts of two other ones, i.e., a little over one year. Samaria held out as long as it could, awaiting the promised aid from Egypt (2Ki. 17:5). Finally in 722 B.C. Samaria fell to the king of Assyria, either Shalmaneser, or to Sargon who claimed the throne that same year.[594] The Assyrian records relate that 27,290 persons were carried captive from Samaria, and doubtlessly many others from smaller villages round about. These captives were taken and distributed in the distant eastern provinces of the Assyrian empire.
[594] In various texts Sargon claims to have captured Samaria. However A. T. Olmstead makes a strong case that Shalmaneser was still king at the time the city fell. The Fall of Samaria, AJSL, XXI (1904, 5), 17982.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XVII.
THE REIGN OF HOSHEA, THE LAST KING OF SAMARIA. THE FALL OF SAMARIA. CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL, AND RE-PEOPLING OF THE LAND BY FOREIGNERS.
(1) In the twelfth year of Ahaz.If Pekah reigned thirty years (see Note on 2Ki. 15:27), and Ahaz succeeded in Pekahs seventeenth year (2Ki. 16:1), Ahaz must have reigned thirteen years concurrently with Pekah. Hoshea, therefore, succeeded Pekah in the fourteenth year of Ahaz.
Began Hoshea.See the inscription of Tiglath Pileser, quoted at 2Ki. 15:30, according to which, Hoshea (A-u-si-ha) only mounted the throne as a vassal of Assyria. On the news of the death of Tiglath, he probably refused further tribute.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
REIGN OF HOSEA AND FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, 2Ki 17:1-23.
1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz In our note on 2Ki 15:30, following Usher we understand that Hoshea slew Pekah in the fourth year of Ahaz. Accordingly there must have been an interregnum of about eight years after Pekah’s death before Hoshea succeeded in seating himself on the throne. This opinion is adopted by Keil, who says, “His possession of the throne must have been contested for eight years. The earlier commentators, and almost all the chronologists, have justly assumed that there was an eight years’ anarchy between the death of Pekah and the commencement of Hoshea’s reign. This assumption merits the preference, above all the attempts made to remove the discrepancy by alterations of the text, since there is nothing at all surprising in the existence of anarchy at a time when the kingdom was in a state of the greatest inward disturbance and decay.” This seems to us more satisfactory than Bahr’s proposal to alter the text in 2Ki 15:27 by reading thirty instead of twenty years for Pekah’s reign, and to regard the latter part of 2Ki 15:30 as an interpolation.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Reign Of Hoshea King Of Israel c. 732/1-723/2 BC And The Last Days Of Israel ( 2Ki 17:1-7 ).
The history here is very much telescoped. Hoshea had assassinated Pekah and he immediately then submitted to Assyria, paying heavy tribute. Fortunately for Israel Tiglath-pileser accepted his submission. This resulted in a reprieve for Israel who, unlike Damascus, were not at that time destroyed.
Hoshea’s vassal status then had to be re-confirmed when, on Tiglath-pilesers’s death, Tiglath-pileser’s son, Shalmaneser ‘came up against him’ at which point Hoshea renewed his submission and became Shalmaneser’s servant and paid tribute. This need not indicate that he was seen as in a state of rebellion, only as now needing to submit to the new king. On the death of Tiglath-pileser it would be necessary for treaties to be renewed and new submissions made to the new king, and tribute might well have been delayed by Hoshea until it was certain who would successfully succeed Tiglath-pileser (succession was not always straightforward). Thus by this ‘visit’ he was being given a firm reminder of his responsibilities.
This tribute then continued for some years. But at some point Hoshea apparently felt that with Egypt’s offered help, he could take the risk of withholding tribute. The initiative may well have come from Egypt who wanted to set up a buffer between Egypt and Assyria. We can understand Hoshea’s error. Egypt had no doubt always been looked on as a powerful country, even if at present inactive in Palestine, and Hoshea was not to know that at this time it was divided up and weak, and simply trying to protect itself by stirring up people against Assyria. He no doubt felt that with Egypt behind him he, along with other states, would now be able to resist Assyria. But he was gravely mistaken. No actual help would come from Egypt.
Analysis.
a
b And he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him (2Ki 17:2).
c Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant, and brought him tribute (2Ki 17:3).
d And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year (2Ki 17:4 a).
c Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison (2Ki 17:4 b).
b Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years (2Ki 17:5).
a In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2Ki 17:6).
Note that in ‘a’ Hoshea commenced reigning in Samaria and reigned for nine years, and in the parallel in the ninth year he ceased to reign because the cream of Israel were exiled. In ‘b’ he did what was evil in the eyes of YHWH, and in the parallel YHWH responded by sending the king of Assyria to besiege Samaria. In ‘c’ Shalmaneser made him yield to him as his vassal and pay tribute, and in the parallel he put him in prison because he had failed to pay tribute. Centrally in ‘d’ he had rebelled against Assyria at the instigation of the king of Egypt, and had withheld tribute.
2Ki 17:1
‘In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned for nine years.’
As we saw in 2Ki 15:30 Hoshea assassinated Pekah, the preceding king of Israel in order to submit to Assyria, thereby saving Israel from total destruction. As a result he was confirmed in his kingship by the Assyrians. This was in the twelfth year of Ahaz and the twentieth year of Jotham (2Ki 15:30), Thus Ahaz’s twelve years were years of co-regency. But Ahaz was by now in sole control because of his father’s illness, and thus seen as a main party. Hoshea reigned for nine years during most of which Israel paid tribute to Assyria.
2Ki 17:2
‘And he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him.’
This rather enigmatic statement is not easy to interpret. It would suggest that he did not lay any emphasis on Jeroboam’s false cult, but nevertheless did not truly turn to YHWH. It may also indicate that he had more concern for social justice. Possibly he was in fact lukewarm towards religion generally, although perfunctorily engaging in the worship of the Assyrian deities, simply because he had no choice in the matter. Some have connected it with a willingness to allow his subjects to visit the temple at Jerusalem inasmuch as, according to 2Ch 30:10, Hezekiah invited to the feast of the Passover, held at Jerusalem, the Israelites from Ephraim and Manasseh as far as to Zebulun, with some individuals from these tribes accepting his invitation
2Ki 17:3
‘Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant, and brought him tribute.’
Shalmaneser V followed Tiglath-pileser III. At the commencement of any new reign there would be a tendency to withhold tribute in order to see what the new king would do, but once Shalmaneser came on the scene, possibly sending a warning ahead, Hoshea rapidly submitted and paid tribute. ‘Became his servant’ i.e. acknowledged himself as his vassal.
2Ki 17:4
‘And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year.’
Years passed during which Hoshea continued to pay tribute, but then Hoshea began to enter into intrigues with ‘So, king of Egypt’ and withheld tribute, and the king of Assyria, through his spies, possibly stationed in Samaria, discovered the fact. The king of Egypt in question was probably Osorkon IV. It seems probable that Osorkon, who only ruled a part of Egypt, initiated the intrigue as a way of protecting the borders of Egypt, without having too much concern about the consequences for his ‘allies’. It would be left to them to look after themselves. But Hoshea probably saw Egypt as a powerful united country whom even Assyria would fear. In fact around this time (in about 725 BC), Egypt had two lines of senior pharaohs reigning in the Delta, Osorkon IV in Tanis (Zoan) and Iuput II in Leontopolis further south. Neither king actually ruled effectively over anything more than his own local province, but Hosea probably did not realise that. Tanis (Zoan) would be the recognised objective of Hebrew envoys to Egypt in the eighth and seventh centuries BC (compare Isa 19:11; Isa 19:13; Isa 30:2; Isa 30:4). That Osorkon was not to be relied on comes out in the outcome.
2Ki 17:4
‘Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.’
It would appear that as Shalmaneser approached Israel Hoshea went out to meet him, probably hoping to make his submission and blame the intrigue on his anti-Assyrian compatriots. Shalmaneser was not, however, convinced, and shut him up, bound, in prison.
2Ki 17:5
‘Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years.’
Then Shalmaneser advanced into Israel, ‘throughout all the land’, occupying every part of it and laying siege to Samaria whose stout walls held him back for three years. It was during this siege that Shalmaneser died and was replaced by Sargon II who finally took the city. Alternatively Sargon may have been acting as his father’s commander-in-chief. Both seemingly laid claim to having taken the city.
2Ki 17:6
‘In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.’
Once Samaria was taken many of its people were carried away into exile, some to Assyria itself, and others to the cities of the Medes. There are a number of Assyrian records of this event. The Nimrud Prism reads, ‘I clashed with them in the power of the great gods, my lords, and counted as spoil 27,280 people together with their chariots, — and the gods in whom they trusted.’ The Display Inscription reads, ‘I surrounded and captured the city of Samaria, 27,290 of the people who dwell in it I took away as prisoners.’ These would be the cream of the city, including all the princes, aristocrats and businessmen. Their journey would not have been a pleasant one as they would be shamed and chained (compare Isa 20:4 of captured Egyptians) but eventually they would be settled in the places mentioned.
Interestingly records have been discovered which have confirmed these settlements. Texts from Gozan (tell Halaf) mention as living there ‘Halbisu from Samaria’ and list other names compounded with Yau (YHWH), while an ostracon from Calah (now Nimrud) of about 720/700 BC contains a list of ‘biblical’ names such as ‘Elinur son of Menahem; Nedabel son of Hanun; Elinur son of Michael’, and so on.
Thus came to an end Israel as a united people, and shortly afterwards the exiles would be replaced by peoples transferred from other areas (see 2Ki 17:24), resulting in a mixed population. Israel was no more (apart from those who had settled in Judah or who had fled to Judah in the face of the Assyrian onslaught, of which there would be a good many) and its exiles would slowly be absorbed into the surrounding peoples.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
2Ki 17:1-41 The Reign of Hoshea Over Israel & Its Captivity (732-722 B.C.) 2Ki 17:1-41 records the account of the reign of Hoshea over Israel and of Israel’s destruction and captivity by Assyria.
2Ki 17:1-6 Comments – The Siege of Samaria – F. F. Bruce tells us that the siege of Samaria was begun while Shalmaneser V was ruler over Assyria, and by the time the city was taken, Sargon II has superseded him. [66]
[66] F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963), 126.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The End of Israel as a Nation
v. 1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hoshea, the son of Elah, v. 2. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, v. 3. Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, v. 4. And the king of Assyria, v. 5. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years, v. 6. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel, v. 7. For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord, their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, v. 8. and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, v. 9. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord, their God, v. 10. And they set them up images, v. 11. and there they burned incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them, and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger; v. 12. for they served idols, v. 13. Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah, v. 14. Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, v. 15. And they rejected His statutes, v. 16. And they left all the commandments of the Lord, their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, v. 17. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, v. 18. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah only, v. 19. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord, their God, v. 20. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, v. 21. For He rent Israel from the house of David, v. 22. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, they departed not from them, v. 23. until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
2Ki 17:1-41
THE REIGN OF HOSHEA OVER ISRAEL. DESTRUCTION OF THE ISRAELITE KINGDOM, AND THE GROUNDS OF IT RE–PEOPLING OF THE KINGDOM BY ASSYRIAN COLONISTS.
2Ki 17:1-6
REIGN OF HOSHEA. Hoshea, the last King of Israel, had a short reign of nine years only, during two of which he was besieged in his capital by the Assyrians. The writer notes that he was a bad king, but not so bad as most of his predecessors (2Ki 17:2); that he submitted to Shalmaneser, and then rebelled against him (2Ki 17:3, 2Ki 17:4); that he called in the aid of So, King of Egypt (2Ki 17:4); that he was besieged by Shalmaneser in Samaria (2Ki 17:5); and that after three years, or in the third year of the siege, he was taken, and with his people carried off into captivity (2Ki 17:6).
2Ki 17:1
In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria. In 2Ki 15:30 Hoshea was said to have smitten Pekah and slain him, and become king in his stead, “in the twentieth year of Jotham.” This has been supposed to mean “in the twentieth year from the accession of Jotham,” or, in other words, in the fourth year of Ahaz, since Jotham reigned only sixteen years (2Ki 15:33). But now the beginning of his reign is placed eight years later. An interregnum of this duration has been placed by some between Pekah and Doshea; but this is contradicted by 2Ki 15:30, and also by an inscription of Tiglath-pileser. If Ahaz reigned sixteen years, the present statement would seem to be correct, and the former one wrong. Hoshea’s accession may be confidently dated as in B.C. 730. Nine years. It is certain that Hoshea’s reign came to an end in the first year of Sargon, B.C. 722, from which to B.C. 730 would be eight complete, or nine incomplete, years.
2Ki 17:2
And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Hoshea’s general attitude towards Jehovah was much the same as that of former kings of Israel. De maintained the calf-worship, leant upon “arms of flesh,” and turned a deaf ear to the teaching of the prophets e.g, Hoshea and Micah, who addressed their warnings to him. But he was not guilty of any special wickednesshe set up no new idolatry; he seems to have allowed his subjects, if they pleased, to attend the festival worship at Jerusalem (2Ch 30:11, 2Ch 30:18). The rabbis add that when the golden calf of Bethel had been carried off by the Assyrians in one of their incursions, he did not replace it (‘Seder Olam,’ 2Ki 22:1-20.); but it is not at all clear that the image was carried away until Hoshea’s reign was over.
2Ki 17:3
Against him came up Shal-maneser King of Assyria. Shalmaneser’s succession to Tiglath-pileser on the throne of Assyria, once doubted, is now rendered certain by the Eponym Canon, which makes him ascend the throne in B.C. 727, and cease to reign in B.C. 722. It is uncertain whether he was Tiglath-pileser’s son or a usurper. The name, Shalmaneser (Sali-manu-uzur) was an old royal name in Assyria, and signified “Shalman protects” (compare the names Nabu-kudur-uzur, Nergal-asar-uzur, Nabu-pal-uzur, etc.). And Hoshea became his servant. Hoshea had been placed on the throne by Tiglath-pileser, and had paid him tribute (ibid; lines 18, 19). We must suppose that on Tiglath-pileser’s death, in B.C. 727, he had revolted, and resumed his independence. Shalmaneser. having become king, probably came up against Hoshea in the same year, and forced him to resume his position of Assyrian tributary. This may have been the time when “Shalman spoiled Beth-Arbel in the day of battle” (Dos. 10.14), defeating Hoshea near that place (Arbela, now Irbid, in Galilee), and taking it. And gave him presents; or, rendered him tribute, as in the margin of the Authorized Version.
2Ki 17:4
And the King of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So, King of Egypt. We learn from the Prophet Hosea that the expediency of calling in Egypt as a counterpoise to Assyria had long been in the thoughts of those who directed the policy of the Israelite state (see Hos 7:11; Hos 12:1, etc.). Now at last the plunge was taken. An Ethiopian dynasty of some strength and vigor had possession of Egypt, and held its court during some part of the year at Memphis (Hos 9:6). The king who occupied the throne was called Shabak or Shebeka name which the Greeks represented by Sabakos or Sevechus, and the Hebrews by . (The original vocalization of this word was probably , Seveh; but in later times this vocalization was lost, and the Masorites pointed the word as , Soh or So). The Assyrians knew the king as Sibakhi, and contended with him under Sargon. Hoshea now sent an embassy to this monarch’s court, requesting his alliance and his support against the great Asiatic power by which the existence of all the petty states of Western Asia was threatened. Shalmaneser was at the time endeavoring to capture Tyro, and Hoshea might reasonably fear that, when Tyre was taken, his own turn would come. It is not clear how Shabak received Hoshea’s overtures; but we may, perhaps, assume that it was with favor, since otherwise Hoshea would scarcely have ventured to withhold his tribute, as he seems to have done. It must have been in reliance on “the strength of Egypt” that he ventured to brave the anger of Assyria. And brought no presentor, sent no tributeto the King of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the King of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. The ultimate result is mentioned at once, before the steps by which it was accomplished are related. Shalmaneser did not “summon Hoshea before his presence to listen to his explanations,” and then, “as soon as he came, take him prisoner, put him in chains, and imprison him” (as Ewald thinks), but simply declared war, invaded Hoshea’s country, besieged him in his capital, and ultimately, when he surrendered, consigned him to a prison, as Nebuchadnezzar afterwards did Jehoiachin (2Ki 24:15; 2Ki 25:27). Otherwise Hoshea’s reign would have come to an end in his sixth or seventh, and not in his ninth year.
2Ki 17:5
Then the King of Assyriarather, and the King of Assyriacame up throughout all the landi.e; with an army that spread itself at once over the whole land, that came to conquer, not merely to strike a blow, and obtain submission, as on the former occasion (see 2Ki 17:3, and the comment)and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. From some time in Hoshea’s seventh year (2Ki 18:9) to some time in his ninth (2Ki 18:10). According to the Hebrew mode of reckoning, parts of years are counted as years; and thus the siege need not have lasted much over a year, though it may have been extended to nearly three years. In either case, there was ample time for Shabak to have brought up his forces, had he been so minded; and his failure to do so, or in any way to succor his ally, showed how little reliance was to be placed on Egyptian promises.
2Ki 17:6
In the ninth year of Hoshea the wing of Assyria took Samaria. In B.C. 722, the ninth year of Hoshea, there seems to have been a revolution at Nineveh. The reign of Shalmaneser came to an end, and Sargon seated himself upon the throne. There have been commentators on Kings (Keil, Bahr) who have supposed that Shalmaneser and Sargon were the same person, and have even claimed that the Assyrian inscriptions support their view. But the fact is otherwise. Nothing is more certain than that, according to them, Sargon succeeded Shalmaneser IV. in B.C. 722 by a revolution, and was the head of a new dynasty. He claims in his annals, among his earliest acts, the siege and capture of Samaria. It is remarkable that Scripture, while in no way connecting him with the capture, never distinctly assigns it to Shalmaneser. Here we are only told that “the King of Assyria” took it. In 2Ki 18:9, 2Ki 18:10, where we are distinctly told that Shalmaneser “came up against Samaria, and besieged it,” the capture is expressed by the phrase, “they took it,” not “he took it.” Perhaps neither king was present in person at the siege, or, at any rate, at its termination. The city may have been taken by an Assyrian general, while Shalmaneser and Sargon were contending for the crown. In that case, the capture might be assigned to either. Sargon certainly claims it; Shalmaneser’s annals have been so mutilated by his successors that we cannot tell whether he claimed it or not. The city fell in B.C. 722; and the deportation of its inhabitants at once took place. And carried Israel away into Assyria. The inscription of Sargon above referred to mentions only the deportation, from the city of Samaria itself, of 27,290 persons. No doubt a vast number of others were carried off from the smaller towns and from the country districts. Still, the country was not left uninhabited, and Sargon assessed its tribute at the old rate (‘Eponym Canon,’ l.s.c.). Nor was the cry of Samaria destroyed, since we hear of it subsequently more than once in the Assyrian annals. And placed them in Halah. “Halah” () has been supposed by some to be the old Assyrian city (Gen 10:11) of Calah (), which was, down to the’ time of Tiglath-pileser, the main capital; but the difference of spelling is an objection, and the Assyrians do not seem to have ever transported subject-populations to their capitals. It is moreover reasonable to suppose that Halah, Habor, Gozan, and Hara (1Ch 5:26) were in the same neighborhood. This last consideration points to the “Chalcitis” of Ptolemy (5. 18) as the true “Halah,” since it was in the immediate vicinity of the Khabour, of Gauzanitis, and of Haran. And in Habor by the river of Gozan. This is a mistranslation. The Hebrew runs, “And on Habor (Khabor), the river of Gozan” (so also in 2Ki 18:11). “Habor, the river of Gozan,” is undoubtedly one of the Khabours. Those who find Halah in Calah, or in Calacine (Calachene), generally prefer the eastern river which runs into the Tigris from Kurdistan a little below Jezireh. But there is no evidence that rids river bore the name in antiquity. The Western Khabour, on the other hand, was well known to the Assyrians under that appellation, and is the Aborrhas of Strabo and Procopius, the Chaboras of Pliny and Ptolemy, the Aburas of Isadore of Charax, and the Abora of Zosimus. It adjoins a district called Chalcitis, and it drains the country of Gauzanitis or Mygdonia. The Western Khabour is a river of Upper Mesopotamia, and runs into the Euphrates from the northeast near the site of the ancient Circesion. The tract which it drains is called Mygdonia by Strabo, Gauzanitis by Ptolemy. And in the cities of the Medes. Media had been repeatedly invaded and ravaged by the Assyrians from the time of Vulnirari IV.; but the first king to conquer any portion of it, and people its cities with settlers from other parts of his dominions, was Sargon. We learn from the present passage that a certain number of these settlers were Israelites.
2Ki 17:7-23
The provocations which induced God to destroy the Israelite kingdom.
Here, for once, the writer ceases to be the mere historian, and becomes the religious teacher and prophet, drawing out the lessons of history, and justifying the ways of God to man. As Bahr says, he “does not carry on the narrative as taken from the original authorities, but himself here begins a review of the history and fate of Israel, which ends with 2Ki 17:23, and forms an independent section by itself.” The section divides itself into four portions:
(1) From 2Ki 17:7 to 2Ki 17:12, a general statement of Israel’s wickedness;
(2) from 2Ki 17:13 to 2Ki 17:15, a special aggravation of their guilt, viz. their rejection of prophets;
(3) verses: 16 and 17 contain a specification of their chief acts of sin; and
(4) from 2Ki 17:18 to 2Ki 17:23, a general summary, including some words of warning to Judah.
2Ki 17:7
For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God; rather, And it came to pass, when, etc. The clauses from the present to the end of 2Ki 17:17 depend on the “when” of this verse; the apodosis does not come till 2Ki 17:18, “When the children of Israel had done all that is stated in 2Ki 17:7-17, then the result was that the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight.” Which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. So commencing his long series of mercies to the nation, and indicating his gracious favor towards it. “The deliverance from Egypt,” as Bahr well says, “was not only the beginning, but the symbol, of all Divine grace towards Israel, and the pledge of its Divine guidance.” Hence the stress laid upon it, both here and by the Prophet Hoses (comp. Hos 11:1; Hos 12:9, Hos 12:13; Hos 13:4). From under the handi.e. the oppressionof Pharaoh King of Egypt, and had feared other gods; i.e. reverenced and worshipped them.
2Ki 17:8
And walked in the statutes of the heathen. The” statutes of the heathen” are their customs and observances, especially in matters of religion. The Israelites had been repeatedly warned not to follow these (see Le 2Ki 18:3, 2Ki 18:30; Deu 12:29-31; Deu 18:9-14, etc.). Whom the Lord east out from before the children of Israeli.e. the Canaanitish nations, whose idolatries and other “abominations“ were particularly hateful to God (see Le 2Ki 18:26-29; Deu 20:18; Deu 29:17; Deu 32:16, etc.)and of the kings of Israel. The sins and idolatries of Israel had a double origin. The great majority were derived from the heathen nations with whom they were brought into contact, and were adopted voluntarily by the people themselves. Of this kind were the worship at “high places” (2Ki 17:9), the “images“ and “groves” (2Ki 17:10), the causing of their children to “pass through the fire” (2Ki 17:17), the employment of divination and enchantments (2Ki 17:17), and perhaps the “worship of the host of heaven” (2Ki 17:16). A certain number, however, came in from a different source, being imposed upon the people by their kings. To this class belong the desertion of the temple-worship, enforced by Jeroboam (vex. 21), the setting up of the calves at Dan and Bethel (2Ki 17:16) by the same, and the Baal and Astarte worship (2Ki 17:16), introduced by Ahab. This last and worst idolatry was not established without a good deal of persecution, as we learn from 1Ki 18:4. Which they had made.
2Ki 17:9
And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God. Most of the evil practices of the Israelites were open and flagrant, but some sought the veil of secrecy, as the use of divination and enchantments (2Ki 17:17). It is doubtful, however, whether the Hebrew words have the signification assigned to them in the Authorized Version. They may mean no more than that the Israelites made their evil deeds a barrier between themselves and God. And they built them high places in an their cities. “In all their cities” is probably rhetorical; but the gist of the charge is that, instead of keeping to the one temple and one altar commanded by God for the conservation of their belief in his unity, the Israelites “erected places of worship all over the country, after the fashion of the heathen” (Bahr), and so at once depraved their own faith, and ceased to be a perpetual protest to the surrounding nations. From the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; i.e. from the smallest and most solitary place of human abode to the largest and most populous. The expression was no doubt proverbial, and (as used here) is a strong hyperbole.
2Ki 17:10
And they set them up images; rather, pillars (comp. Gem 28:18, 22; 31:13, 45, 51, 52; 35:14, 20; Exo 24:4; Deu 12:3; 2Sa 18:18, where the same word is so rendered). The matse voth were stone pillars, anciently connected with the worship of Baal, but in Judah perhaps used in a debased and debasing worship of Jehovah with self-invented rites, instead of those which had the express sanction of God, being commanded in the Law. And groves (compare the comment on 1Ki 14:14 and 1Ki 14:23, and see also that on 2Ki 13:6) in every high hillrather, on every high hilland under every green tree. Mote that the “groves” (ash,-rim) were “set up under green trees,” and must therefore have been artificial structures of some kind, such as could stand beneath their boughs.
2Ki 17:11
And there they burnt incense in all the high places. Incense symbolized prayer (Psa 141:2), and ought to have been burnt only on the golden altar of incense within the veil. As did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them. The offering of incense to their gods by the Canaanitish nations had not been previously mentioned; but the use of incense in religious worship was so widely spread in the ancient world, that their employment of it might have been assumed as almost certain. The Egyptians used incense largely in the worship of Ammon. The Babylonians burnt a thousand talents’ weight of it every year at the great festival of Bel-Merodach (Herod; 1:183). The Greeks and Romans offered it with every sacrifice. And wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger (see below, verses 15-17).
2Ki 17:12
For they served idols; rather, and they served idols. The sense flows on from 2Ki 17:7, each verso being joined to the preceding one by the vav connective. Gillulim, the term translated “idols,” is a word rarely used, except by Ezekiel, with whom it is common. “It contains,” as Bahr says, “a subordinate contemptuous and abusive signification;” the primary meaning of galal being “dung,” “ordure.” Whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing (see Exo 20:4, Exo 20:5, Exo 20:23; Deu 4:16-18, etc.).
2Ki 17:13
Yet the Lord testifiedrather, and the Lord testifiedagainst Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers. A “seer” is, properly, one who sees visions; a “prophet,” one inspired to pour forth utterances. But the words were used as synonyms (see 1Sa 9:9). Ever since the revolt of Jeroboam, there had been a succession of prophets in both countries whose office it had been to rebuke sin and to enforce the precepts of the Law. In Judah there had been Shemaiah, contemporary with Rehoboam (2Ch 11:2; 2Ch 12:5); Iddo, contemporary with Abijah (2Ch 13:22); Azariah, with Asa (2Ch 15:1); Hanani, with the same (2Ch 16:7); Jehu, the son of Hanani, with Jehoshaphat (2Ch 19:2); Jahaziel, the son of Zechariah, with the same (2Ch 20:14); Eliezer, the son of Dodavah, also contemporary with the same (2Ch 20:37); Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, contemporary with Joash (2Ch 24:20); another Zechariah, contemporary with Uzziah (2Ch 26:5); Joel, Micah, and Isaiah, besides several whose names are unknown. In Israel, the succession had included Ahijah the Shilonite, contemporary with Jeroboam (1Ki 14:2); Jehu, the son of Hanani, with Baasha (1Ki 16:1); Elijah, and Micaiah the son of Imlah, with Ahab (1Ki 22:8) and Ahaziah (2Ki 1:3); Elisha, with Jehoram, John, Jehoahaz, and Joash (2Ki 3:11-13:14); Jonah, with Jeroboam II. (2Ki 14:25); Hosea and Amos, with the same (Hos 1:1; Amo 1:1): and Oded (2Ch 28:9), contemporary with Pekah. God had never left himself without living witness. Besides the written testimony of the Law, he had sent them a continuous series of prophets, who “repeated and enforced the teaching of the Law by word of month, breathing into the old words a new life, applying them to the facts of their own times, urging them on the con- sciences of their hearers, and authoritatively declaring to them that the terrible threatenings of the Law were directed against the very sins which they habitually practiced.” The prophets continually addressed them in the Name of God, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the Law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. This was the general burden of the prophetical teaching, both in Israel and in Judah, both before the captivity of Israel and afterwards (see Hos 12:6; Hos 14:2; Joe 2:12, Joe 2:13; Amo 5:4-15; Isa 1:16-20; Isa 31:6; Jer 3:7, Jer 3:14; Eze 14:6; Eze 18:30, etc.).
2Ki 17:14
Notwithstanding they would not hear; rather, and they would not hear. The construction still runs on without any change (see the comment on 2Ki 17:7 and 2Ki 17:12). But hardened their necks. (On the origin of the phrase, see ‘Homiletic Commentary’ on Exo 32:9.) The obstinate perversity of the Israelites, which the phrase expresses, is noted through the entire history (see Exo 33:3, Exo 33:5; Exo 34:9; Deu 9:6, Deu 9:13; Psa 75:5; 2Ch 30:8; 2Ch 36:13; Neh 9:16, Neh 9:17, Neh 9:29; Jer 7:26; Jer 17:23; Act 7:51, etc.). Like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. The reference is especially to the many passages in the Pentateuch where the Israelites are called “a stiff-necked people” (see, besides those already quoted, Deu 31:27).
2Ki 17:15
And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers. The covenant made at Sinai, first by the people generally (Exo 19:5-8), and then by their formal representatives (Exo 24:3-8), was, on their part, a solemn promise that “all which the Lord commanded them they would do.” Rejecting the “statutes” of God was thus rejecting the “covenant.” And his testimonies which he testified against them. The “testimonies” of God are his commandments, considered as witnessing of him and setting forth his nature. The use of the term is common in Deuteronomy and in the Psalms, but otherwise rare. And they followed vanity, and became vain. False gods are “vanity;” false religions are “vanity;” there is nothing firm or substantial about them; they belong to the realm of futility and nothingness. And the followers of such religions derive weakness from themthey “become vain “i.e. weak, futile, impotent. Their energies are wasted; they effect nothing of that which they wish to effect; they are completely powerless for good, at any rate; and they are not really powerful for evil. Their plans, for the most part, miscarry; and “their end is destruction.” And went after the heathen that were round about them. Upon a neglect to keep God’s commandments follows active revolt from him, and the doing of that which he has forbidden. When they rejected God’s statutes, the Israelites adopted “the statutes of the heathen” (verse 8), and “walked in them.” Concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them (see above, verse 12, and compare the comment on verse 8).
2Ki 17:16, 2Ki 17:17
The main sins of Israel are now specified, that they themselves may stand self-convicted, and that others may be warned against doing the like. First, generally.
2Ki 17:16
They left all the commandments of the Lord their God; i.e. neglected them, rendered them no obedience, offered none of the stated sacrifices, attended none of the appointed feasts, broke the moral law (Hos 4:1, Hos 4:2, Hos 4:11; Hos 7:1, etc.) by swearing, and lying, and stealing, and committing adultery, by drunkenness, and lewdness, and bloodshed. And made them molten images, even two calves. These at least were undeniablethere they were at Dan and Bethel, until the Captivity came (Hos 8:5; Hos 10:5, Hos 10:6; Hos 13:2; Amo 8:14), worshipped, sworn by (Amo 8:14), viewed as living gods (Amo 8:14), offered to, trusted in. Every king had upheld them, so that Bethel was regarded as “the king’s court,” and “the king’s chapel” (Amo 7:13); all the people were devoted to them, and “brought their sacrifices to Bethel every morning” (Amo 4:4), “and their tithes after three years.” And made a grove. The “grove “(asherah) which Ahab set up at Samaria (1Ki 16:1-34 :38), and which remained there certainly to the time of Jehoahaz (see the comment on 2Ki 13:6). And worshipped all the host of heaven. This worship had not been mentioned before; and it is nowhere else ascribed to the Israelites of the northern kingdom. Manasseh seems to have introduced it into Judah (2Ki 21:3; 2Ki 23:5, 2Ki 23:11). Such knowledge as we have of the Western Asiatic religions seems to indicate that astral worship, strictly so called, was a peculiarity of the Assyro-Babylonian and Arabian systems only, and did not belong to the Syrian, or the Phoenician, or the Canaanite. It may be suspected that the present passage is somewhat rhetorical, and assigns to the Israelites the “worship of the host of heaven,” simply because an astral character attached to Baal and Ashtoreth, who were associated in the religion of the Phoenicians with the sun and moon. On the ether hand, it is just possible that the Assyro-Babylonian star-worship had been introduced into Israel under Menahem, Pekah, or Hoshea. And served Baal. The Baal-worship, introduced by Ahab (1Ki 16:31), was not finally abolished by Jehu (2Ki 10:28). Like other popular religions, it had a revival Hosea, writing under the later kings from Jeroboam II. to Hoshea, alludes to the Baal-worship (Hos 2:8, Hos 2:17) as continuing.
2Ki 17:17
And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire. (On this phrase, see the comment upon 2Ki 16:3.) The sin of child-murder had not Been previously laid to the charge of Israel; but, as it had infected Judah (2Ki 16:3), there is no reason why it should not have invaded also the sister kingdom. Perhaps it is alluded to by Hos 4:2; Hos 5:2; and Hos 6:8. It was an old sin of the Canaanitish nations (Le 18:21, etc.), and continued to be practiced by the Moabites (2Ki 3:27; Amo 2:1) and Ammonites, neighbors of Israel. And used divination and enchantments. The “witchcrafts” of Jezebel have been already mentioned (2Ki 9:22). Magical practices always accompanied idolatry, and were of many kinds. Sometimes divination was by means of staves or rods (rhabdomancy), which were manipulated in various ways. Sometimes it was by arrows (Eze 21:21). Very often, especially in Greece and Rome, it was by inspecting the entrails of victims. Where faith in God wanes, a trust in magical practices, astrology, chiromancy, “sertes Virgilianae,” horoscopes, spirit-rapping, and the like, almost always supervenes. And sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. (On the expression, “sold themselves to do evil,” see the comment upon 1Ki 21:20.)
2Ki 17:18
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel; rather, that then the Lord was very angry, etc. We have here the apodosis of the long sentence beginning with 2Ki 17:7 and continuing to the end of 2Ki 17:17. When all that is enumerated in these verses had taken place, then the Lord was moved to anger against Israel, then matters had reached a crisis, the cup of their iniquity was full, and God’s wrath, long restrained, descended on them. And removed them out of his sight. Removal out of God’s sight is loss of his favor and of his care. “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous” (Psa 34:15)he “knoweth their way,” “watcheth ever them” (Jer 31:28), “careth for them” (Psa 146:8); but “the countenance of the Lord is against them [averted from them] who do evil” (Psa 34:16). He will not look upon them nor hear them. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only. The “tribe of Judah” stands for the kingdom of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin (see 1Ki 11:31-36; 1Ki 12:23; ‘2Ch 17:14-18), into which the greater part of Dan and Simeon had also been absorbed. This became now, exclusively, God’s “peculiar people,” the object of his love and of his care. The writer, it must be remembered, belongs to the period of the Captivity, and is not speaking of the restored Israel.
2Ki 17:19
Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God. The sharp contrast which the writer has drawn between Israel and Judah in 2Ki 17:18 reminds him that the difference was only for a time. Judah followed in Israel’s sins, and ultimately shared in her punishment. This verso and the next are parenthetic. But walked in the statutes of Israel which they made; i.e. followed Israel in all her evil courses, first in her Baal-worship, under Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah; then in her other malpractices under Ahaz (2Ki 16:3, 2Ki 16:4), Manasseh (2Ki 21:2-9), and Amen (2Ki 21:20-22). Of course, the calf-worship is excepted, Judah having no temptation to follow Israel in that.
2Ki 17:20
And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel. God is no respecter of persons. As he had rejected the ten tribes on account of certain transgressions, which have been enumerated (2Ki 17:8-17), so, when Judah committed the self-same sins, and transgressed equally, Judah had equally to be rejected. “All the seed of Israel” is the entire nationIsrael in the widest sense, made up of Judah and of Israel in the narrow sense. So Keil, rightly. And afflicted themby the hands of Sargon, and Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon (2Ch 33:11), and Pharaoh-Nechoh, and othersand delivered them into the hands of spoilers. The “spoilers” intended are probably, first, the “bands of the Chaldees, and of the Syrians, and of the Moabites, and of the children of Ammon,” who were let loose upon Judaea by Nebuchadnezzar when Jehoiakim rebelled against him (2Ki 24:2), and secondly Nebuchadnezzar himself and Nebuzaradan, who completed the spoliation of the country, and plundered Jerusalem itself, to punish the revolts of Jehoiachid and Zedekiah (2Ki 24:13-16 and 2Ki 25:8-21), when all the treasures of the temple were carried off. Until he had cast them out of his sight; i.e. until he had punished Judah as he had previously punished Israel (2Ki 17:18), which was what justice required.
2Ki 17:21
For he rent; rather, for he had rent. The nexus of the verse is with 2Ki 17:18. The difference between the fates of Israel and Judahthe survival of Judah for a hundred and thirty-four yearsis traced back to the separation under Rehoboam, and to the wicked policy which Jeroboam then pursued, and left as a legacy to his successors. Israel could suffer alone, while Judah was spared, because the kingdom of David and Solomon had been rent in twain, and the two states had thenceforth continued separate. Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord. The separation alone might not have had any ill result; but it was followed by the appointment of Jeroboam as king, and Jeroboam introduced the fatal taint of idolatry, from which all the other evils flowed, including the earlier destruction of the northern kingdom. Jeroboam not only introduced the worship of the calves, but he “drave Israel from following the Lord “i.e. compelled the people to discontinue the practice of going up to worship at Jerusalem (2Ch 11:13-16), and required them to take part in the calf-worship. And [thus] made them sin a great sin.
2Ki 17:22
For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did. The nation, having been once persuaded to adopt Jeroboam’s innovations, continued to “walk” in themfollowed Jeroboam’s example in “all his sins”gave up the temple-worship altogether; accepted the ministrations of priests not of the seed of Aaron (1Ki 13:33; 2Ch 13:9); brought their tithes to these idol-priests; sacrificed to the calves at Dan and Bethel (Amo 4:4); and put their trust in the “similitude of a calf that eateth hay.” They departed not from them.
2Ki 17:23
Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight (see the comment on 2Ki 17:18) as he had said by all his servants the prophets. The destruction of the kingdom of Israel had been distinctly prophesied by Ahijah the Shilonite (1Ki 14:15, 1Ki 14:16), Hosea (Hos 1:4; Hos 9:3, Hos 9:17), and Amos (Amo 7:17). General warnings and denunciations had been given by Moses (Le 26:33; Deu 4:26, Deu 4:27; Deu 28:36, etc.), by Isaiah (Isa 7:8; Isa 28:1-4), and probably by the entire series of prophets enumerated in the comment on verse. 13. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day; i.e. up to the time that the Second Book of Kings was written, about B.C. 580-560, the Israelites remained within the limits of the country to which they were carried by the conqueror. Not long after this time, about B.C. 538, a considerable number returned with Zerubbabel to Palestine, and others with Ezra (see Ezr 2:70; Ezr 3:1; Ezr 6:16, Ezr 6:17; Ezr 7:13; Ezr 8:35; 1Ch 9:2, 1Ch 9:3; Zec 8:13). What became of the rest has been a fertile subject of speculation. Probably the more religions united with the Jewish communities, which were gradually formed in almost all the cities of the East; while the irreligious laid aside their peculiar customs, and became blended indistinguishably with the heathen. ‘There is no ground for expecting to find the “ten tribes” anywhere at the present day.
2Ki 17:24-41
Re-peopling of the kingdom of Israel by Assyrian colonists, and formation of a mixed religion. The writer, before dismissing the subject of the Israelite kingdom, proceeds to inform us of certain results of the conquest. Having removed the bulk of the native inhabitants, the Assyrians did not allow the country to lie waste, but proceeded to replace the population which they had carried off by settlers from other localities (2Ki 17:24). These settlers were, after a short time, incommoded by lions, which increased upon them, and diminished their numbers (2Ki 17:25). The idea arose that the visitation was supernatural, and might be traced to the fact that the newcomers, not knowing “the manner of the God of the land,” displeased him by the neglect of his rites or by the introduction of alien worship (2Ki 17:26). A remedy for this was sought in the sending to them from Assyria one of the priests who had been carried off, from whom it was thought they might learn how “the God of the land” was to be propitiated. This was the orion of the “mixed religion” which grew up in the country. While the nations who had replaced the Israelites brought in their own superstitions, and severally worshipped their own gods (2Ki 17:30, 2Ki 17:31), there was a general acknowledgment of Jehovah by all of them, and a continuance of Jehovistic worship in the various high places. The nations both “feared the Lord, and served their graven images,” down to the time when the writer of Kings composed his work (2Ki 17:33-41).
2Ki 17:24
And the King of Assyria brought men from Babylon. It has been supposed, in connection with Ezr 4:2, that no colonists were introduced into the country till the time of Esarhaddon, who began to reign in B.C. 681. But this, which would be intrinsically most improbable (for when did a king forego his tribute from a fertile country for forty-one years?), is contradicted by a statement of Sargon, that he placed colonists there in B.C. 715. These were not necessarily the first; and, on the whole, it is probable that the re-peopling of the country begun earlier. Hamath was reduced by Sargon in B.C. 720, and punished severely. Its inhabitants were carried off, and replaced by Assyrians. Probably some of them were at once settled in Samaria. The conquest of Babylon by Sargon was not till later. It occurred in B.C. 709, and was probably followed by the immediate deportation of some of its inhabitants to the same quarter. And from Cuthah. “Cuthah,” or “Cutha,” was an important Babylonian city, often mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions. Its ruins exist at the site now called Ibrahim, about fifteen miles northeast of Babylon. Sargon must have become master of it when he put down Merodach-Baladan and assumed the sovereignty of Babylonia, in B.C. 709. Why the later Jews called the Samaritans “Cuthaeans,” rather than Sepharvites, or Avites, or Hamathites, it is impossible to determine. Possibly the Cuthaean settlers preponderated in numbers ever the others. And from Ava. “Ava” () is probably the same as the Ivah () of 2Ki 18:34 and 2Ki 19:13, and perhaps identical with the Ahava () of Ezra (Ezr 8:15, Ezr 8:21). The city intended is thought to be the “Is” of Herodotus, and the modern Hit. Hit lies upon the Euphrates, about a hundred and thirty miles above Babylon, in lat. 33 45′ nearly. It is famous for its bitumen springs. And from Hamath (see the comment on 2Ki 14:25). Hamath on the Orontes was conquered by Sargon in B.C. 720, two years after his capture of Samaria. Its rude inhabitants were carried off, and Assyrians were placed there. And from Sepharvaim. It is generally allowed that “Sepharvaim” is “Sippara,” the dual form being accounted for by the fact that Sippara was a double town, partly on the right and partly on the left bank of a stream derived from the Euphrates. Hence Pliny speaks of it as “oppida Hipparenorum” (‘Hist. Nat.,’ 6.30). The exact site, at Abu-Habba, sixteen miles southwest of Baghdad, has only recently been discovered. And placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. Transplantation of nations, commenced by Tiglath-pileser, was practiced on a still larger scale by Sargon. The following summary will illustrate this point: “In all his wars Sargon largely employed the system of wholesale deportation. The Israelites were removed from Samaria, and planted partly in Gozan or Mygdonia, and partly in the cities recently taken from the Medes. Hamath and Damascus were peopled with captives from Armenia and other regions of the north. A portion of the Tibareni were carried captive to Assyria, and Assyrians were established in the Tibarenian country. Vast numbers of the inhabitants of the Zagros range were also transported to Assyria; Babylonians, Cuthaeans, Sapharrites, Arabians, and others were placed in Samaria; men from the extreme east (perhaps Media) in Ashdod. The Comukha were removed from the extreme north to Susiana, and Chaldaeans were brought from the extreme south to supply their places. Everywhere Sargon ‘changed the abodes’ of his subjects, his aim being, as it would seem, to weaken the stronger races by dispersion, and to destroy the spirit of the weaker ones by severing at a blow all the links which unite a patriotic people to the country it has long inhabited. The practice had not been unknown to previous monarchs; but it had never been employed by any of them so generally or on so grand a scale as it was by this king”.
2Ki 17:25
And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord. They were ignorant, i.e; of Jehovah, and paid him no religious regard. They brought with them their own forms of heathenism (see 2Ki 17:30, 2Ki 17:31). Therefore the Lord sent lions among them. Lions are not now found in Palestine, nor indeed in any part of Syria, though they are numerous in Mesopotamia; but anciently they appear to have been tolerably common in all parts of the Holy Land (see the comment on 1Ki 13:24). We may gather from what is said here that, though new settlers had been brought into the country by the Assyrians, yet still there had been a considerable decrease in the population, which had been favorable to the lions multiplying. The new settlers, it is to be noted, were placed in the towns (2Ki 17:24); and it is probable that many of the country districts lay waste and desolate. Still, the writer views the great increase in the number of the lions as a Divine judgment, which it may have been, though based upon a natural circumstance. Which slew some of them. (For the great boldness of the Palestinian lion, see 1Ki 13:24; 1Ki 20:36; Pro 22:13; Isa 31:4; Isa 38:13; Jer 5:6, etc.)
2Ki 17:26
Wherefore they spake to the Feng of Assyria, saying. The meaning seems to be, not that the colonists made direct complaint to the king, but that some of the persons about the court, having heard of the matter, reported it to him as one requiring consideration and remedy. Hence the use of the third person instead of the first. The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria (see 2Ki 17:24), know not the manner of the God of the land. It was the general belief of the heathen nations of antiquity that each country and nation had its own god or gods, who presided over its destinies, protected it, went out at the head of its armies, and fought for it against its enemies. Each god had his own “manner,” or ritual and method of worship, which was, in some respects at any rate, different from that of all other gods. Unless this ritual and method were known, new-comers into any land were almost sure to displease the local deity, who did not allow of any departure from traditional usage in his worship. Therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, bemuse they know not the manner of the God of the land.
2Ki 17:27
Then the King of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence. It does not appear that this was a suggestion of the colonists. Either it was the king’s own idea, or that of one of his advisers. The priests, who ministered at the two national sanctuariesthose of Dan and Bethelhad, as important personages, been all carried off. Though a “remnant” of Israel was left in the land (2Ch 34:9), they were probably of the baser sort, or at any rate could not be trusted to know the details and intricacies of the Samaritan ritual. Thus it was necessary to send back a priest. And let them go and dwell there. We should have expected, “Let him go;” but the writer assumes that the priest would have an entourage, assistant-ministers and servants, and so says, “Let them go;” but immediately afterwards, And let him teachsince he alone would be competentthem the manner of the God of the land.
2Ki 17:28
Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samariathe country, not the city, as in 2Ki 17:24 and 2Ki 17:25came and dwelt in Bethel. Bethel from a very early time greatly eclipsed Dan. While the allusions to Bethel, commonly called “Bethaven” (” House of nothingness” for “House of God “), are frequent in the Israelitish prophets (Hos 4:15; Hos 5:8; Hos 10:5, Hos 10:8, Hos 10:15; Amo 3:14; Amo 4:4; Amo 5:5, Amo 5:6; Amo 7:10-13), there is but a single distinct allusion to Dan (Amo 8:14). Bethel was “the king’s chapel” and “the king’s court” (Amo 7:13). The priest selected by Sargon’s advisers was a Bethelite priest, and, returning thither, took up the worship familiar to him. And taught themi.e; the new settlershow they should fear the Lord. This worship could only be that of the calf-priests instituted by Jeroboam, which was, however, most certainly a worship of Jehovah, and an imitation or travesty of the temple – worship at Jerusalem. Whether the returned priest set up a new calf-idol to replace the one which had been carried off to Assyria (Hos 10:5), is doubtful.
2Ki 17:29
Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. The several bands of settlers found in the cities assigned to them “houses of the high places,” or high-place temples (2Ki 17:9), which had been left standing when the inhabitants were carried off. These “houses” they converted to their own use, setting up in them their several idolatries.
2Ki 17:30
And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth. There is no deity of this name in the Assyrian or Babylonian lists. The explanation of the word as “tents” or “huts of daughters,” which Satisfied Selden, Calmer, Gesenius, Winer, Keil, and others, is rendered absolutely impossible by the context, which requires that the word, whatever its meaning, should be the name of a deity. The Septuagint interpreters, while as much puzzled as others by the word itself, at least saw this, and rendered the expression by , showing that they regarded it as the name of a goddess. The Babylonian goddess who corresponds most nearly to the word, and is most likely to be intended, would seem to be Zirat-banit, the wife of Merodach. Zirat-banit means “the creating lady;” but the Hebrew interpreter seems to have mistaken the first element, which he confounded with Zarat, the Babylonian for “tents,” and so translated by “Succoth.” The goddess Zirat-banit was certainly one of the principal deities of Babylon, and would be more likely to be selected than any ether goddess. Probably she was worshipped in combination with her husband, Merodach. And the men of Cuthi.e. “Cuthah”made Nergal. Nergal was the special deity of Cutha. He was the Babylonian war-god, and had a high position in the Assyrian pantheon also. His name appears as an element in the “Nergal-sharezer” of Jeremiah (Jer 39:3, Jer 39:13) and the Neriglissar of Ptolemy and Berosus. And the men of Hamath made Ashima. The-nius conjectures that “Ashima” represents the Phoenician Eshmoun,one of the Cabiri, or eight “Great Ones.” But the etymological resemblance of the two words is not close, and it is not at all certain that the Hamathites at any time acknowledged the Phoenician deities. The Hamathite inscriptions are in the character now known as “Hittite;” and there is reason to believe that the people were non-Semitic. This identification, therefore, must be regarded as very doubtful. Perhaps “Ashima” represents Simi, the daughter of Hadad (see Melito, ‘Apologia’).
2Ki 17:31
And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak. “Nibhaz” and “Tartak” are very obscure. The Sabians are said to have acknowledged an evil demon, whom they called Nib’az or Nabaz; and Tartak has been derived by Gesenius from the Pehlevi Tar-thak, “hero of darkness;” but these guesses cannot be regarded as entitled to much attention. We do not know what the religion of the Avites was, and need not be surprised that the names of their gods are new to us. The polytheism of the East was prolific of deities, and still more of divine names. Nibhaz and Tartak may have been purely local gods, or they may have been local names for gods worshipped under other appellations in the general pantheon of Babylonia. And the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. The god principally worshipped at Sippara was Shamas, “the sun.” It is probable that “Adrammelech” (equivalent to adir-melek, “the glorious king,” or edir-malek, “the arranging king”) was one of his titles. Shamas, in the Babylonian mythology, was always closely connected with Anunit, a sun-goddess; and it is probably this name which is represented by Anammelech, which we may regard as an intentional corruption, derisive and contemptuous.
2Ki 17:32
So they feared the Lordrather, and they (also) honored Jehovah; i.e. with their idolatrous worship they combined also the worship of Jehovahand made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high placesi.e; followed the example of Jeroboam in taking for priests persons of all ranks, even the lowest (see the comment on 1Ki 12:31)which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
2Ki 17:33
They feared the Lord, and served their own gods. This syncretism, this mixed religion, is so surprising to the writer, and so abhorrent to his religious sentiments, that he cannot but dwell upon it, not shrinking from repeating himself (see 2Ki 17:32, 2Ki 17:33, 2Ki 17:41), in order to arrest the reader’s attention, and point out to him the folly and absurdity of such conduct. The practice was still going on in his own day (2Ki 17:34, 2Ki 17:41), and may have had attractions for the descendants of the small Israelite population which had been left in the land. After the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence; rather, after the manner of the nations from whom they (i.e. the authorities) carried them away; i.e. after the manner of their countrymen at home. The translation of the Revised Version gives the sense, while changing the construction”after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.”
2Ki 17:34
Unto this dayi.e; the time at which Kings was writtenthey do after the former mannersthat is, they maintain the mixed religion, which they set up on the coming of the Samaritan priest from Assyria a hundred and fifty or sixty years previouslythey fear not the Lord. This statement seems directly opposed to the thrice-repeated one (2Ki 17:32, 2Ki 17:33, 2Ki 17:41), “They feared the Lord;” but the apparent contradiction is easily reconciled. The new immigrants “feared Jehovah” in a certain sense, i.e. externally. They admitted him into their pantheon, and had ritual observances in his honor. But they did not really fear him in their hearts. Had they done so, they would have inquired what were his laws, statutes, and ordinances, and would have set themselves to obey them. This they did not think of doing. Neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinanceseither the “statutes” and “ordinances” are regarded as having become de jure “theirs“ by their occupation of the Holy Land, or “their” refers by anticipation to “the children of Jacob” towards the close of the verseor after the Lawrather, and after the Lawand commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel (see Gem 32:28).
2Ki 17:35
With whom the Lord had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them (see Exo 20:3; Deu 5:7; Deu 6:14; Deu 11:28. For the “covenant,” see Exo 19:5-8; Exo 24:3-8).
2Ki 17:36
But the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched-out arm (comp. Exo 6:6; Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15; Deu 7:19; Deu 9:29; Psa 136:12, etc.), him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice (see Deu 6:13; Deu 10:20; Deu 13:4; Jos 24:14, etc.).
2Ki 17:37
And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the Law, and the commandment, which he wrote for youi.e; which, by his Providence, were given you in a written form (comp. Exo 24:4; Deu 31:9; Jos 8:34)ye shall observe to do forevermore (comp. Le 2Ki 18:4, 2Ki 18:5; 2Ki 19:37; Deu 4:6; Deu 5:1; Deu 6:24, Deu 6:25, etc.); and ye shall not fear other gods (see the comment on 2Ki 17:35).
2Ki 17:38
And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget. The “covenant” intended is not the covenant of circumcision, which God made with Abraham (Gen 17:9-14), but the covenant of protection and obedience made at Sinai between God and the entire people (Exo 19:5-8), and most solemnly ratified by sprinkling with blood and by a covenant feast, as related in Exo 24:3-11. This was the covenant which Israel had been warned so frequently not to “forget” (Deu 4:23; Deu 8:11; Deu 26:13; Pro 2:17), yet which they had “forgotten,” or, at any rate, “forsaken,” as already declared in Exo 24:15. Neither shall ye fear other gods. The writer has probably a practical object in his reiteration. He expects his words to reach the ears of the mixed race inhabiting Samaria in his day, and would fain warn them against their idolatrous practices, and point them to the pure worship of Jehovah. It is pleasing to remember that ultimately the mixed race was won to the true faith, and that the Samaritans of our Lord’s time were as true worshippers of Jehovah, and as zealous followers of the Law, as the Jews themselves. The interesting community at Nablous still maintains Samaritan forms, and reads the Samaritan Pentateuch.
2Ki 17:39
But the Lord your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. This promise had been made repeatedly (see Exo 23:27; Le Exo 26:7, Exo 26:8; Deu 6:18, Deu 6:19; Deu 20:4; Deu 23:14; Deu 28:7, etc.). The writer of Chronicles aims at showing in detail that the promise was literally fulfilled in the history, victory in every case declaring itself in favor of God’s people, when they were faithful and obedient, while reverses always befell them in the contrary ease (see 1Ch 5:20-22; 1Ch 10:13; 1Ch 14:10-16; 2Ch 12:1-12; 2Ch 13:4-18; 2Ch 14:9-12; 2Ch 20:5-30, etc.).
2Ki 17:40
Howbeit they did not hearken. The mixed race, with their mixed religion, though professing to be worshippers of Jehovah, paid no attention to the warnings and threatenings of the Law (2Ki 17:34), which were to them a dead letter. But they did after their former manner; i.e. they continued to maintain the syncretism described in 2Ki 17:28-33.
2Ki 17:41
So these nationsi.e; the Babylonians, Cuthaeans, Hamathites, Avites, and Sepharvites settled in Samariafeared the Lord, and served their graven images. The rabbinical writers tell us that Nergal was worshipped under the form of a cock, Ashima under the form of a goat, Nibhaz under the form of a dog, Tartak under that of an ass, while Adrammelech and Anammelech were represented by a mule and a horse respectively. Not much confidence can be placed in these representations. The Babylonian gods were ordinarily figured in human forms. Animal onesas those of the bull and the lion, generally winged and human-headed, were in a few cases, but only in a few, used to represent the gods symbolically. Other emblems employed were the winged circle for Asshur; the disc plain or four-rayed for the male sun, six or eight-rayed for the female sun; the crescent for the moon-god Sin; the thunderbolt for the god of the atmosphere, Vul or Rimmon; the wedge or arrow-head, the fundamental element of writing, for Nebo. Images, however, were made of all the gods, and were no doubt set up by the several “nations” in their respective “cities.” Both their children, and their children’s childreni.e. their descendants to the time of the writer of Kingsas did their fathers, so do they unto this day.
HOMILETICS
2Ki 17:1-4
The unwisdom of worldly craft and policy.
Hoshea came to the throne at a time of great danger and difficulty. The Assyrian system of gradual expansion and annexation was settled and almost declared. The petty states upon her borders were first invaded and ravaged; then they were taken under her protection; finally they were absorbed. The process had been going on from the days of Tiglath-pileser I., and was still in operation. Damascus was a recent example of it. Under these circumstances, Hoshea could not but feel his throne precarious, and the independence of his country more than threatened. How would he act most wisely for his own security and that of his country? There were three courses open to him.
I. HE MIGHT LOOK SOLELY TO THE ASSYRIAN KING. Absolute submission, fidelity, watchful regard for the suzerain’s interests, punctual payment of the fixed tribute, liberal donations to the court officials and the monarch beyond the sum appointed, generally secured to the protected state the continuance of its suzerain’s favor, and a prolongation of its protected existence. Hoshea might have adopted this policy. He might have bent all his efforts to the propitiation of the Assyrian monarch, and the obtaining of his favorable regard. In this way he would probably have secured to himself a long and quiet reign; and his country would have been spared for many a year the horrors of war, and his people the misery of being carried into captivity.
II. HE MIGHT LOOK FOR A HUMAN PROTECTOR AGAINST ASSYRIA. Human helps, negotiations, treaties, alliances, are the natural and ordinary resort of weak states when menaced by a stronger. Cannot a counterpoise be raised up against the monster community which threatens the existence of all its neighbors? Cannot a “balance of power” be established? Hoshea was particularly tempted at the time by the rise to greatness of a new dynasty in Egypt, which seemed to have greater strength and greater resources than had been possessed by its predecessors. It was probably regarded by his advisers as a wonderfully clever stroke of policy when they suggested that alliance with Shebek, the new King of Egypt, might be the salvation of Samaria under the circumstances. So AEtolia called in the aid of Rome against Macedon; and so recently, with better results, Sardinia called in the aid of France against Austria. Hoshea caught at the suggestion. Though pledged to Assyria, though actually owing his throne to an Assyrian monarch, he accepted the advice, made alliance with Shebek, and broke with Shalmaneser, to his own destruction and that of his country.
III. HE MIGHT DISCARD “ARMS OF FLESH,” AND LOOK WHOLLY TO JEHOVAH. The prophets were calling Israel to repentance. They were denouncing the calf-worship and the other idolatries. They were condemning reliance on either Egypt or Assyria (Hos 7:11; Hos 12:1). They were threatening the destruction of the kingdom unless Israel truly repented and turned to the Lord. They were pointing to a possible restoration to God’s favor if these conditions were fulfilled (Hos 2:14-23; Hos 7:1-3; Hos 14:1-9; Amo 5:4-9, and Amo 5:14, Amo 5:15), and urging compliance before it was too late. They taught that God could save by his own power, and “not by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen” (Hos 1:7). True wisdom would have taught Hoshea and his advisers to look for salvation to this quarter; but they were so infatuated with their trust in the strength of Egypt that they seem not even to have given the alternative course a thought. The result showed that their (supposed) worldly wisdom was the extremest unwisdom, their perfection of policy the worst policy that could possibly have been adopted.
2Ki 17:7-23
The lessons to be learnt from the destruction of the kingdom of Samaria.
The first and main lesson is, of course, the great fact
I. THAT NATIONS ARE TREATED BY GOD AS RESPONSIBLE UNITS, AND ARE PUNISHED, EVEN DESTROYED, FOR THEIR SINS. It was their “evil ways,” their transgression against the commandments of God, that lay at the root of Israel’s rejection. The prophets Hosea and Amos paint an awful picture of the condition of Samaria under its later kings. Luxury, oppression, lewdness, drunkenness, idolatry, prevailed. The service of God was a lip-service, which “his soul hated.” There was no truth, no mercy, no real “knowledge of God,” in the land (Hos 4:1). “By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing they broke out, and blood touched blood” (Hos 4:2). “Whoredom and wine and new wine had taken away their heart” (Hos 4:11). “A man and his father would go in unto the same maid” (Amo 2:7). False balances were employed (Amo 8:5). “Companies of priests murdered in the way by consent” (Hos 6:9). Therefore was the doom pronounced against the nationthey should “go into captivity beyond Damascus” (Amo 5:27). “The Lord swore by his holiness that he would take them away with hooks, and their posterity with fish-hooks” (Amo 4:2). “The end came upon them; they could not be passed by any more” (Amo 8:2). Minor lessons are
II. THAT SINS ARE GREATLY AGGRAVATED IN GOD‘S SIGHT WHEN THEY ARE INFRACTIONS OF A COVENANT MADE WITH HIM. Israel was under covenant with Godhad been made God’s “peculiar people” on the express condition of keeping his statutes, testimonies, commandments, and judgments (Exo 19:5-8). This they had bound themselves to do; but they had done the exact opposite. Hence the reproaches in verses 15 and 35-40. It is the breach of the covenant by the northern kingdom that, in the view of the writer of Kings, is the main and special cause of its fall. All else might have been forgiven, but not that. A covenant is a holy thing, even when it is only between man and man (Gal 3:15); but a covenant between man and Godhow can anything be more holy? Must not the infraction of such a covenant entail fearful consequences?
III. THAT IT IS A FURTHER GREAT AGGRAVATION OF THE GUILT OF SIN TO COMMIT IT AGAINST FREQUENT WARNINGS. “Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways” (verse 13). Comp. 2Ch 36:15, 2Ch 36:16, “And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling-place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.” The sin of Israel would have been far less, would not perhaps have been quite “without remedy,” had they not for so long a time turned a deaf ear to the warnings and exhortations of the prophets, refusing to “hear the voice of the charmers, charmed they never so wisely,” and persisting in their disobedience, their wickedness, their greed, their cruelty, their besotted idolatry, despite the scathing denunciations, the tender pleadings, the wise counsels, almost uninterruptedly addressed to them. “Stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Act 7:51), they “resisted the Holy Ghost; “and their doom had to be pronounced. Congregations in this country and at the present day may be reminded
(1) that England is not without her national sins;
(2) that the sins of Christians are, all of them, infractions of the covenant made in baptism between themselves and God; and
(3) that the sins of Christians are committed against the constant warnings of God’s appointed ministers, who stand to them as the prophets stood to the Israelites.
2Ki 17:24-41
The absurdity and uselessness of a mixed religion.
Syncretism has been at all times a form which religion is apt to assume in mixed communities. Theoretically, religions are antithetic, exclusive, mutually repulsive. Practically, where they coexist, they tend to give and take, to approximate one to the other, to drop differences, to blend together into an apparent, if not a real, union. Christianity had at first those who would sit in an idol-temple, and partake of idol-sacrifices (1Co 8:10). Judaism under the Seleucidae, but for the rude impatience of Antiochus Epiphanes, was on the point of making terms with Hellenism. In Samaria, after the events related in 2Ki 17:24-28, a mixed religiona “mingle-mangle,” to use Reformation languagetook its place as the religion of the mixed people. “They feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” Jehovah was everywhere acknowledged, honored, worshipped with sacrifice. But at the same time, heathen godspartial, local, hail-material, sacred, but not holywere objects of a far more real and intense worship. Such a religion is
(1) absurd,
(2) useless.
I. SYNCRETISM IS ABSURD, since it is self-contradictory. “What concord has Christ with Belial?” (2Co 6:15). Religions which are really different have contradictory first principles; and agreement can only be effected by a dropping, on one side or the other, or both, of what is vital and essential. In the particular case before us, absolute monotheism was the very core and essence of the Jehovah-worship; actual polytheism was the root and groundwork of the other. The two were logically inconsistent, incompatible. Practically, the contradiction may not always have been perceived, for man, though a rational, is not a logical animal; but the general result, no doubt, was that the monotheistic idea had to give way: Jehovah, the one only God of the whole earth, had to sink into a “god of the land,” and to receive an occasional and grudging acknowledgment from those whose hearts were with their own gods, Nergal and Ashima and Adrammelech. But, in this case, the worship of Jehovah was superfluous. God does not thank men for dragging him into a pantheon, and setting him side by side with beings who are no gods, but the fantastic inventions of imaginations depraved and corrupted by sin.
II. SYNCRETISM IS USELESS. Contrary systems of religion will not amalgamate, let men do what they may. Either each neutralizes the other, and the result is no religion at all; or one gets the upper hand, and the other element might as well be absent. There is no serving “God and mammon, Christ and Belial.” The mind cannot really, at one and the same time, accept contradictories. The lips may do so, but religion is an affair of the heart. Syncretism is an apparent, not a real union. Theories mutually destructive cannot coalesce. Thus, practically, syncretism is useless. It is either a mere nominal union or a mode of eliminating religion from human life. In the case before us it seems to have left the Samaritans just as much polytheists, just as much idolaters, as it found them. Zerubbabel did well to allow them no part in the building of the second temple, and to give them the curt answer, “Ye have nothing to do with us to build a house unto our God” (Ezr 4:3). Had he done otherwise, he would have merged Judaism in a polytheistic and idolatrous pseudo-religion.
HOMILIES BY C.H. IRWIN
2Ki 17:1-5
The reign of Hoshea.
I. A FOOLISH SERVICE. The life of every man is a service of some sort. We cannot, even if we would, be absolutely our own masters. Some men are the servants of self. Some are the servants of others. Some are the servants of good. Some are the servants of evil. Some are the servants of money, or of pleasure, or of their passions. What higher epitaph could be written over any man’s tomb than the simple words, “A servant of God”? What higher choice could any man make than this, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”? But that was not the choice which Hoshea made. He thought the service of God was slavery. He chose the service of the King of Assyria. What fools men are sometimes! How blind to their own best interests! The prodigal son in his father’s house had every comfort, consideration, and care. But he thought there was too much restriction. He would like to have more of his own way. And so he went away from his father’s house. But he was glad enough to return. He did not find the service of the world and of sin quite so pleasant as he expected. So many discover, when it is too late, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
II. A FAITHLESS SERVANT. Hoshea was unfaithful to God. And the man who is unfaithful to the claims of Godthe highest of all claimsis generally unfaithful to his fellow-men. So it was in this case. “The King of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea.” Hoshea had entered into engagements which he did not fulfill. The best security for right dealing between man and man is obedience to the Law of God. The history of nations and individuals teaches us that. The nation where God is honored, where the Word of God is read, is generally superior to others in the industry, contentment, and prosperity of its inhabitants. The man who fears God is the man who can be depended on. “He backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.”C.H.I.
2Ki 17:6-23
Captivity and its cause.
Here is the beginning of the dispersion of Israel. Soon that favored nation will be “a people scattered and peeled.” These verses give us the explanation of Israel’s exile. It is a solemn warning against the neglect of opportunities.
I. COMMANDS DISOBEYED. “They rejected his statutes” (2Ki 17:15); “They left all the commandments of the Lord their God” (2Ki 17:16); “They served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing” (2Ki 17:12). Consider:
1. Whose commands they disobeyed. The commands of the Lord their God. It was he who had brought them out of Egypt. It was he who had brought them into the promised laud. It was he who had made of thema race of humble shepherdsa great nation. When God gave the Ten Commandments, he prefaced them by reminding Israel of his claim upon them. “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This was a strong reason for obedience. “The preface to the ten commandments teaches us that because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.” God has a similar claim:
(1) Upon every human being. This is the claim of creation and preservation and providence. “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” Whether men like it or not, they cannot get rid of God’s claim upon them.
(2) Upon every Christian. He has brought us out of the house of bondage. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
2. What commands they disobeyed. All God’s commandments were for their own good. They were rational and wise commandments. To forbid idolatry was to forbid a sin which in itself was ungrateful and dishonoring to the true God, and which was degrading and demoralizing in its consequences. Oh that men were wise, that they would consider the consequences of sin for time and for eternity! “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”
II. WARNINGS DISREGARDED. Note:
1. God‘s forbearance and mercy. God did not cut them off at once for their sin. Time after time he forgave them. He sent them his prophets to invite them to return to him, to give them premises of pardon and blessing, to point out to them what must be the inevitable consequence of perseverance in sin. His anxiety to save them was very great. The phrase used in Jeremiah is a remarkable one. “They have not hearkened to my words, saith the Lord, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them.” What a wonderful and touching description of God’s desire to save!”Rising up early.” As if he wanted to be before men. As if he wanted to anticipate their temptations by his messages of warning and of guidance. If we make God’s Word our morning study, what a help we shall find it in the difficulties and temptations and duties of each day!
2. Man‘s folly and blindness. “Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God” (verse 14). All the warnings were in vain. “They sold them- selves to do evil in the sight of the Lord” (verse 17). Is it not a true description of the life of the sinner? He imagines that sin is freedom, and he finds it to be the most grinding and oppressive slavery. He is “led captive by the devil at his will.” The sinner serves a hard master. “They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire” (verse 17). How cruel is heathenism! How it crushes out the tender feelings of humanity and kindness! Look upon the picture of it as presented in its Molochs, in its Juggernauts, in its suttees. See how the aged and the sick are left alone to die. Contrast with all this the spirit and work of Christianity, its care for the sick and the poor, its sympathy for the oppressed. Heathenism makes slaves; Christianity emancipates them. This is true alike of the slavery of the body and the slavery of the mind.
3. Sin‘s bitter fruit. “And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.” Calamity is never causeless. If we are afflicted, let us see whether the cause may not be in our own hearts, in our own lives. What a warning is here to Churches! What a warning against unfaithfulness, against setting up human ordinances in the worship of God! “Remember, therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” What a warning is here against neglect of opportunities! If we fail to use our opportunities and privileges, they will be certainly taken from us. Let us give an attentive ear to the warnings of God’s Word, to the everyday warnings of God’s providence. “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh They would none of my counsel, they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.”C.H.I.
2Ki 17:24-41
Samaria and its religion.
I. ITS EARLY GODLESSNESS. The land of Samaria was now deprived of its Israelitish inhabitants. The King of Assyria colonized it with heathen immigrants. “At the beginning of their dwelling there, they feared not the Lord.” What a mistake to go anywhere without taking God’s presence with us! How many journeys are undertaken, how many a business is entered on, without ever a word of prayer being offered to God! How many a home life is commenced without a family altar! As the young Scotch lad said of a house where he stayed for some time, and where there was no family prayer, “There is no roof on that house.” “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”
II. ITS SUBSEQUENT JUDGMENTS. “Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. Wherefore they spake to the King of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land” (2Ki 17:25, 2Ki 17:26). It was judgment that first made them think of God. It is often so in the history of human life. Men live without God, prayerless, godless lives, so long as all appears to be going well with them. But when sickness comes, or troubles overtake them, or death is drawing near, they cry to the Lord then. There is something mean about this. It is better to call upon God and to come to him in trouble than not to call on him at all; but how much better it is to serve him in health as well as in sickness, in prosperity as well as in trouble!
III. ITS MIXED RELIGION. Samaria tried the experiment of serving the true God and the gods of the heathen at the same time. It tried the impossible task of serving two masters. “They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence” (2Ki 17:33). In their case, as in every case, it proved to be an impossible task. “Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the Law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob” (2Ki 17:34); “So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day” (2Ki 17:41). They “feared the Lord:” that was profession. “They served their graven images.” that was practice. Yet there are many who are trying the same impossible task. They have a certain amount of fear of God. They are afraid to die, afraid of the judgment to come. So they think it desirable to be “religious.” They go to church. They read the Bible occasionally, perhaps. They hear the name of good Christians. But it is a name only. Their life cannot be called a Christian life. They serve God on the Sunday in a kind of way, and the world or sin the rest of the week. They try, perhaps, to serve God and mammon. They try to serve God and the world. They are liberal-minded Christians. But this kind of mixed religion is no religion in the sight of God. He cannot have a divided service. This is emphatically brought out in the first chapter of Isaiah. There the inconsistency and uselessness of a religious profession combined with a godless life is clearly shown. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” “Bring no more vain oblations;” “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” Here it is plainly taught that a religious profession is worthless without a religious life. If we regard iniquity in our heart, the Lord will not hear us. It is interesting to remember that even this degraded people of Samaria, with their mixed and corrupt religion, were permitted twice at least to receive the gospel message. They were looked down upon with contempt and aversion by the Jews. But there is mercy even for the most degraded. A city of Samaria received Christ himself, and many of its people believed on him, for the saying of the woman who testified, “He told me all things that ever I did.” It was even in the apostate city of Samaria that, when Philip went down and preached Christ unto them, “the people with one accord gave heed unto the things which Philip spake,” and many of them believed and were baptized. And we read that “there was great joy in that city.” Even to these Samaritans, aliens from the ancient Jewish faith, a people despised and hated by the Jews, the gospel of Christ brought great joy. Surely there is here an encouragement for the greatest sinner. Surely there is here a reason for us to hope and work for the salvation even of the most degraded. Surely an encouragement for Christian missions to the heathen.C.H.I.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS
2Ki 17:1-8
Aspects of a corrupt nation.
“In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years,” etc. Hoshea, the king here mentioned, was the nineteenth and last King of Israel. He lived about seven hundred and twenty years or more before Christ. After a reign of nine years his subjects were carried away captive to Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end. The selection we have made from this chapter presents to usAspects of a corrupt nation. A nation appears here as an unfortunate inheritor of wrong; as a guilty worker of wrong; and as a terrible victim of wrong.
I. AS AN UNFORTUNATE INHERITOR OF WRONG. Upon Hoshea and his age there came clown the corrupting influence of no less than eighteen princes, all of whom were steeped in wickedness and fanatical idolatry. The whole nation had become completely immoral and idolatrous. This kingthe last of the Israelitishit is said, “did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him.” If one shade better than his predecessors, he was, notwithstanding, a man whose character seems unredeemed by one single virtue. It is one of not only the commonest, but the most perplexing, facts in history that one generation comes to inherit, to a great extent, the character of its predecessor. The thoughts, the principles, and the spirit that animated the men of the past, come down and take possession of the minds of the men of the present. Though the bodies of our predecessors are moldering in the dust, they are still here in their thoughts and influences. This is an undoubted fact. It serves to explain three things.
1. The vital connection between all the members of the race. Though men are countless in number, and ever multiplying, humanity is one. All are branches of the same root, members of the same body, links in one chain. None can be affected without affecting others; the motion of one link propagates an influence to the end of the chain. None of us liveth unto himself. Solemn thought! Our very breathings may produce ripples upon the mighty lake of existence, which will spread in ever-widening circles to the very shores of eternity. There are mystic springs connecting us with the universe. Can we move without touching them? Can we give a touch that will not send its vibrations along the arches of the boundless future? The effects of a man’s influence, either for good or evil, will be determined by his moral character. A bad man is a moral curse; the influence that streams from him will be moral poison. A good man, under God, is a blessing; his influence, like the living waters, will irrigate and beautify the mental districts through which it flows.
2. The immense difficulty of improving the moral condition of the race. There have been men in every age and land who have “striven even unto blood” to improve the race. Poets have depicted the charms of virtue, moralists have reasoned against wrong, martyrs have died for the right; and during the last eighteen centuries, throughout Christendom, the best men throughout all communions have struggled hard to bring the world’s mind under the supreme reign of the true, the beautiful, and the good. But how miserable has been the result! Evil is everywhere the dominant forcedominant not merely in markets and governments, but even in Churches. Those of us who have lived longest in the world, looked deepest into its moral heart, and labored most zealously and persistently for its improvement, feel, like Sisyphus in ancient fable, struggling to roll a large stone to the top of a mountains which, as soon as we think some progress has been made, rolls back to its old position, and that with greater impetuosity. Scripture everywhere recognizes this difficulty, and speaks of the work as a “race,” a “battle,” a “crucifixion.” I question whether the world is morally much better than it has ever been.
3. The absolute need of superhuman agency spiritually to redeem the race. Philosophy shows that a bad world cannot improve itself, cannot make itself good. Bad men can neither help themselves morally nor help others. If the world is to be improved, thoughts and influences from superhuman regions must be transfused into its heart. Moral goodness must come in a new form, and ply new agencies. Herein is the gospel: “When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
II. AS A GUILTY WORKER OF WRONG. Hoshea and his people were not only the inheritors of the corruptions of past generations, but they themselves became agents in propagating and perpetuating the wickedness. See what is said of Hoshea here. “The King of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea.” This is only one specimen or development of this man’s wickedness. See what is said of his people. “The children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh King of Egypt, and had feared other gods.” So that while they were the inheritors of a corrupt past, they were at the same time guilty agents in a wicked present. Strong as is the influence of the past upon us, it is not strong enough to coerce us into wrong. Gracious Heaven has endowed every man with the power of thought and resolve sufficient, if he uses it, to rise above the influence of the past, and to mount into a new moral orbit of life. He has the power to stand on the firm rock of his own individuality, and to say to the swelling sea of depravity, as its waves are approaching him, “So far shall thou come, and no further.” Because the father has been bad, there is no just reason why the child should be bad also. Because all the generations that have gone have been bad, there is no reason why this generation should be wicked. We are not like logs of wood on the surging seas of past wickedness, but rather like those snowy birds that can at pleasure mount from the billows, and quit them for the wide fields of air.
III. AS A TERRIBLE VICTIM OF WRONG. What was the judicial outcome of all this wickedness? Retribution stern, rigorous, and crushing. “Then the King of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.” “This was the third and final expedition of Shalmaneser against the whole of Syria, and it seems to have been after the lapse of a year or two from his second expedition. What new offence had excited his wrath has not been recorded; but as a determined resistance was made by his refractory vassal, Shalmaneser prepared for a regular siege of Samaria, which, through the stubborn valor of the Israelites themselves, or with the aid of Egyptian troops, lasted for nearly three years. At length the city capitulated; or, if Josephus is correct, was taken by storm. But the glory of this conquest was not enjoyed By Shalmaneser, who had been suddenly recalled by the outbreak of a domestic revolution occasioned, or at least encouraged, by his protracted absences from his capital. He was dethroned by the insurrection of an ambitious subject, and he seems to have died also before the fall of Samaria” (Dr. Jameson). Thus the whole of the inhabitants, one and all, were carried away by tyrannic force. “From inscriptions in the palace at Khorasbad,” says a modern expositor, “which record the number of Israelitish captives, it appears that 27,280 were transported into Assyria from Samaria and other parts of the kingdom of Israel. The removal of entire populations from vanquished countries to some other portion of the conqueror’s dominions had not been adopted, so far as reliable history testifies, as the policy of any ancient sovereigns in the East until it was introduced and acted upon by the later Assyrian kings. Soldiers when taken captive in battle, women and children belonging to the conquered enemy, it had, indeed, for ages been the custom to carry into the land of the victor. And even numerous tribes of foreigners, resident within the territory, and reduced to a state of bondage, like the Israelites in Egypt, had frequently, by the arbitrary will of ancient kings, been dragged to different quarters of their kingdom to labor on the public works.” Here is the temporal retribution, at any rate, of two hundred years of idolatry and wickedness. During this period Israel had sinned away its liberty, its property, its country. The ten tribes sinned themselves into slavery, destitution, and everlasting obscurity. For where are they? Two thousand years have rolled away since this terrible catastrophe, and none can tell us who they are or where they are. “Be sure your sins will find you out.” Retribution may move silently and slowly, but ever with a resistless step. It follows the sins of a nation as well as of an individual. It was the crimes of the Israelites that ruined the kingdom, and made them the victims of this terrible catastrophe. So it ever is; the great dynasties and kingdoms of the past have met with the same fate by the same inexorable law of retribution. There are sins in our England that are working towards its ruin. The sins of a nation work, like the subterranean fires, underground. The nation may have arts lovely as the landscape, institutions apparently grand and firm as the old mountains. But whilst the people revel in their exuberance of resources, their natural beauties, and in the grandeur of their institutions, and that for ages, sin, like an ocean of fire underground, will one day break out in flames, that will destroy the whole, as in the case of the ten tribes.D.T.
2Ki 17:9-23
A great privilege, wickedness, and ruin.
“For so it was,” etc. We have used the first verses of this chapter, in our last sketch, to set forth the aspects of a corrupt nation. The Israelitish people appear in that fragment of their history as an unfortunate inheritor of wrong, a guilty worker of wrong, and a terrible victim of wrong. These fifteen verses now under our notice present to us three subjects of thoughta great national privilege; a great national wickedness; and a great national ruin.
I. A GREAT NATIONAL PRIVILEGE. We learn here from that the Infinite Governor of the world had given them at least three great advantagepolitical freedom, right to the land, and the highest spiritual teaching. He had given them:
1. Political freedom. For ages they had been in political bondage, the mere slaves of despots; but here we are told that God had “brought them out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh King of Egypt” (2Ki 17:7). When they crossed the Red Sea, entered the desert, and stepped into Palestine, they were civilly free; the chains that had bound them so long were then completely broken, and each had the common right of liberty. Political freedom is the inalienable right of all men, is one of the greatest blessings of a people, but one which in every age has been outraged by despots. The millions are groaning in many a land still under political disabilities.
2. A right to the land. Canaan was the common right of all; true, it was divided amongst the ten tribes, but this was not for the private interests of any, but for the good of all. What we call “landlordism“ scarcely existed, and perhaps it would have been as well had it never existed; it bars the common rights of mankind. When one thinks that all the land in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England is in the hands of eight thousand men, a number which could be crowded into Spurgeon’s tabernacle, and that thirty millions have no portion in the land, it is impossible not to feel that the condition of things is anomalous. Archdeacon Paley, no mean authority, with his characteristic clearness and common sense, has the following remarkable words. “If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if (instead of each one picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got in a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse, keeping this heap for one, and that for the weakest, perhaps the worst pigeon of the flock, sitting round and looking on all the winter, whilst the one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon more hardy or hungry than the rest touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces;if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practiced and established amongst men. Among men you see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one too oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole seta child, a woman, a madman, or a fool), getting nothing for themselves all the while but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces, looking quietly on while they see the fruits of all the labor spent or spoiled, and if one of the number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him and hanging him for the theft.” What boots collecting and publishing facts concerning the sufferings of people, and entitling the tract the ‘Bitter Cry of Outcast London,’ unless something is done to put a greater share of the land into the hands of the people, not by violence or spoliation, but by a calm and just legislation? Alas! even good men, through a weakness of judgment and the workings of a traditional faith, seem to dream that by multiplying churches and chapels they will hush the “bitter cry.” How absurd!
3. The highest spiritual teaching. “The Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the Law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets” (2Ki 17:13). One of the fundamental needs of mankind is true ethical teaching; not the teaching of abstruse dogmas and vain ceremonies, but the teaching of immutable lawthe “statutes of God.” These statutes are not only written on paper, but on every page of Nature’s magnificent volume, and on the tablets of human reason and conscience. “Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you.” Genuine disciples of such teaching will evermore act rightly towards themselves, towards their fellow-men, and towards their God.
II. A GREAT NATIONAL WICKEDNESS. Possessing all these privileges, how acted these peoplenot merely the people of Israel, but the people of Judah as well? Was the sentiment of worship and justice regnant within them? Were they loyal to all that is beautiful, true, and good? Nay.
1. They rejected God. “They would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God,” etc. (2Ki 17:14, 2Ki 17:15). They declined the study of his statutes, and renounced his claim on their devotion.
2. They adopted idols. Mark:
(1) The earnestness of their idolatry. With what unremitting zeal they promoted the cause of idolatry! “The children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities” (verse 9). It is also stated, “They made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal” (verse 16). Error on this earth is more active than truth, wrong is more industrious than right, the spirit of evil knows no rest, it goes to and fro on the face of the earth. Here, then, is national wickedness. Are we, as a country, less wicked than the nation of Israel? I trow not. True, we are all, for the most part, theoretical theists, but how many practical atheists? For England to a large extent ignores the Almighty. It might be said of most of us, “God is not in all our thoughts.”
“With lips they own him Master, in life oppose his Word;
They every day deny him, and yet they call him ‘Lord;’
No more is their religion like his in life and deed
Than painted grain on canvas is like the living seed.”
(2) The cruelty of their idolatry. “And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord” (verse 17).
III. GREAT NATIONAL RUIN. “Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight” (verse 18); “The Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight” (verse 20).
1. Their ruin involved the entire loss of their country. “So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day” (verse 23). Expatriation is an enormous trial.
2. Their ruin involved the loss of their national existence. “The Lord removed them out of his sight” (verse 18). The ten tribes are gone, and it may be doubted whether they were ever worth looking after, for they were a miserable type of humanity. “The kingdom of the ten tribes,” says Dr. Blackie, “was never restored, nor did the dispersed of Israel ever attempt to return in a body to their land.” More than two hundred years of idolatry and wickedness have been followed by more than two thousand years of dispersion and alienation. Having said in their hearts to God, ‘Depart from us!’ God said to them, ‘Depart from me!’ The divorce was completed, and till a reconciliation shall take place, its sad, dark fruits must remain.
3. Their ruin involved the retributive agency of Heaven. The Assyrians were only the instruments. It is God’s plan to punish the wicked by the wicked. No wonder that amid so gross a perversion of the worship of the true God, and the national propensity to do reverence to idols, the Divine patience was exhausted, and that the God whom they had forsaken by violating covenant, an adherence to which formed their title to the occupation of Canaan, permitted them to go into captivity, that they might learn the difference between his service and that of their despotic conquerors,D.T.
2Ki 17:24-41
Subjects worth thinking about.
“And the King of Assyria brought men from Babylon,” etc. This fragment of Israelitish history brings under our notice four subjects which run through all human history, and which find their illustration in the events of modern as well as ancient life.
I. THE TYRANNY OF MAN. Here we find the Assyrians committing two great enormities on the men of Israeldriving them out of their own land into Assyria, and taking possession of their own country and home. “And the King of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.” Who that King of Assyria was at this time who carried away the last remnant of the ten tribes into a foreign land, and brought from various parts of his own country men to occupy their property and their homes, whether Shalmaneser or Esarhaddon, is a question not worth debating. He was a tyrant. The places from which he selected the men whom he placed in the cities of Samaria are mentioned. Cuthah, a city about fifteen miles north-east from Babylon; Ava, situated on the Euphrates, to the north of Babylon; Hamath, the chief city of Upper Syria; and Sepharvaim, supposed to be on a branch stream from the Euphrates, lying about sixteen miles from Babylon. Now, there was tyranny in both cases. There was tyranny in taking the Assyrians from their own countries and placing them in the cities of Samaria; as well as tyranny in taking away the ten tribes from Samaria into foreign regions. Had the exchange taken place with the mutual consent of both parties, there would have been no outrage on the rights of man, but it might, indeed, have conduced to the interests of both parties concerned. Men are constantly changing their countries, especially in this age, when facilities for traveling are increasing every day, when the old countries are becoming over-populated, their resources rapidly decreasing, and new and fertile regions opening up in every part of the globe. All this is right enough, as well as often necessary and truly expedient. But to be forced away from home, this is tyranny, and such tyranny is not extinct even in our England. The tens of thousands that leave our shores every year for strange and distant lands, for the most part do it by a terrible coercion. Not only is he a tyrant who inflicts positive injustice on another, but also he who withholds from another his due. Tyranny is not confined to the throne of despots, but it sits in every heart where there is not a practical regard for the rights of others. It is in Belgravian mansions and ducal castles, where the groans of starving millions around are disregarded, as well as in the palace of the Czar of Russia, where the rights of millions are trodden underfoot.
“Thinkest thou there is no tyranny but that
Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice,
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury,
The negligence, the apathy, the evils
Of sensual slothproduce ten thousand tyrants,
Whose delegated cruelty surpasses
The worst acts of one energetic master,
However harsh and hard in his own bearing.”
(Byron.)
II. THE RETRIBUTIONS OF LIFE. “And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. Wherefore they spake to the King of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.” Probably the lions had been in the land of Samaria before the settlement of the Assyrian colonists, but after their settlement these furious beasts of prey seem to have been multiplied. Perhaps the colonists were too few in number to keep them down and to check their increase. Still, whatever the natural cause or causes of their increase, it was regarded by the new population as a retributive visitation. The statement of the courtiers to the king was, “The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them,” etc. The law of retribution is ever at work in human history, not only in the lives of nations, but in the lives of individuals. No man can do a wrong thing without suffering for it in some form or other. Nemesis surely, though silently, treads on the heels of wrong. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The lions of retribution track our steps as sinners stealthily, and are ready to spring on us at any moment. We are far enough from saying that retribution here is adequate and complete; hence there is within all a “fearful looking for” of some future judgment. We do not fully discharge the debt; as we go on it accumulates, and there is a balance to be settled in the great hereafter. Albeit the retribution here is a foretaste and pledge of a judgment to come.
“Nature has her laws,
That will not brook infringement; in all time,
All circumstances, all state, in every clime
She holds aloft the same avenging sword,
And, sitting on her boundless throne sublime,
The vials of her wrath, with Justice stored,
Shall in her own good hour on all that’s ill be poured.”
(Percival.)
III. THE PROSTITUTION OF RELIGION. The Assyrian king, it would seem, in answer to the alarm which was felt concerning the colonists whom he had settled in the cities of Samaria, conceived the plan of adopting religion as the remedy. “Then the King of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.” The priest whom the king sent to them seems to have been one of the exiled priests who had formerly had his head-quarters at Bethel. It is not said this priest took a copy of the Pentateuch with him; perhaps he trusted to his religious intelligence and to his oral abilities. The fact of his being one of the exiled priests, and being settled in Bethel, would imply that he was not a Levite, but rather one of the calf-worshipping priests; his instructions, therefore, would most likely not be very sound or useful. Now, the question is, why did this Assyrian king introduce this religion? Not because he or his people had any faith in it. “Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt,” etc. (2Ki 17:29-31). Several of the gods of these people are here mentioned. “Succoth-benoth.” The meaning of this word, which is thought to be “tents or booths of daughters,” might seem to point to the places where the Babylonians celebrated impure rites; but here it represents one of the deities. “Nergal” is said to have been worshipped under the form of a cock; and from Layard, in his work on Nineveh and Babylon, we find that a cock was sometimes associated with a priest on the Assyrian monuments. “Ashima,” according to some, was worshipped under the form of a he-goat, bald to the very skin. “Nibhaz.” This deity was represented in the figure of a dog. “Tartak.’ According to the rabbis, this deity was represented in the form of an ass. “Adrammelech.” This means the “fire-king,” who was worshipped as a sun-god. “Anammelech,” a deity worshipped, some say in the form of a hare, and some say in the form of a goat. These were the gods in which the king and the colonists seem to have had faith, and not in the one true and living God. Why, then, did the king send this priest from Bethel to impart to them a knowledge of the God of Israel? Simply as a matter of selfish policy. The attention that they paid to any representation that the priest made of the true God was partial, insincere, and selfish. “So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners,” etc. Here you have one of the million examples of that religion of policy that has abounded in all lands and times. In every page in history, nay, in every scene of life, we find religion taken up as a means to an end, rather than as the grand end of being. Some use it as a means for secular advantage, others as a means for personal salvationwhat is called the salvation of the soul. Rulers employ it as a means to govern the people, and priests employ it as a means to coerce men into ecclesiastical order or conventional morality. In such cases their own personal interests are by no means ignored. This is a prostitution of religion. True religion should ever be pursued as the supreme end of man. In it alone his highest obligations are fulfilled, his full powers employed, his true destiny realized. But, alas! everywhere we find it regarded as a subsidiary and partial element in man’s calculations, experience, and life. What is here said applies to millions even in Christendom. “They feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” The religion of policy will never rescue man from the rapacious jaws of the lions of retribution.
IV. THE THEISTIC HUNGER OF SOULS. All these men, both the colonists and the Israelites, would have their gods; a god seemed to them as necessary almost as their life. “So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.” The same hunger for worship which the generations that preceded them possessed and developed had been transmitted to these their children as an innate force in their spiritual constitution. The religious element in man is not a passing sentiment, not a traditional belief, not something superadded to his nature. It is the very core of his being, the substratum in which all his higher faculties inhere, lie who has this element in him (and who has not?) needs no argument to prove the existence of a God. If it be alive within him, all such arguments are an impertinence. The existence of a Supreme Being is independent of all proof. It is written on the consciousness of human nature. Like the fact of our own being, it is too near, too evident, too much a matter of living self, for outward argument to have any force. Faith in God springs from within. It is based on those immutable sentiments of the soul that outlive all theories and defy all skepticism. To deny the existence of God is to offer violence to all that is great and sacred in human nature.D.T.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
2Ki 17:1-6
The end of the kingdom of Israel
We learn from the inscriptions that Hoshea, the murderer of Pekah, only secured his throne by acknowledging the supremacy of the King of Assyria. It was not long, however, before he conspired to achieve his independence. This led to the final overthrow of the kingdom.
I. A LAST FLICKER.
1. Hoshea‘s better character. It is said of this last King of Israel that he did evil in the sight of the Lord, “but not as the kings of Israel that were before him.” The testimony rather points to the great wickedness of the earlier kings than implies any exceptional virtue in Hoshea, who came to the throne by blood, and showed no more reliance on God than the others. His character, however, must have had some redeeming qualities. Possibly he tried to check some of the excesses of wickedness in the land, and to discountenance at least foreign idolatries. The unfavorable judgment we are sometimes compelled to pass on men’s characters as a whole need not blind us to what is praiseworthy in them.
2. A hopeless task. It is both curious and pathetic to see this last flicker of a better disposition in the kings of Israel just before the end. But even had Hoshea been a better ruler than he was, it was probably now too late to do the nation any good. Every attempt to bring the people back to God had proved in vain, and corruption had reached a height which made a crisis inevitable. The carcass was there, and the vultures were preparing to descend upon it. We have a modern example in the state of the French nation prior to the great Revolution. A nation, like an individual, has its day of grace, and if that is sinned away there remains only “a fearful looking for of judgment” (Heb 10:27).
II. BROKEN ENGAGEMENTS.
1. A policy of double-dealing. Hoshea’s desire from the first was to free his land from the yoke of Assyria. Some attempt of this kind, probably at the death of Tiglath-pileser, brought down upon him the new king, Shalmaneser, who compelled his submission, and exacted tribute. But Hoshea was not faithful to his engagements. While still pretending loyalty to Shalmaneser, he was carrying on a system of intrigue with So, King of Egypt (Sabaco). They “made a covenant with the Assyrians,” and at the same time “oil was carried into Egypt” (Hos 12:1). It was not God Hoshea trusted in, but an alliance with Egypt. He relied on treachery, on double-dealing, on clever intrigue, to get him out of his difficulties. This kind of policy never permanently succeeds.
2. Open revolt. When Hoshea thought himself strong enough, he threw off his allegiance to Shalmaneser. He brought him no present, as he had done year by year. He was playing a desperate game, but he seems to have thought himself secure. A people is justified in rebellion against foreign authority when it is strong enough to make success probable; but God’s blessing could hardly be looked for on an attempt which was cradled in duplicity, and in which God himself was totally ignored.
3. A bruised reed. As might have been anticipated, so failed Hoshea in his hour of need. His “oil” and other presents had been sent in vain. The King of Assyria came against him; but there was no movement on the part of Egypt for his help. He had trusted in the staff of a bruised reed (2Ki 18:21). How manifold are the disappointments of those who rely on “the help of man” (Psa 60:11), and put their “trust in princes” (Psa 146:3)! Hoshea himself was captured, and shut up in prison. His ultimate fate we do not know.
III. FINAL RUIN.
1. The siege of Samaria. The King of Assyria now marched against Samaria, which bravely held out for three years. Had details been given us, it would no doubt have been found that this was one of the great sieges of historygreat in its horrors, as well as in its after-results. We may picture the extremities of the famine of 2Ki 6:1-33. repeated with additional horrors of anarchy and bloodshed; or, with perhaps more truth, we may draw our ideas of this siege from the descriptions of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (cf. 2Ki 24:1-20; 2Ki 25:1-30.). That was the concluding act in the history of the southern kingdom, as this was the concluding act in the history of the northern. Both were long-delayed, and in the end terrible judgments of God. The cup of iniquity was full, and another cupthe cup of God’s wrathwas now put into the nation’s hand (cf. Psa 75:8). The city at length fell, and the final blow descended.
2. The captivity of the tribes. We read on the monuments that, after the fall of Samaria, the King of Egypt, alarmed probably for his own safety, approached, and was defeated by Sargon, Shalmaneser’s successor. In any case, help was now unavailing for the unhappy Israelites. The children of Israel were removed from their cities, and carried away captive into Assyria, being scattered up and down in the places named. 27,280, according to Sargon, were taken from Samaria alone. What sorrow was here! Torn from their land, exiles from house and home, forced to eat unclean things in Assyria (Hos 9:3, Hos 9:4), their national existence extinguished, ruled by the heathen,all because, when they knew God, they would not glorify him as God, but gave his glory to dumb idols, and defiled his land with their abominations, and misused the gifts he had so richly bestowed on them (cf. Hos 2:1-23.).J.O.
2Ki 17:7-23
Review of the history of Israel.
The Bible does not simply relate, but draws aside the veil and shows us the innermost springs of God’s providence, and how they work. It teaches us to understand the deepest causes of the rise and fall of nations. The causes it insists on are not economical, or political, or intellectual, but religious, and its lessons are for all time. We may say of this survey of Israel’s historythese things “are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1Co 10:11). We have here
I. MANIFOLD PROVOCATIONS.
1. Ingratitude to God. This is put in the foreground. It was the Lord “their God “Israel had sinned againstthe God who had brought them up from Egypt, who had delivered them from bondage, who had made a nation of them, who had given them a land to dwell in, who had bound them to himself by solemn covenant. What people were ever under stronger obligations to obedience! Yet they apostatized, and “feared other gods.” Sin appears more heinous against a background of mercies received. It is worse for a nation that has known God, that has possessed pure ordinances, and has been graciously dealt with by him, to backslide, than for another that has been less favored. Our own nation has been blessed in these respects as few have been or are. Correspondingly great are our responsibilities. The individual may reflect that the fact of spiritual redemptionsalvation through Christplaces him under greater obligations than could spring from any temporal deliverance.
2. Heathenish ways. The positive wickedness of the people is next detailed. The heart of man cannot exist without an object to fill and occupy it; and if God is neglected, something else must be found to take his place. The Israelites rejected Jehovah, but they took to following idols. They would have none of his statutes, but they walked in the statutes of the heathen, and of the kings of Israel. It is to be remembered that the heathen worships here referred to were saturated through and through with lust and vileness. It was because of the nameless abominations connected with them that the Lord, after long forbearance, cast out the former inhabitants from Canaan (Le 2Ki 18:24-32; 2Ki 20:1-6). Yet these were the ways into which Israel turned back in the land which God had given them. May we not fear as we think of the vices, the impurities, the filthy abominations, which abound in our own nation?
3. Zeal in the service of idols. Israel had no heart for the service of God, but they showed unbounded zeal in the service of their idols. Publicly, and in secret also, in every city, on every hill, and under every green tree, wherever even there was a watchman’s solitary tower, there they set up their high places, burnt incense, and “wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger.” The children of light may well learn a lesson from the children of this world in respect of zeal. If only one tithe of the earnestness with which men serve the devil were put into the service of God, how rapid would be the spread of true religion! The wicked throw the whole energy of their souls into their follies, their pursuit of pleasure, their service of the world, the devil, and the flesh. But how slack-handed and half-hearted oftentimes are Christians! What wonder God’s cause suffers!
II. REJECTION OF PROPHETS.
1. God‘s prophets sent. God did not leave Israel to sin without trying every means to turn the people from their evil ways. Prophets were sent, and these not one or two, but “all the prophets” and “all the seers.” They were sent both to Israel and to Judah. They spoke in God’s Name to the people, testified against their sins, and exhorted them to return to the ways of right. They warned them also of the consequences of disobedience (verse. 23). Thus it was shown that God has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth (Eze 18:32). The fact of warning being given is a great aggravation of guilt if sin is persisted in. It leaves the transgressor without excuse. In our own land, warnings abound. The Bible is widely circulated, the gospel is faithfully preached; there is no lack of voices proclaiming the need and duty of repentance. If men perish, it is not in ignorance. They sin against light, and their blood is on their own heads.
2. Their testimony rejected. The efforts of the prophets to bring the people back to God proved unavailing. No heed was paid to their warnings; rather the people grew bolder and more daring in sin. If faithful counsel does not soften, it hardens. Judged by outward results, no class of preachers ever had less success than the Hebrew prophets. Their exhortations seemed as water spilt upon the ground. Yet through them was preserved and kept alive in the nation a remnant according to grace (Rom 11:5), and to it belonged the great future of God’s promises. The stubbornness of the Jewish character was proverbialthey were, and had ever been, a stiff-necked people. The root of their evil was they “did not believe in the Lord their God.” When they did believe, the same basis of character discovers itself in their unyielding tenacity and perseverance in serving God and obeying the dictates of their conscience (cf. Dan 3:1-30.).
3. Aggravated wickedness. The people latterly threw off all restraint in the practice of their evil. It was no longer “secretly,” but openly, that they rejected the statutes of the Lord their God and his covenant, and the testimonies which he testified, against them. It but aggravated the evil that in name they still claimed him as their God, and professed to do him honor, while in reality they had “left all his commandments,” and had changed the whole substance of his religion. The form is nothing if the heart is wanting (Mat 15:7-9); but the Israelites changed even the form. They went after vanity, and became vain, imitating the heathen who were round about them, and unblushingly introducing the worst heathen abominations into their own worship.
(1) They changed the fundamental law of Israel in making molten imagesintended to represent Jehovah, no doubt, but still idolsBaalim.
(2) They imported the Phoenician Baal-worship, with its pillars and asheras, and its licentious ritesanother direct violation of fundamental laws.
(3) They went further afield, and imported from Babylonia or Assyria the worship of “the host of heaven “another thing directly forbidden on pain of death (Deu 17:2-7).
(4) Still unsatisfied, they abandoned themselves to the horrid rites of Moloch, and to the practice of every kind of divination and enchantmentthe last and lowest stage in a people’s religious degradation. This also was most emphatically forbidden to the Israelites under the most severe penalties (Le 2Ki 20:1-6). Thus they literally “sold” themselves to do evil, throwing off all shame or pretence of regard for God’s authority, and became confirmed and wedded to their evil ways. In heart and outward conduct they had absolutely and utterly apostatized from God, and seemed bent only on provoking him to anger. Instead of marveling at their final rejection, one wonders how a holy God should have borne with them so long. But is not God’s patience with sinners and peoples still just as wonderful? Their iniquities literally go up to heaven before he cuts them off.
III. JUSTICE NO LONGER TARRYING. If the Lord’s justice tarries, it does not sleep. And when the blow does fall, it is all the more severe that it has been so long delayed.
1. Israel rejected. This people had rejected God, and God now rejected them, as he had from the first threatened he would do (Le 26:14-29). He did not cast them off without the warning afforded by many premonitory judgments. But when neither judgment nor mercy was regarded, and the cup of their transgression was brimming over, he gave them up, and “cast them out of his sight.” They were carried away out of their own land to Assyria, and never, as a nation, returned.
2. Judah not taking warning. The sad thing was that Judah also, which had begun to walk in the same paths, did not take warning by the fall of the sister kingdom. “The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound” (Hos 5:10), and many warnings directed to Judah mingle with the prophetic denunciations of Israel. Yet, notwithstanding partial reformations, the people did not repent. The sight is not unparalleled. If wicked men could be deterred from sin, or led to repentance, by warnings, these are never wanting. History and experience bear uniform testimony that it is well with the righteous, ill with the wicked; men have daily examples of the ruinous effects of vice before their eyes; yet they go on heedless and blinded. It is not a question of reason, but of evil inclination, and wrong bent of will. Sin is truly named follyit is the absolute unwisdom.
3. The origin of the mischief. Again, the source of all these evils which came on Israel is traced to Jeroboam’s fatal step in setting up the two calves. It was he who “drave Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin.” One step in the wrong direction carries many others in its train. That act of Jeroboam had in the heart of it a principle which logically meant the overthrow of the theocracy. It was not only a violation of the fundamental law of the second commandment; but it was an act of self-will in religion; the assertion of the right to set human will above God’s ordinances, and change and alter them at pleasure. Once a principle of that kind is introduced and acted on, it cannot be prevented from logically working itself out. The consequences of a wrong step stretch far beyond the results immediately seen or intended.J.O.
2Ki 17:24-41
Heathen occupants of the land.
The narrative of the fall of the northern kingdom concludes with an account of the arrangements made by the King of Assyria for resettling the land of Israel.
I. THE NEW SETTLERS.
1. Their foreign origin. The policy of removing rebellious populations to distant partsat this time a favorite one with the Assyriansled not only to the Israelites being carried away to Assyria, but to foreign settlers being brought and put down in their place. The nationalities of the new inhabitants are mentioned. They were men from Babylon, and Cuthah, and Ava, and Hamath, and Sepharvaim. These took possession of the cities of Samaria, and dwelt in them. Behold now God’s holy land in the possession of aliens, men without one glimmer of knowledge of the true God and his ways! The Israelites had become heathen in heart, and were removed, and now real heathen were put in their place. In the sight of God the latter were less objectionable than the former. They had never known anything better than heathenism; while the Israelites had sinned against the clearest light and the strongest love. In the judgment day, the heathen will rise up to condemn those who have abused the light of revelation (Mat 12:41).
2. The visitation of lions. Thick darkness had now settled on the land. Even the outward worship of Jehovah had ceased, and the only gods known were those of the heathen colonists. Yet the land was Jehovah’s, and however he might “wink” at the ignorance of a rude, uninstructed people, it was not meet that something should not be done to arouse them to inquiry. The removal of the former inhabitants seems to have led to the multiplication of lions, and these now began to attack the people in a way which convinced them that the God of the land was displeased with them. It is not only the colonists who took this view of the matter. The sacred writer gives the same interpretation. God has his own ways of speaking to the consciences of men, and this was the one now adopted. The people were right in seeing in the visitation a reminder of their neglect of “the manner of the God of the land;” they were wrong in thinking that all that was necessary to remedy this neglect was the performance of certain external rites. It was moral conduct, based on a right knowledge of himself, which “the God of the land” required. But their error was only part of their dark heathen superstition.
3. Their request for instruction. The people were much concerned about the visitation which had befallen them, and their case was reported at once to the King of Assyria, who sent them one of the priests who had been carried away captive, to teach them “how they should fear the Lord.” Alas! how shall the blind lead the blind! This priest was himself one who had no right knowledge of Jehovah. He was doubtless one of the priests of Bethel, who had been mixed up with the calf-worship and all the other sins for which Israel had been carried away. It is evident from the results that he gave the people no right instruction. He probably set up again at the Bethel sanctuary the disused rites of the former idolatry, and taught the people some external observances connected with the Name of Jehovah. A religion so deeply corrupted was hardly better than those they already practiced. Jehovah remained to them a local deity, of whose real character they knew nothing, and whom they served from motives of fear.
II. MIXED RELIGIONS.
1. Extraordinary syncretism. An extraordinary scene was now witnessed. The new-comers, once settled in their cities, lost no time in organizing their religionsin this, at all events, setting an example to more enlightened peoples. The high places formerly used by the Israelites stood temptingly ready to receive the new idols. Whatever may have been the character of the priest’s instructions, they had no influence in checking the multiplication of strange gods. In the mixture of peoples, each nationality adhered to its own deity. The Babylonians made Succoth-benoth, the Cuthites made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, etc. The result was a chaotic confusion of religions, such as perhaps has never before or since been equaled. The new worships needed priests, and these were made from the lowest of the people. The whole is a sad but instructive picture of heathenism in its want of internal unity, its Babel-like confusion, its destitution of moral character, and its degrading and cruel practices, e.g. the burning of the children in the fire to Adrammelech, etc. Only monotheism can give true unity to life, religion, and worship.
2. Jehovah and strange gods. Meanwhile Jehovah was not overlooked, but had his place given him among the rest. The people “feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” This showed, of course, that the first principles of the religion of Jehovah were not understood by them. But is it so uncommon a thing for mennot heathen, but professedly Christianthus to attempt to combine incompatibilities? Is there not such a thing as attempting to combine the service of the Lord with the friendship of the world, which yet is declared to be “enmity with God” (Jas 4:4)? Is there no such thing as professing to serve God, yet giving the chief place in the heart to money, pleasure, fashion, or some other spiritual idol, which is duly worshipped upon its own high place? The less glaring idolatries are not always the least sinful. Ere condemning the irrational practices of these heathen, let us sit strictly in judgment on ourselves.
3. The absence of true religion. The cause of all this religious confusion was that the true God was not rightly known. Men may possess theoretically correct notions of God, and not act upon them; but it is impossible to base a right moral or religious life on conceptions of God which are fundamentally erroneous. These colonists did not know Jehovah’s real character; they had not been properly instructed in his statutes; therefore they thought they were serving him when they were doing him the highest dishonor.
III. A PAST MEMORY.
1. God‘s ancient covenant. The sight of this indescribable chaos recalls to the historian the memory of that original covenant of God with Israel, by the terms of which the people were pledged not to serve strange gods, but to adhere to Jehovah, their Redeemer from Egypt, and to keep his holy statutes. Had they been faithful to that covenant, how different would have been the result! Instead of being in exile, the nation would have been safe, happy, and prosperous under Jehovah’s care.
2. The melancholy contrast. As it was, the people had been driven from their land, and this motley crowd of heathen held possession of it. Their obedience was not better than that of the rejected Israelites, and, so far as experience had gone, they showed no sigma of improvement. It is due, however, to the Samaritans to say that, when better instructed, they did improve, and, in Christ’s time, they were as strict monotheists as the Jews, and more willing to receive the gospel.J.O.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
C.The Fall of the Kingdom of Israel, under Hoshea
2Ki 17:1-41
1In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began [omit began] Hoshea the son of Elah [became king] to reign [omit to reign] in Samaria over Israel nine years. 2And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. 3Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents 4[tribute] And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. 5Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. 6In the ninth year1 of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in [on the] Habor [,] by the river of [omit of] Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes [Media].
7For so it was, that [so it came to pass that when] the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, 8And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and [in those] of the kings of Israel, which [statutes] they [i.e., the kings] had made. [:] 9And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. 10And they set them up images and groves [statues] in [on] every high hill, and under every green tree: 11And there they burnt incense in [on] all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away [removed] before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: 12For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. 13Yet the Lord testified2 against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets,3 and by [and by] all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 14Notwithstanding, they would not hear [And they heard not], but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. 15And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. 16And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove [an Astartestatue] and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 17And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divinations and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, 18to provoke him to anger. [:] Therefore [It came to pass, I say (2Ki 17:7), that then] the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. [(] 19Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel 20which they made. [)] And [then] the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. 21For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave [seduced]4 Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin. 22For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them:5 23Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.
24And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, 25and dwelt in the cities thereof. And so it was [it came to pass] at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of [slaughtered amongst] them. 26Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land. 27Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land. 28Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear6 the Lord. 29Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. 30And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, 31And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 32So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them [from the common people] priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the 33houses of the high places. They [i.e., these immigrants] feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom [whence] they [were] carried away from thence [omit from thence].
34Unto this day they [i.e., the remnant of the Israelites] do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel; 35With whom the Lord had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow 36yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them: But [only] the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. 37And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods. 38And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not 39forget; neither shall ye fear other gods. [;] But [only] the Lord your God ye 40shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. Howbeit [and] they did not hearken, but they did after their former manners.
41So these nations [i.e., all the mixed inhabitants of the northern kingdom] feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their childrens children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.
The Chronology of the Period from the Reign of Jehu until the fall of the Kingdom of Israel
[Compare the Appendix on the Chronology]
This period, as well as that from Ahab to Jehu, presents chronological difficulties. Their solution can be successfully accomplished only by starting from the surest possible data, and bringing together and comparing all the separate chronological statements. For the starting-point we have the year 884 in which Jehu, in Israel, and Athaliah, in Judah, came to the throne; the date of the close of the period is also firmly established. The kingdom of Israel came to an end, according to the great majority of the chronologers, in the year 721 b.c. However much they may differ about the limits of the several reigns, they generally agree in this. So Petavius, Usher, Scaliger, Seyffarth, Winer, Tiele, Keil. See Herzogs Encyc. XVIII. s. 459, where Rsch has collected into a table the results of the investigations of twelve chronologers. [Rawlinson may be added to the number of those who advocate the date 721. On the other hand are Des Vignoles, 718; Bengel, 722; Ewald, 719; Thenius, 722; Bunsen, 709; Niebuhr. 719; and Lepsius still later, 693. It cannot be regarded as a satisfactory scientific procedure to thus borrow the results of a certain number of scholars. There is no such consensus of opinion as would enable us to simply proceed from these dates as results of science which are no longer questioned. In the absence of such a consensus it is mere building upon the sand to make them the foundation of a calculation which makes claim to reliability. It is to gain the appearance of certainty where there is no certainty. In the Appendix on the Chronology will be found a brief criticism of these chronological data and an estimate of their value.W. G. S.] Bengel and Thenius adopt the date 722, but the difference is not important. They agree with the others in placing Hezekiahs accession in the year 727, and Samaria fell (2Ki 18:10) during his sixth year, that is, in the year 721. Ewald adopts the year 719 instead of 721. The cause of this difference is that he reckons the years of some of the reigns as complete years, which, as we shall see, is inadmissible. Bunsen differs very widely from the rest. He fixes this date as 709, but his entire calculation is founded upon data of the Assyrian chronology which are, as yet, in the highest degree uncertain, and which have not been yet regarded by anybody as correct. [See the Appendix on the Chronology, 3 and 6.] They cannot, therefore, avail to shake our confidence in the two dates 884 and 721. This period accordingly covers 163 years, and, as the numbers given for the various reigns do not always apply to complete years, but sometimes to fragments of years (see Pt. II., p. 86), inasmuch as the year in which one died and another succeeded may be counted twice over, these 163 years give us the only reliable basis for estimating the length of the separate reigns. If then we calculate, commencing from the year 884, we reach the following results:
a) For the kings of Judah. Athaliah reigned from 884 on for six years. In the seventh, that is in 877, Joash became king (2Ki 11:3; 2Ki 12:2). Since, however, he became king in the seventh year of Jehu, the forty years of his reign were not complete years, so that the accession of his successor falls in 838.Amaziah reigned 29 years (2Ki 14:2), that is to 809, or, if the years were not all complete, until 810, or possibly 811.Uzziah (Azariah) reigned 52 years (2Ki 15:2), that is, until 759 or 758, for all the years of his reign can hardly have been complete twelve-months.Jotham reigned 16 years (2Ki 15:33), that is, until 743.Ahaz reigned 16 years (2Ki 16:2), that is, until 727, in which year Hezekiah came to the throne. In the latters sixth year (2Ki 18:10) Samaria fell; that is, in 721. If we add together the numbers representing the durations of these reigns we get 165 years, whereas the time from 884 to 721 is only 163 years. This difference is only apparent. It proceeds from the fact that fragments of years at the beginning or end of reigns are counted as years.
b) For the kings of Israel. Jehu reigned from 884 on for 28 years (2Ki 10:3; 2Ki 10:6), that is, until 856.Jehoahaz reigned 17 years (2Ki 13:1), that is, till 840 or 839.Jehoash ruled 16 years (2Ki 13:10), that is, until 823.Jeroboam II. reigned, according to 2Ki 14:23 only 41 years. But, as he is said in the same verse to have become king in the fifteenth year of Amaziah of Judah, and as this statement is consistent with 2Ki 14:1; 2Ki 14:17, he must have been king, as is shown above (chap. 14, Exeg. on 2Ki 17:23), for 51 or 52 years, unless we are willing to assume that there was an interval of anarchy for 10 or 11 years. At any rate, his son Zachariah did not come to the throne before the year 773. He only ruled six months and his successor Shallum, in the following year, 772, only one month (2Ki 15:8; 2Ki 15:13). Menahem reigned from 772 on for 10 years (2Ki 15:17), that is until 762.Pekahiah reigned two years (2Ki 15:23), that is, until 760.Pekah ruled only 20 years according to 2Ki 15:27; but according to 2Ki 17:32 he ascended the throne two years before Jotham of Judah, survived him (he lived 16 years, 2Ki 17:33), and waged war with Ahaz, his successor. It was not until the twelfth year of the last-named king that Hoshea became king. Now 2+16+12=30; therefore, either Pekah reigned 30 years and not 20, or there was no king in Israel for a space of 10 years (see notes on 2Ki 15:27). [See the Supp. Note after the Exeg. section on the fifteenth chapter.] This much is certain, that Hoshea became king 30 years after 760, when Pekah ascended the throne, that is, in 730. He reigned 9 years, that is, until 721.The sum of all the reigns mentioned is 164 instead of 163 years, and this slight difference is accounted for as before in the case of the kings of Judah.
c) The synchronistic data between the reigns in the two kingdoms. Athaliah in Judah and Jehu in Israel began to reign in the same year 884. Joash, Athaliahs successor, became king in the seventh year of Jehu (2Ki 12:2), or, since the latter became king in 884, in 877.Amaziah became king in the second year of Jehoash (2Ki 14:1), or, since Jehoash ascended the throne in 840 or 839, in the year 838.Uzziah became king, according to 2Ki 15:1, in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam II, but this statement rests, as was shown in the comment on that passage, and as is generally admitted, upon an error of the copyist. We must read, according to 2Ki 14:17, in the fifteenth year, but this was not a full year, so that Josephus says: In the fourteenth year of Jeroboam. Since now the latter became king in 823, Uzziah ascended the throne in 809.Jotham became king in the second year of Pekah, 2Ki 15:32, or, as the latter became king in 760, in 759.Ahaz became king in the seventeenth year of Pekah (2Ki 16:1), or, as the latter began to reign in 760, in 743.Hezekiah finally became king in the third year of Hoshea (2Ki 18:1), or, as he ascended the throne in 730, in 727.In Israel, the successor of Jehu, Jehoahaz, began to reign, according to the correct reading in 2Ki 13:1 (see Exeg. note thereon), in the twenty-first year of Joash, king of Judah, or, as he became king in 877, in 856.Joash became king in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoash of Judah (2Ki 13:10), or, as the latter ruled from 877, in 840 or 839.Jeroboam II. became king in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (2Ki 14:23), or, as the latter began to reign in 838, in 823.The accession of the five following kings: Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah is defined (2Ki 15:8; 2Ki 15:13; 2Ki 15:17; 2Ki 15:23; 2Ki 15:27) in terms of the years of Uzziahs reign. Since, however, the year of the accession of this king is less certain than that of almost any other (Bengel and Thenius put it in 811, Usher and Keil in 810, Petavius and Winer in 809, Ewald and Niebuhr in 808), it is uncertain what year was his thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fiftieth and fifty-second. But this does not render the chronology radically uncertain. The year of accession of these kings can be very satisfactorily ascertained from other data (see above, under b). Moreover, the statements in terms of the years of Uzziahs reign are not perfectly accurate, as we see from 2Ki 15:13; 2Ki 15:23. For, if Menahem became king in the thirty-ninth of Uzziah and reigned 10 years, Pekahiah must have followed in the forty-ninth, and not, as 2Ki 17:23 states, in the fiftieth of Uzziah. On the other hand, it is certain that Menahem and Pekahiah together reigned for 12 years, viz., from 722 to 760. The year in which Zachariah began to reign (according to 2Ki 17:8 the thirty-eighth of Uzziah) may, therefore, have been the year 773; but it is also possible, inasmuch as he and Shallum did not both together reign for a year, that all these kings, Zachariah, Shallum, and Menahem, came to the throne in the same year, 772, and therefore, since the synchronistic data and the chronological data do not coincide, that the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth of Uzziah both fell in the year 772.Hoshea, finally, became king in the twelfth year of Ahaz (2Ki 17:1), or, since he became king in 743, and this was the very beginning of his twelfth year, in 730.
d) From this review it follows that the chronological data in no less than fifteen places, however much they may traverse and interlace one another, nevertheless agree, for the difference of a single year which appears here and there is fully accounted for by the peculiarity of the Jewish mode of reckoning, and it cannot be regarded here, any more than in the former period, as a contradiction. [In making this comment on the chronology, Bhr must take it for granted that the reader has fresh in his mind those changes in the text which have been found necessary, and those assumptions which have been made in order to complete the construction of the chronology. With this modification the above may be allowed to pass as a just comment on what has gone before. Otherwise it would convey a very incorrect impression of the reliability of this chronology.W. G. S.]
Now, on the other hand, there remains one datum which is utterly irreconcilable with these which have been considered. According to 2Ki 15:30 Hoshea became king in the twentieth year of Jotham, son of Uzziah. This stands in contradiction to three other statements which are consistent with each other. According to 2Ki 15:33 Jotham did not reign for 20 but only for 16 years, as is also stated in 2Ch 27:1. According to 2Ki 17:1, Hoshea did not become king until the twelfth year of Ahaz the successor of Jotham. According to 2Ki 16:1, Ahaz commenced to reign in the seventeenth year of Pekah, and as Ahaz waged war with Pekah (2Ki 16:5), it is impossible that Pekahs successor, Hoshea, should have begun to reign during the reign of the predecessor of Ahaz, Jotham. All sorts of attempts have been made to solve this flat contradiction (see Winer, R.-W.-B. 1, s. 614). We take notice here only of the two most common ones. The first is to this effect: Jotham was coregent with his father Uzziah for four years, during his sickness (2Ki 15:5). If these four years are added to the sixteen of his reign, he was king for 20 years, and Hoshea became king in his twentieth. This attempt at a solution is disposed of, not to speak of other objections, by the statement in 2Ki 17:1, that Hoshea did not become king until the twelfth year of Jothams successor, Ahaz. The second attempt at a solution, the one which was adopted by Usher, and which has been lately designated by Keil as the only successful one, assumes that, in 2Ki 15:30; 2Ki 15:4 years of the reign of Ahaz are reckoned in the reign of Jotham, because the history of Jothams reign is not narrated until we come to 2Ki 17:32 sq. But the years of the reign of a king cannot possibly be reckoned on after his death, least of all when, as here, his successor followed immediately; moreover, as above stated, Hoshea did not become king in the fourth of Ahaz (or, if so reckoned, the twentieth of Jotham) but in the twelfth of Ahaz. All attempts at a reconciliation are here vain. Hitzig and Thenius have attempted to escape the difficulty by text-conjectures, but these are so complicated that they do not fall, in point of improbability, at all behind the artificial attempts at reconciliation. When we examine the final words of 2Ki 15:30 : In the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah, they strike us as strange and unusual. In other cases we do not find the date of a kings accession given in terms of the corresponding reign in the sister-kingdom until we come to the place where the history of the new reign begins (see the proof-passages quoted above, Pt. II., p. 89). Such is the case here also with reference to Hoshea, 2Ki 17:1. The author, who, in the usual place, viz., where the history of Jothams reign begins, 2Ki 15:33, states the duration of that reign at 16 years, in agreement with 2Ch 27:1, cannot possibly have spoken, a few lines before, in 2Ki 17:30, of the twentieth year of Jotham. If he had, he must have been more forgetful than the most thoughtless copyist. In fact these words are, in this place, not only superfluous, because the statement of the year in which Hoshea became king is given farther on in its proper place (2Ki 17:1), but they are even a cause of confusion. If they should be adopted as correct, it would be necessary to change a whole series of data to correspond with them. All this renders it very probable that the words are a false and late addition, in regard to which the case stands as it does with 2Ki 1:17 (see Pt. II., pp. 878). Another circumstance which goes to prove this is that Jothams father is called, in 2Ki 17:1; 2Ki 17:6-8; 2Ki 17:13; 2Ki 17:17; 2Ki 17:23; 2Ki 17:27, Azariah; here all at once he is called Uzziah. Keil unjustly characterizes the erasure of this clause as violent, for we are compelled to it, since fifteen other passages, all of which are consistent with one another, are in irreconcilable conflict with this one, so that it introduces contradiction and confusion into the entire chronology of the period. The question is simply whether we will correct all the other data to bring them into consistency with this one, or whether we will sacrifice it. If it is not violent to change the number 27, in 2Ki 15:1, into 15, as Keil does, then it is not violent to regard the number 20, in 2Ki 15:30, as incorrect.
e) In this period, as well as in the former one, some have thought it necessary to assume joint-reigns and interregna, that is, times of anarchy in which there was no king. So it is supposed that the two Israelitish kings Jehoahaz and Jehoash reigned together for 2 or 3 years, and the Jewish kings Jotham and Ahaz for 4 years. We have spoken above (Pt. II, p. 88) about the theory of joint-reigns in general, but besides this, the first of these cases is disposed of when we have discovered the correct reading in 2Ki 13:1; 2Ki 13:10 (see Exeg. notes thereon); and the second, when we have removed the false addition 2Ki 15:30, upon which alone it rests. The assumed interregna have much more probability in their favor. Formerly it was often assumed that there was an interregnum of 11 years between Amaziah and Uzziah in Judah, but this is now almost entirely abandoned, and rightly. On the other hand, two others are still assumed in the history of Israel by almost all scholars, the first of 11 years, between Jeroboam 2. and Zachariah; the second of 9 or 10 years, between Pekah and Hoshea, to which reference was made above under b). But the biblical text does not hint at any such interregna, though they must have been of great importance for the history of the kingdom. On the contrary, it always assumes that each king was followed immediately upon his death by his successor. The author makes especial mention of the fact about Edom that there was no king in Edom (1Ki 22:48), and he mentions a king who reigned but 7 days (1Ki 16:15), and another who reigned but a month (2Ki 15:13). Certainly he would not have passed in silence over the fact that Israel, at two different times, for periods of 9 or 11 years, was without a king. It is true, as Keil says, that A period of anarchy in a time of the utmost confusion and distraction would not be anything astonishing, but it certainly would be astonishing that the text should be silent about such an important historical event. There are no historical statements whatsoever in the text which have led to the hypothesis of interregna. This hypothesis is the result solely of the desire to reconcile certain chronological data. We cannot, however, be induced to manufacture history to account for certain discrepancies in figures, discrepancies which can arise so easily from simple errors either of a copyist or of others. Josephus is as silent about any periods in which there were no kings as the Bible is. Ewald calls the hypothesis that there were such periods erroneous in every respect. It contradicts the tenor of the text directly, and produces an utterly incorrect conception of the history. Bunsen also rejects the hypothesis decidedly. Wolff, in the work quoted above (Pt. II., p. 89) says: We must, therefore, have done entirely with this notion of interregna as an escape from difficulties. It invents arbitrarily blank and empty periods and inserts them in the history. When, however, Wolff changes most of the chronological data of the text,when he gives Jehoahaz 14 instead of 17 years, and Jehoash 19 instead of 16, when he makes Amaziah succeed in the fourth instead of the second year of Jehoash, Zachariah in the twenty-sixth instead of in the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, Pekahiah in the thirty-eighth instead of in the fiftieth year of Uzziah, Pekah in the forty-first instead of in the fifty-second of Uzziah, and asserts that the two Israelitish kings Jehoash and Jeroboam II. ruled over Judah, the former for 4 years and the latter for 27 years, that is all as void of foundation and as arbitrary as is the interregnum-hypothesis which he rejects.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
2Ki 17:2. And he did that which was evil * * * but not as the kings of Israel, i.e., not to the same degree as his predecessors. As the formula: He did that which was evil, &c., always refers to the attitude towards Jehovah and the Jehovah-cultus, so the restriction: But not, &c., must be understood as applying to the same, just as in 2Ki 3:2. We are not told wherein Hoshea differed from his predecessors in this respect. It is not at all probable that he desisted from the calf-worship (Thenius). If he had done so he would have broken down the wall of separation between the two kingdoms, and the text would certainly have contained some mention of it. The old commentators for the most part follow the statement of the rabbis in the book, Seder Olam, chap. 22, according to which Hoshea did not replace the golden calf-image at Bethel (Hos 10:6), which had been carried away by the Assyrians, and made no opposition to his subjects accepting Hezekiahs invitation to the passover-festival at Jerusalem (2Ch 30:6-11). But, according to the account in Chronicles, this invitation was laughed at and scorned; only a few accepted it, which shows that Jeroboams cultus was still maintained under Hoshea. Moreover, Hezekiahs passover certainly did not take place before the three-year siege of Samaria, but rather after it. Perhaps Hosheas better behavior was limited to this, that he was an opponent of the idolatry which had found entrance under his immediate predecessors.
2Ki 17:3. Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. This king must have ruled between Tiglath Pileser (2Ki 25:29) and Sennacherib (2Ki 18:13) in Assyria. It has hitherto been believed that Sargon, who is mentioned in Isa 20:1, ruled for a short time between these two, but, through the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions it is placed beyond a doubt that the king of Assyria who is called in the biblical annals Shalmaneser or Shalman [Hos 10:14], really bore the name of Sargana, so that he is identical with Sargon, who was the father and immediate predecessor of Sennacherib (Wolff, in the above quoted work, s. 672. cf. Brandis, Ueber den historischen Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der assyrischen Inschriften, ss. 48 and 53). [Later discoveries show that this statement is incorrect. Sargon and Shalmaneser are different persons, and not even of the same dynasty. See the Supp. Note at the end of this section, in which this whole subject is treated.] Among the countries mentioned in the inscriptions as having been conquered by Sargana is Samirina (Samaria). (See notes on 2Ki 18:13 below.) Hoshea does not seem to have provoked Shalmanesers first expedition against him (2Ki 17:3). It appears to have been an expedition of conquest on the part of the growing and spreading Assyrian power, yet it is also possible that Tiglath Pileser had imposed a tribute upon Pekah which Hoshea refused to continue to pay, and that the expedition was intended to compel him to do so. When he, however, at a later time, again refused the tribute (2Ki 17:4), and had recourse to Egypt for help to resist, the king of Assyria came a second time and took away from him his country and his people. As Shalmaneser waged war with Tyre, but island Tyre resisted him for five years (Josephus; Antiq. 9, 14, 2), Ewald supposes, and very many of the latest authorities follow him, that the people of Samaria joyfully recognized in this a proof that the Assyrians were not invincible, and considered this a favorable opportunity to make an offensive and defensive alliance with Egypt; furthermore, that when Shalmaneser heard of this, he suddenly marched against Hoshea. It is impossible, however, to determine certainly whether the war against Island-Tyre took place before or after the fall of Samaria. Knobel in fact, in his comment on Isa 20:1, assumes that it took place after that event. Thenius unnecessarily desires to change , conspiracy, to , falsehood, deceit. We have to understand by conspiracy nothing more than a secret agreement. The name of the Egyptian king is to be punctuated , Seveh. In Manetho he is called . He is doubtless one of the two kings named Shebek of the twenty-fifth dynasty, belonging to the Ethiopic race (Keil). Hoshea turned to him because Egypt was at that time the only great power which seemed at all able to cope with Assyria. It seems, however, that Seveh did not enter into the alliance, or, if he did, that he did not carry it out when the Assyrian attack was made. On the words: The king of Assyria shut him up, &c., Vatablus remarks: Hoc dicitur per anticipationem; postea narratur, quomodo factum. The final consequences which Hosheas attempted revolt had for his own person are stated forthwith, and then in 2Ki 17:5-6 the particular description of the course of events in regard to the country and the people is given (Thenius). It is not, therefore, correct that Shalmaneser ordered him to appear and give an account of his conduct before the siege of Samaria, and then, when he came in obedience to this command, made him prisoner (Ewald, Schlier). The text does not say this; on the contrary, the words in 2Ki 17:6 and in 2Ki 18:10 : In the ninth year of Hoshea, assume that Hoshea was king when the city was taken. Moreover, it is very improbable that Hoshea, who had sought for, and was expecting, aid from Egypt, would have forthwith obeyed the summons of the king of Assyria, from which he could not anticipate any pleasant consequences, and that, after the king of Samaria had been made captive, that city should have resisted for three years. On the contrary, the captive king was taken in chains to Assyria after the city had been taken, and there he was put in prison, while his people were led into exile in distant regions. Plate 100 in Bottas Monum. de Ninev. represents a king standing upon a war chariot, before whom a chained captive with apparently. Hebrew features is being led. Plate 106 represents two figures with the same cast of countenance and appropriate costume, one of whom is presenting the model of a fortified city (Thenius). is used here as in Jer 33:1; Jer 36:5The three years of the siege were not thirty-six months, for, according to 2Ki 18:9 sq. it began in the seventh of Hoshea, and the city was taken in his ninth. Accordingly it can hardly have lasted for two years and a half. [The later discoveries have so changed the face of our knowledge of all this contemporaneous history that the above must all be modified by what is stated in the Supp. Note below.]
2Ki 17:6. And carried Israel away into Assyria, i.e., into the kingdom of Assyria, which then included Mesopotamia, Media, Elam, and Babylon (Winer, R.-W.-B. I. s. 102). It is, therefore, a general designation of place which is followed by the names of the particular localities in this kingdom. The two first names, in Halah and on the Habor, belong together, as well as the two latter, On the river Gozan and in the cities of Media, as is evident from 1Ch 5:26 : And brought them unto Halah, and [to the] Habor, and [to] Hara [i.e., Media] and to the river Gozan. This verse also shows that is not, as has often been supposed, in apposition to : To the Habor, the river of Gozan, so that Habor would be the name of this river. There is nothing else with which the name Halah can be identified but the district in the north of Assyria bordering upon Armenia, which Strabo (2Ki 11:8; 2Ki 11:4 and 2Ki 16:1; 2Ki 16:1) calls , and Ptolemy (2Ki 6:1) . [Lenormant takes it to mean Calah, the capital of Assyria at this time.] Habor is not (Eze 1:1; Eze 1:3) in upper Mesopotamia, the large river which flows into the Euphrates, but, because the name Halah precedes, it must be the smaller river of this name which flows westward and empties into the Tigris to the north of Nineveh (Ewald). Here, in northern Assyria, there is a river, which is called Khabur Chasani to distinguish it from the river Chaboras or Chebar in Mesopotamia. It still bears its ancient name (Keil). The Jewish tradition also favors this. This designates northern Assyria, and, in fact, the mountainous region, the district on the border between Assyria and Media, on the side towards Armenia, as the place of exile of the ten tribes (cf. Wickelhaus; Das Exil der zehn Stmme Israels, in the Deutsch-morgenlnd. Zeitschrift; V. s. 474). The river Gozan is the Kisel-osen, which rises in the northern part of the Zagros range and flows into the Caspian Sea (Frst, Dictionary s. v.). It refers, therefore, not to the district of Mesopotamia which Ptolemy calls (2Ki 5:18) , but to the city of Media which he mentions (2Ki 6:2) as . This we see also from the passage in Chronicles quoted above, where the river Gozan is mentioned after Harah, Media. If this river, which bounds Media, is the one meant, we can understand why the and is, in this connection, omitted before it. The two first names and the two latter names then belong more closely in pairs (Ewald). Thenius desires to change into , and into , because the Sept. here read: E , so that Halah also would have to be taken as the name of a river, that is, of the one anciently called Mygdonius and afterwards Saokaras. But the Sept. have, in the similar verse, 2Ki 18:11, the singular . The plural is, therefore, evidently a mistake. This disposes of the rash supposition that Halah is the Saokaras. The proposed reading is, to say the least, unnecessary.
2Ki 17:7. And it came to pass when the children of Israel, &c. The frequently recurring means always: And it came to pass when (Gen 6:1; Gen 26:8; Gen 27:1; Exo 1:21; Jdg 6:7, &c.). It is not correct, therefore, to translate as Bunsen, De Wette, and others do: And it came to pass, because. 2Ki 17:7 does not carry on the narrative as it is taken from the original authorities, but the writer himself here begins a review of the history and fate of Israel, which ends with 2Ki 17:23 and forms an independent section by itself. The conclusion to the opening sentence: And it came to pass, when, &c. follows in 2Ki 17:18 : That then the Lord was very angry. 2Ki 17:8-15 contain merely a development of what is said in 2Ki 17:7, inasmuch as they go on to specify how, and by what means, the children of Israel sinned, viz., partly by apostatizing from Jehovah and falling into idolatry (Exo 20:2-3), and partly by making for themselves molten calf-images to represent Jehovah (Exo 20:4). It is shown in the verses from 18 to 23 that these transgressions brought down judgments upon them, and what was the character of these judgmentsThe words in 2Ki 17:7 : Which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt * * * king of Egypt must not be taken as a parenthesis, as Luther takes them. They do not contain a mere incidental remark; rather the entire emphasis rests upon them, as is evident from Hos 12:10; Hos 13:4-6. The deliverance from Egypt was really the selection of Israel to be Gods peculiar and covenant people (Exo 19:4-6). It was not only the beginning, but also the symbol, of all divine grace towards Israel, the pledge of its divine guidance. It therefore stands at the head of the covenant, or organic law (Exo 20:2; Deu 5:6), and it is always cited as the chief and fundamental act of the divine favor (Lev 11:45; Jos 24:17; 1Ki 8:51; Psa 81:10; Jer 2:6, &c.). Therefore this author also makes that the standpoint for his review and criticism of the history. He means to say, thereby: although no people on earth had experienced such favor from Almighty God as Israel had, nevertheless it abandoned this God and adored other gods. 2Ki 17:8-12 state the manner in which this latter fault was committed. The worship of idols was the worship practised by the very people whom God expelled before the Israelites, and whose utter destruction he commanded, that is to say, of the nations of Western Asia (2Ki 17:8, cf. Deu 11:23; 1Ki 14:24; 1Ki 21:26; 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 21:2). But the Israelites erected places of worship all over the country, after the fashion of the heathen, instead of worshipping the one true God in the one central sanctuary (2Ki 17:9-11). They also followed the example of the heathen in setting up idol images which they worshipped (2Ki 17:12), 2Ki 17:8, means religious ordinances (see notes on 1Ki 2:3; 1Ki 3:3). Instead of holding faithfully to the ordinances which Jehovah had given, the kings of Israel gave to the people ordinances made by themselves, which were obeyed and observed by them. The result is given in 2Ki 17:9. The words are translated by Keil, who follows Hengstenberg: They covered Jehovah, their God, over with words which were not right, i.e., they sought, by arbitrary distortions of Gods word, to conceal the true character of Jehovah. It is clear however, from in 2Ki 17:11, and, still more certainly, from , 2Ki 17:12, where it cannot possibly be understood otherwise than as thing; that that is its sense here, and not word. The fundamental Signification of or is to cover, cloak over, envelop (2Sa 15:30; Est 6:12; 2Ch 3:5; 2Ch 3:7; 2Ch 3:9). The literal rendering of these words would therefore be: They covered Jehovah with things which were not right (2Ki 7:9), i.e., They concealed him by them, so that he could no longer be seen and recognized, which is as much as to say that they practically denied and ignored him. Compare the formula to reconcile any one with Jehovah; primarily, to cover up his sins before Jehovah. The things by means of which, or with which, they denied Jehovah are mentioned forthwith, so that Luther correctly represents the sense when he puts nmlich before the following words. The translation of the Sept. is entirely incorrect: . Thenius follows this, and explains thus: They dressed up, decorated, and adorned things which were not right, against Jehovah; i.e., they made a parade of things which were not right against Him, and he calls attention, in this connection, to the parade and pomp of the external forms of idolatry. It is equally incorrect to render the words as the Vulg. does: et offenderunt verbis non rectis dominum suum; or, as Gesenius does: perfide egerunt res in Jehovam; or, as De Wette does: They wrought secretly things which were not right, against Jehovah. With words of covering is never against, but always over, or upon (Exo 37:9; Exo 40:3; Eze 24:7)[ The uncertainty attaching to the interpretation of these words is apparent from these diverse renderings of the various expositors. Bhrs interpretation, which is closely akin to that of Keil and Hengstenberg, is fanciful and far-fetched. The idea of men covering God, that is, obscuring the sense of His presence, and of their responsibility to Him, by their sins, and thus practically denying Him, is, in a religious sense, most true and just; but it is very foreign to the simplicity of the conceptions which we find in the Old Testament, especially in the historical books. The meaning of is, to cover a material over an object, or, in the English idiom, to cover an object with a material. If the notion be not pushed farther than this, that they had put their evil lusts and deeds between themselves and God, and preferred these to Him, it offers a meaning which is satisfactory, and which agrees well with the latter half of the verse. I have, however, allowed the E. V., which agrees substantially with the rendering of Gesenius and De Wette, to remain unalteredW. G. S.]
2Ki 17:9. From the tower of the watchmen, &c, i, e., from the lonely buildings erected as a protection for the flocks (2Ch 26:10) to the largest and most strongly fortified citiesOn 2Ki 17:10 see 2Ki 16:4. On see notes on 2Ki 3:2. On see note on 1Ki 14:15. On the meaning of see 1Ki 14:1-20; Hist. 3.In ver 12, the emphasis is on , which contains a subordinate contemptuous and abusive signification (see note on 1Ki 15:12). Israel sank so low that it worshipped lifeless idols, which it ought to have treated with contempt, and whose worship it ought to have disdained.
2Ki 17:13. The author now goes on in his review to the consideration of that which Jehovah had done in his faithfulness and truth, in contrast to the apostasy of the people, which has just been described. These dealings of God with His people had remained fruitless, or had produced exactly contrary results from those which were desired (2Ki 17:13-17). Not only in Israel, of which kingdom he has hitherto been speaking especially, but also in Judah, which, according to 2Ki 17:19, had behaved in a similar manner, had Jehovah borne witness to himself, not only by the law and testimony which had been given, but also by his prophets and seers. Quacunque ratione vel forma illis cernendam proponebat voluntatem suam (Piscator). The form of speech in 2Ki 17:14, to harden ones neck, i.e., to be stiff-necked or obstinate, is borrowed from Deu 10:16. Cf. Exo 32:9. To disobedience and obstinacy (2Ki 17:14) they added formal rejection and contempt of the commands and of the testimonies of Jehovah (2Ki 17:15), and then followed complete decline into heathenism. This last is described by the words: They followed vanity and became vain. The same form of speech is used in Jer 2:5, and St. Paul makes use, in reference to the heathen, in Rom 1:21, of the same expression which the Sept. here use to render this: . Heathenism deals with nothingness, vanity, that is, with what has no existence, so that it is folly and falsehood (Deu 32:21). As a proof that they have fallen into heathenism, that is, have become vain, a series of facts is detailed in 2Ki 17:16-17, from which this appears clearly. In the first place they made calf-images, then Ascher, then they adored the host of heaven (the stars or constellations), and finally they caused their children even to go through the fire (see note on 2Ki 16:3), and devoted themselves to soothsaying and augury. Besides all this, they sold themselves, that is, they surrendered themselves into complete slavery to idolatrous practices (Thenius). All the host of heaven is here mentioned between the worship of the Ascher and that of Moloch; that is, by the side of the Moon-goddess and the Sun-god, cf. Deu 17:3; Deu 4:19. Perhaps the planets are to be especially understood by it. As the author has here only that period in view which fell before the Assyrian influence commenced, we cannot understand him to refer to the Assyrio-Chaldean worship of the constellations, which is not met with among the Hebrews before the time of Manasseh (2Ki 21:3; 2Ki 23:5; 2Ki 23:11), but only to that which was common in Western Asia, such as we find especially among the Arabs (Winer, R.-W.-B., II. s. 528). Soothsaying and augury are mentioned with the same expressions in Num 23:23 and in Deu 18:10, by the side of the worship of Moloch. They seem to have been especially connected with this worship (Winer, l. c., s. 672).
[As has been abundantly shown in the translators notes on the two last chapters (see especially note on 2Ki 16:3), the Assyrian religion became known to the Israelites in the time of Ahaz and Pekah. The subdivisions of the deity (if they may be so called), which these heathen believed in, have been described in that note. But, by the side of each such subordinate or local god, we find a goddess, as the passive principle by the side of the active. These couplets had different names in different places (Bel and Belit at Babylon; Shed and Shedath among the Hittites (, Gen 17:1; Job 5:17; Rth 1:20, &c.); Hadad and Atargath at Damascus). The couplet which the Israelites adopted, Baal and Ashtaroth, is that of Sidon, showing whence this religious idea came to them. On the Baal-worship and the rites of Moloch see note on 2Ki 16:3. The astral idea in this heathen religion does not seem to have attracted the attention of the Israelites before the time of Pekah and Ahaz, although Ashtaroth always had a distinctly sidereal character among the Phnicians. The whole religious conception which has been above described, and which prevailed in Western Asia, was carried out by the Chaldeans and Assyrians into an astral system of deities. When the hierarchy of divinities, or deified emanations and attributes, with their corresponding masculine and feminine forms, had been elaborated, they were identified with the luminaries visible in the heavens. The sun, moon, planets, constellations, and stars formed a corresponding hierarchy whose members were identified. Eight cabirim or planets were reckoned; one was supposed to be invisible because it was nearer to the ultimate and original source, the ALL. It is not difficult to perceive the step by which they passed from this to astrology, divination, and sorcery. If the heavenly bodies are gods, or represent gods, and if they are seen to be in motion, then it is natural to suppose that those motions correspond with and cause the mutations of earthly events and fortune. Since the time of Ahaz and Pekah these religious notions had been introduced into Israel and Judah and accepted there. It is to them that the text refers.W. G. S.]
2Ki 17:18. That then the Lord was very angry, &c. Here begins the real conclusion to 2Ki 17:7 [see the amended translation]. As we had, in 2Ki 17:8-17, the more complete development of 2Ki 17:7, so we have here, in 2Ki 17:19-23, that of 2Ki 17:18 Out of his sight, i.e. out of the Holy Land where Jehovah has His dwelling; out of the land of the covenant and the land of revelation. Cf. Eze 11:15 sq. On the tribe of Judah only, see 1Ki 11:13; 1Ki 11:31; 1Ki 11:36 (Exeg. notes).In 2Ki 17:19 the old expositors thought they saw the statement of a still farther reason for the rejection of Israel by God, which consisted in this, that it had, by its apostasy, tainted Judah also (Hos 4:15), but the context shows that this notion is false. The verse is rather a parenthesis, as the Berleberg. Bibel observes. It contains an incidental remark which is brought out by the only in 2Ki 17:18. It means to say that in truth Judah was also ripe for punishment (Thenius). 2Ki 17:20 follows directly upon 2Ki 17:18 in the connection of thought. We must understand by all the seed of Israel, not the entire people. Israel and Judah (Keil), but only the ten tribes; for the rejection of Judah had not yet occurred. The inhabitants of certain districts had been taken into exile, during the reign of Pekah (2Ki 15:29). The inhabitants of the entire country were now, under Hoshea, taken away. Before that Jehovah had given them, for their chastisement and warning, into the hands of plunderers or spoilers; first into the hands of the Syrians (2Ki 10:32; 2Ki 13:3), and then into those of the Assyrians (2Ki 15:19; 2Ki 15:29) in 2Ki 17:21, connects back, not only with 2Ki 17:18, but also with what has been said in 2Ki 17:18-20. Grotius says justly in regard to 2Ki 17:21 : ad ostendendam malorum originem. Jeroboams calf-worship, which led to pure idolatry, was a consequence of the revolt from the house of David and the separation from Judah, so that these were the cause of all the misfortune. The Vulg. therefore renders, according to the sense: Ex eo jam tempore quo scissus est Israel a domo David. It cannot be correct to take Jehovah as the subject of , as the old expositors did, and as Keil still does. This is a deduction from 1Ki 11:11; 1Ki 11:31, but the final cause of the apostasy and rejection of Israel is here given, and that cannot lie in Jehovah himself. The separation from the House of David took place indeed according to Gods decree; but it was only intended to serve as a humiliation to the House of David, and was not to last forever (1Ki 11:39). It took for granted, moreover, that Jeroboam would remain faithful to the covenant and to the Law of Jehovah (1Ki 11:38). But Jeroboam broke with these in order to make the separation permanent. The separation thereby became the germ of all calamity for Israel. The natural subject of is (see 1Ki 12:16), and it is not necessary to read, as Thenius does, , i.e. Israel had torn itself away; nor to supply, as De Wette does, : Israel had torn away the royal authority from the House of David, for it is not the monarchy as such which is here in question, but the separation between Israel and Judah, that is, the disruption of the theocratic relation. The words mean simply: secessionem fecerant (Clericus).
2Ki 17:22 is not a mere repetition of 2Ki 17:21, but it means: Israel not only fell into this sin of Jeroboam, but it persevered in it in spite of all the divine warnings and chastisements
2Ki 17:23. As he had said by all His servants the prophets. Cf., for instance, Hos 1:6; Hos 9:16; Amo 3:11-12; Amo 5:27 : Isa 28:3. Unto this day, i.e. until the time at which the author was writing, which does not mean to affirm that the exile did not last any longer.
2Ki 17:24. And the king of Assyria brought. This king the old expositors supposed to be Esar-haddon (2Ki 19:37), because (Ezr 4:2) the Samaritans who desired to take part in the erection of the second temple, say to Zerubbabel: We do sacrifice unto him [your God] since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assur, which brought us up hither. Keil still maintains this, because he thinks that 2Ki 17:25 shows that considerable time must have elapsed between the leading of the Israelites into exile and the introduction of new colonists into the depopulated country. But this does not by any means follow from the words: It came to pass at the beginning of their dwelling there. The context forbids us to think of any other king, than the one above mentioned, Shalmaneser. Esarhaddon was not even his immediate successor, for [Sargon and] Sennacherib intervened. He did not come to the throne until 695 [681] B.C., that is, twenty-six years after the Israelites were led into exile by Shalmaneser in 721. Nothing is more improbable than that the latter should have left the country destitute of population, and that this state of things should have lasted for twenty-six years. The colonists who speak in Ezr 4:2 are [descendants of] later ones, whom Esarhaddon may have sent, for some reason unknown to us, to join those already there. Why does not the author mention by name the king who is spoken of in 2Ki 19:37, if that is the one he here meant? [This point also is treated in the Note below, at the end of Exeg. section.] Babel is here not the city, but the province, as in Psa 137:1. The position of Cuthah is entirely uncertain. Josephus says: , . According to Gesenius and Rosenmller, Babylonian Irak must be thought of as lying somewhere in the region of Nahar Malka. Clericus considers the Cuthans as identical with the Kossans, in Susiana, in the northeast of what is now Khurdistan, and this opinion is the best founded (cf. Winer, if. R.-W.-B. I. s. 237). As the Samaritans are called by the rabbis simply , it seems probable that the Cuthans composed the main body of the colonists. [Cuthah was close to Babylon,a suburb of it. See the Supp. Note below.] The location of the city or district Ava is also uncertain. It has been sought in Persia, in Syria, and in Mesopotamia. Perhaps it is to be identified with the Ivah which is mentioned in 2Ki 18:34; 2Ki 19:13; Isa 37:13. [Ivah, however, is unknown. In 2Ki 17:31 it is said that the Avites made Nibhaz, a Chaldean god. Hence this place was unquestionably in Chaldea, near the others except Hamath. Whoever caused this migration had just conquered Chaldea, see the Supplementary Note below.] Hamath (1Ki 8:65; 2Ki 14:25), in the north of Palestine, on the Orontes, had then already fallen under Assyrian dominion. Sepharvaim is generally believed to be the mentioned by Ptolemy (2Ki 5:18; 2Ki 5:7), the southernmost city of Mesopotamia, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. However, as it is mentioned in Isa 36:19, together with Hamath and Arpad, Syrian localities, we might be rather led, with Vitringa and Ewald, to the supposition that it was a Syrian city. [It is undoubtedly Sippara, called by the Greeks Heliopolis. (Its divinity was Shamash, the sun, ). The Chaldean legend of the flood says that Xisuthrus, warned by the gods of the approach of the flood, buried at Sippara tables on which were written an account of the origin of the world and of the ordinances of religion. His children dug them up after the flood, and they became authorities for the Chaldean religion (Lenormant). The primitive Chaldeans were Turanians; but if the word has a Semitic etymology it would seem to mean the Scripture-city ().W. G. S.] (On these different names, see Winer, R.-W.-B. s. v., [and the Dictionaries of the Bible]. This is the first time that is used of the entire kingdom. It is incorrect to infer, as Hengstenberg does, from the words: Instead of the children of Israel, that all the inhabitants, to the last man, were taken into exile, for, see 2Ch 34:9. [Samaria was now reduced from the tributary to the provincial position, as Damascus had been twelve years before.]
2Ki 17:25. And it came to pass at the beginning of their dwelling there, &c. The land became desolate in consequence of the exile of its inhabitants, especially as some time, no doubt, elapsed before the new colonists arrived and brought the land once more under cultivation. It is also probable that their number was not nearly as great as that of the exiles. So it came to pass that the lions, which had been in the country in small numbers before the exile, multiplied to such a degree as to be dangerous to the new inhabitants. Under the circumstances this was not purely a natural incident, but a divine dispensation. The author so considers it, having in mind Lev 26:22 (Exo 23:29; Deu 32:24; cf. Eze 14:15). The colonists saw in this an interposition of the god of the country, because they had not worshipped him. In order to escape from the plague they sent a request (2Ki 17:26) to the king who had located them in this country, that he would send some one to them who could teach them how to worship the local deity, so that he might release them from the calamity. [See, on the heathen conception of local deities, Pt. II. p. 57.] With a genuine heathen judgment they considered the external worship a means of appeasing the god of whom they knew nothing. The priest who was sent to them was, as 2Ki 17:27 expressly states, one of the exilesthat is to say, one of the priests of Jeroboams calf-worship. He took up his residence at Bethel, the chief seat of the calf-worship (1Ki 12:29), although the Assyrians had carried away the golden calf (Hos 10:5). Perhaps they erected there new images, not molten images, but less artistic and less expensive ones. The sending of this priest seems to be so particularly narrated, because it shows how it came that the country did not become entirely heathen.
2Ki 17:29. Every nation made gods of their own. The new inhabitants, who had been brought from very different countries, set up, in the houses on the high places, which the Samaritans had prepared as places of worship (see Exeg. on 1Ki 3:2-3), the images of their gods. Selden (De Diis Syr. ii. 7) understands in the literal meaning of the words: Daughter=huts, and most of the expositors since his time have followed him in this interpretation. It is then understood to refer to the huts or tents in which the young women prostituted themselves in honor of Mylitta, i.e. Venus, a custom which Herodotus speaks of, i. 199. However, this is clearly against the context, for, whereas 2Ki 17:29 treats of the places of worship, 2Ki 17:30 gives the names of the gods whose images were set up in them. Succoth-Benoth is the first-mentioned amongst these. It is not, therefore, an appellative any more than the following names: Nergal, Asima, Nibhaz, and Tartak. The old versions all give it as a proper name. The Sept. have or They therefore understood by it a female divinity. (Amo 5:26) was the name of a female divinity, and appears only to contain a modification of it. Neither word is to be referred to a Hebrew etymology (Frst). We must not, therefore, understand it as referring to little temples or shrines which were worshipped, together with the image which they contained (Gesenius), but to the image of a particular divinity of which we know nothing further. The rabbis assert that it was a hen with her chickens, representing the constellation of the Clucking Hen [the Pleiades]. This is possible, but no further proofs of it can be produced. Movers interpretation of it, as female genitals, is entirely without foundation. The passage 2Ki 23:7, which is often referred to for the above-mentioned ordinary interpretation, has no pertinency here.
[For an exhaustive summary of the different interpretations of these words heretofore offered, see Herzogs Encyc. XV. s. 253. The Babylonian goddess Bilit or Mylitta (see note on 2Ki 17:17) took two forms, just as Venus did in the classical mythology. The one, Taauth, was austere, the other, Nana or Zarpanit, was voluptuous. She had a temple at Babylon, where every woman was forced, once in her life-time, to surrender to a stranger as an act of worship to the goddess. At Cutha she was worshipped as Succoth-benoth, a name referring to these prostitutions. In the astral system she is Ishtar. In her austere form she is sanguinary and is the Goddess of Battlesthe Queen of Victories; in her voluptuous form she presides over reproduction. Moreover two Ishtars are distinguished, each of which presides over two weeks of the month (hence called the Goddess fifteen). This accounts for the Phoenician plural form Ashtaroth. (Lenormant.)]
The names Nergal, Asima, Nibhaz, and Tartak have hitherto been explained very diversely upon etymological grounds, some of which are fictitious, and all of which are very uncertain. (See Gesenius Thesaurus; Winers R.-W.-B. s. v.) We therefore pass over these attempts at explanation. The rabbis ascribe to Nergal (probably Mars) the form of a cock, which certainly does occur frequently on the old Assyrian monuments; to Asima, the form of a goat; to Nibhaz, that of a dog; to Tartak, that of an ass. But these statements also rest upon very uncertain etymologies. The case is not much better with the names Adrammelech and Anammelech. We can only infer from the child-sacrifices which were offered to these idols so much as this, that they were akin to Moloch (Keil). The interpretations of Movers and Hitzig are very uncertain and doubtful.
[In an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, now in the British Museum, is read: I consecrated the portico of the god Nergal and of the god Nibhaz, the gods of the temple Valpitlam at Cutha. (See note on 2Ki 17:24) The special god of this town was Nergal, and we learn from some mythological details given in the tablets of the library of Asshurbanipal, that he was worshipped there under the form of a lion (Lenormant. I., 485.) His image is rare. He stands on the legs of a cock and has a sword in his hand. His epithets are: the Great Hero, the King of Eight, the Master of Battles, Champion of the Gods Hence he is identified with Mars.Adrammelech=Adar-Malik, i.e. Adar the king. Adar (fire) was also called Samdan (the powerful). He was the Assyrian Hercules. Anammelech=Anu-Malik, i. e. Anu, or Oannes, the king. Oannes, the Lord of the Lower World, the Lord of Darkness, was represented on the monuments under the strange figure of a man with an eagles tail, and for his head-dress an enormous fish, whose open mouth rises above his head, while the body covers his shoulders (Lenormant.)]
According to 2Ki 17:32, the worship of heathen gods and the worship of Jehovah, under the form of the calf, existed side by side. In regard to the priests from the mass of the people see note on 1Ki 12:31.
2Ki 17:33 repeats and brings together the contents of 2Ki 17:28-32.
2Ki 17:34. Unto this day they do after the former manners. Even at the time at which the author was writing they still followed the way of the first colonists, that is, those which are described in 2Ki 17:28-33. Some did not worship Jehovah, but served idols (2Ki 17:25; 2Ki 17:29); these were the heathen who had immigrated, who had brought their national divinities with them and still worshipped them; the others worshipped Jehovah indeed (2Ki 17:28-32), but not according to the ordinances which had been given them by Him; these were those of the Israelites who remained, and those who adopted the worship taught by the priests of Jeroboams calf-worship, who were sent back for the purpose (2Ki 17:27). The words in 2Ki 17:34 : After their statutes or after their ordinances, do not, therefore, stand in contrast with those which immediately follow, as Keil thinks, that is, with the words: After the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, so that the meaning would be: Until this day the Samaritans have retained their peculiar worship, which consists of idolatry and the worship of Jehovah through the calf-image, and do not worship according to the manner of the ten tribes, nor according to the Mosaic law. The before cannot have any other meaning than that which it has before the preceding and the following words. It does not, therefore, mean still, but and in the sense of namely, in which sense it so often occurs. The words form an epexegesis to , as Thenius justly remarks cf. 1Ki 2:3)The sentence: Whom he named Israel has the same sense here as in 1Ki 18:31In reference to those who at the time of the author still persisted in illegal worship, or even in idolatry, he points expressly, in order to show the heinousness of their offence, in 2Ki 17:35-39, to what Jehovah had done amongst His people and for them, and how earnestly he had warned them against any breach of the covenantOn 2Ki 17:36 see note above on 2Ki 17:7. The breach of the covenant was the more base inasmuch as the Lord had miraculously removed all the hindrances, even the greatest ones, and had held faithful to His people. In 2Ki 17:37 particular stress is laid upon the fact that the Law was written, and not merely spoken. The existence of the written law is, therefore, assumed as undoubtedAnd they did not hearken (2Ki 17:40); i.e. Those descendants of the ones to whom this warning and exhortation had been addressed, who had remained in the land (Thenius). Their former manner, i. e. the worship introduced by Jeroboam. 2Ki 17:41 brings the authors review of the history to a close with a reference to the posterity of the apostates who had, not desisted from the sins of their fathers. [There is great obscurity in the verses 3341, probably because the writer has in mind different classes of the Samaritan population whom he does not distinguish or define. Thus the subject changes in 2Ki 17:33-34 without being specified in such a manner as the laws of grammar require. If we paragraph as is done in the amended translation, and identify the subjects as is there suggested, we reach a clear meaning.The new population of the northern kingdom might be classified thus: (a) Sincere worshippers of Jehovah in the old theocratic sense. These were very few, if indeed there were any. (b) Worshippers of Jehovah under the form of the calf, i.e., adherents of the old worship of the northern tribes, (c) Israelites who adhered to the calf-worship, but had adopted also the idolatry of the heathen colonists, (d) Heathen colonists who had adopted the calf-worship.Thus there were very few, possibly none, whom this theocratic author could approve. The third and fourth were the largest classes, and are the ones referred to in the text. Those under (c) feared not the Lord, i.e. in the religious sense. They knew him and should have been his servants, but were not, while they apostatized to idolatry. Those under (d) feared the Lord, not in the religious sense,they never had been taught to fear God in that sense,but they were afraid of Him, and paid Him deference, but served, i.e., gave their faith and worship to their heathen divinitiesW. G. S.]
[Supplementary Note on the references to contemporaneous history in chap. 17. (See similar notes after chaps. 2Ki 15:16.) The great king Tiglath Pileser died in 727. In the same year Ahaz died and was succeeded by Hezekiah on the throne of Judah. Shalmaneser (IV. Rawlinson; VI. Lenormant), the next king of Assyria, seems to have been a less able ruler. We have no records of him save some bronze weights in the British Museum. The dates, however, are furnished by the canon. Hosheas revolt against Pekah, as we saw at the end of the note on chap. 15, was a success for the policy of submission to Assyria. However, this entire history is nothing but a series of revolts against Assyria, and Hoshea, in his turn, soon renewed the attempt. In 725 the Ethiopians, who had for some time held dominion over Upper Egypt, invaded Lower Egypt under a king named Shebek (Sabacon, Shabaka). This name is really Shaba or Shava, with the Cushite article ka appended. It is therefore written in Hebrew . The Massoretes punctuated this . (See note on 2Ki 17:4 above.) This king succeeded in overrunning all of Egypt, and conquering it, although the native dynasty preserved its succession, being confined to the western half of the delta in the marshes (Herod. II. 137). The appearance of this great conqueror on the scene infused hope into the small nations of Western Asia that they might be able at least to change masters; that this new Egyptian power might form a counterpoise to the Assyrian; and that his rule might be found milder. Hoshea was seduced by this hope. He plotted a revolt, but Shalmaneser hastened to crush the attempt before union with Shebek might make it formidable. He captured Hoshea, conquered the province of Samaria, and in December, 724, laid siege to the capital by investment. In 722 he died. He left a son who was a minor. The Tartan or general-in-chief, Sargon, a member of the royal family, seized the throne in spite of some opposition. An eclipse of March 19, 721, was influential in some way at this crisis. For three years he was nominally regent for the young prince (Samdan-Malik=Samdan [Hercules] is King). From 718 on he reigned alone. He was a great conqueror, one of the most famous of the kings of Assyria. He regained all the territory which had been lost and extended the empire beyond any limits which it had ever attained The long inscriptions found by M. Botta in the palace of Khor-sabad make us even better acquainted with the details of his reign than with those of more than one of the Roman emperors. A long inscription, called commonly the Acts of Sargon, details the events of fifteen campaigns. The following are the contents, so far as they are interesting to us in the present connection:
I besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and caried into captivity 27,280 of its inhabitants. I changed the former government of the country, and placed over it lieutenants of my own Thus he counts the capture of Samaria among his own achievements. In place of the inhabitants whom he forced to emigrate, he introduced colonies from Elam which he had just conquered.
and Sebeh, Sultan [so Lenormant translates a rare title which is said to mean suzerain, referring probably to Shebeks position as a recent conqueror and not regular king] of Egypt, came to Raphia to fight against me; they met me and I routed them. Sebeh fled.
Pursuing the record in order to find traces of the recolonization of Samaria, we notice the following:
From 720 to 715 the Assyrians were occupied in an unsuccessful siege of Tyre. Yaubid of Hamath. persuaded Damascus and Samaria to revolt against me, and prepared for battle. I killed the chiefs of the rebels in each city and destroyed the cities. [This revolt of Samaria, after its reduction to a province, is not mentioned in the Bible. It may have been after this conquest of Hamath that some of the inhabitants of that country were colonized in Samaria.]
The inhabitants of Papha in Pisidia were transported to Damascus.
In 710 he marched against Ashdod, which had revolted (Isa 20:1).
In 709, according to the canon of Ptolemy, Sargon defeated Merodach Baladan at the battle of Dur Yakin. By this victory he resubjugated Chaldea, which had been independent since 747. The prisoners taken in Chaldea were colonized in Samaria. In August, 704, Sargon was assassinated.
He was succeeded by Sennacherib, whose glory rivalled that of his predecessor. In regard to him see the Note after the Exeg. section on the next chapter. In 681 he was assassinated by his two sons.
Another son, Esarhaddon, succeeded him, and reigned from 681 to 667. On him also see below. We are only concerned here with one statement in his annals.At the close of his first campaign, which was in Phnicia, he says: I settled the inhabitants of Syria and the sea shore in strange lands. I built in Syria a fortress, called Dur–asshur–akhiddin, and there established men whom my bow had subdued in the mountains, and towards the sea of the rising sun (Caspian) [Whether Syria here includes Samaria is indeed doubtful, but it is probable that, as the policy of transportation was practised more and more, it became more thorough and comprehensive. Probably this was a large migration, since the name of a country is given for the new seat of the colonists instead of the names of cities. Hence the memory of this migration was perpetuated while the lesser migrations under Sargon were forgotten. It is not at all likely that the different migrations remained distinct from one another, and remembered each the time and occasion of its own migration. The second temple was finished in 516 (Ewald), so that from the time of Esarhaddon to the time of the speakers in Ezr 4:2 there must have been 160 years. This is sufficient to account for the fact that they ascribe their origin to Esarhaddon.] In this account we have followed Lenormants Manual very closely.W. G. S.]
HISTORICAL AND ETHICAL
1. Only so much is narrated in regard to the nine years reign of Hoshea as pertains to this fact, that he was the last king of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Hosheas chief aim was to become independent of Assyria. He saw what a mistake Menahem had made when he called Pul into the country, and what had been the sad consequences to Pekah, who had subjected himself to Tiglath Pileser (Schlier). [See the last paragraph of the Supplementary Note on chap. 15.] He therefore refused the tribute which had been imposed, turned to Egypt for help, and defended himself for three years bravely and perseveringly against the Assyrian power. From this it is evident that he was not a weak ruler, but that he had a strong will and was an able general. But the despairing resistance was useless, the measure was full, the days of the northern kingdom were numbered, and the long threatened ruin drew on unchecked. The criticism upon Hosheas reign, and his conduct in general, which is given in 2Ki 17:2, is often understood as if it asserted that he was the best of all the kings of the northern kingdom. Ewald says: It seems like a harsh jest of fate that this Hoshea, who was to be the last king, was better than all his predecessors. The words of the noble prophets who, during the last fifty years, had spoken so many and such grand oracles in regard to this kingdom, had perhaps had more influence upon him. But as these prophets had always foretold the destruction of the kingdom as certain, so the irresistible power which works in history was now to show that an individual, though a king, better than all his predecessors, is too weak to arrest the ruin of the commonwealth when the time for reformation is past The Calwer Bibel also says of Hoshea: When he was at length seated upon the throne he showed himself personally better than all his predecessors, and nevertheless it was in his reign that the destruction was consummated. Schlier also supposes that Hoshea, in the conflict, through which it is assumed that he won the throne, turned to the Lord more sincerely than his predecessors. There is not a word of all that, however, in the text. The words in 2Ki 17:2 do not say that he was better than all his predecessors, but only that he was not as bad as the kings before him (). This can only be understood, however, as applying to his immediate predecessors (Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah), for the word all is not in the text. [It is arbitrary and untenable to restrict the application of the words to these kings. The all is not in the text, but it is a fact that the author introduces a modification here into the standing formula which goes farther towards lessening the sweeping condemnation than any which is introduced at the mention of any other king of the northern kingdom. Jehoram is said to have been bad, but not as bad as Ahab and Jezebel (2Ki 3:2). In the other cases the condemnation is utter and complete. The modification introduced in reference to Hoshea, slight as it is, is, therefore, by comparison, very weighty.W. G. S.] The statement does not apply to his personal and moral character, but to his attitude as king towards the national religion. He made his way to the throne by conspiracy and murder (2Ki 15:30), as several of his predecessors had done. He did not, therefore, have any better principles, and was not a better man than they. If he had listened to the warnings of the true prophets, he would not have turned to Egypt for help, for they warned him against this as much as against Assyria. The least probable supposition of all is that Hoshea gave up the cultus which Jeroboam had introduced, for, if he had done so, then his fate would have been undeserved. [This argument is presumptuous and unfounded. All such inferences from the dispensations of Providence to the desert of those who suffer calamity are precarious and unbecoming. The special fact here at. stake is insignificant, but the general principle involved in this method of argument is of the first importance.W. G. S.] The review of the history which the author appends to the story of this reign assumes that the king adhered to Jeroboams cultus. His case is similar to that of Jehoram, of whom it is said (2Ki 3:2): He wrought evil in the. sight of the Lord, but not like his father and like his mother, for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made. Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam. Hoshea may have differed from his immediate predecessors in the same way. Probably he was led more by political than by religious considerations, at least we find no sign at all of the latter. We have no reason at all to imagine that he was genuinely converted. For the rest, it has several times occurred in the history of the world, as Keil remarks, that the last rulers of a falling kingdom have been better than their predecessors.
2. The somewhat lengthy review which the author appends to the story of the downfall of the northern kingdom is, as Hess observes: Almost the only instance in the Old Testament where the author departs from his usual habit of simply narrating, without inserting any comments of his own. We see from this that he was interested not only in the narrative, but also in something further. Here, where the kingdom of the ten tribes comes to an end, and disappears forever from history, was the place, if there was any, for casting a glance back upon its development and history, and for bringing together the characteristics of the story in a summary. This he does from the Old Testament stand-point, according to which God chose the people of Israel to be His own peculiar people, made a covenant with it, and took it under His especial guidance and direction for the welfare and salvation of all nations. The breach of the covenant by the northern kingdom is, therefore, in his view, the first, the peculiar, and the only cause of its final fall, and this fall is the judgment of the holy and just God. By showing this in careful detail he makes it clear to us that this is the only light in which the history can be or ought to be criticised. His mode of criticism, therefore, stands in marked contrast with that of modern critical science, which considers it its task to set aside this point of view,to measure the history of the people of God by the same standards as that of any other ancient people. There is no other passage in the Bible where what we have called in the Introduction, 3, the theocratic-pragmatic form of representation, is so clearly and distinctly evident as in this review. This is a proof that the author of these books was a prophet, or belonged to the prophet-class, and so that it is properly reckoned among the . This review, however, is noticeable also in another respect, viz., that the existence of the with all its , ,, and , long before the time of the monarchy, and that too in a written form (2Ki 17:37), is assumed in it as unquestioned. If the author had not known that this Law, in the form in which he was familiar with it, had existed long before the division of the kingdom, he could not have declared so distinctly and decidedly that the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes was a divine judgment upon it for its apostasy from that Law.
3. The forced emigration of the ten tribes to Assyria was a result of the despotic principle which was accepted throughout the entire Orient, that it was right to make any revolt of subjugated nations impossible (see Exeg. on 1Ki 8:50). In this case it was not merely a transportation into another country, but also the commencement of the dissolution of the ten tribes as a nationality. No one particular province in Assyria was assigned to them as their dwelling-place, but several, which were far separated from one another, so that, although this or that tribe may have been kept more or less together, as seems probable from Tob. i., yet the different tribes were scattered up and down in a foreign nation, without the least organic connection with one another. They never again came together; on the contrary they were gradually lost among the surrounding nations, so that no one knows, until this day, what became of them, and every attempt to discover the remains of them has been vain. (See, on the attempts which have been made, Keil, Comm. zu den Bchern d. K. s. 311, sq.) In this particular the exile of the ten tribes differs from that of Judah and Benjamin. The exile in Babylon was temporary. It lasted for a definite period which had been foretold by the prophets (2Ch 36:21; Jer 29:10). It was not like the Assyrian exile, a period of national dissolution. Judah did not perish in exile; it rather gained strength, and finally came back into the land of promise, whereas, of the ten tribes only a few who had joined themselves to Judah, and become a part of it, ever found their way back. The ten tribes had, by their violent separation from the rest of the nation, broken the unity of the chosen people, and, in order to maintain this separation, they had revolted from the national covenant with Jehovah. The breach of the covenant was the corner-stone of their existence as a separate nationality. Thereby also they had given up the destiny of the people of God in the worlds history. They were the larger fragment of the entire nation, but they were only a separate member which was torn away from the common stock, a branch separated from the trunk, which could only wither away. After 250 years of separate existence, when all the proofs of the divine grace and faithfulness had proved vain, it was the natural fate of the ten tribes to perish and to cease to be an independent nation. The Lord removed them out of his sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone (2Ki 17:18). The case was different with Judah. Although it had sinned often and deeply against its God, yet it never revolted formally and in principle from the covenant, much less was its existence built upon a breach of the covenant. It remained the supporter and the preserver of the Law, and therefore also of the promise. Its deportation was indeed a heavy punishment and a well-deserved chastisement, but it did not perish thereby, nor disappear as a nation from history, but it was preserved until He came of whom it was said: The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luk 1:32, sq.).
4. The population of the country of the ten tribes after their migration consisted, in the first place, of the few of the ancient inhabitants who had remained. That such a remnant did remain is certain, whether we assume that there were two immigrations, one under Shalmaneser and the other under Esarhaddon, or only one under the latter (see note on 2Ki 17:24 under Exegetical [See, also, the bracketed note under Exeget. and Crit., on 2Ki 17:41, for the classes among the population, and the Supplementary Note above, at the end of the Exeg. section, for the details of the repopulation of the country by Sargon and Esarhaddon.]). This is proved beyond question by 2Ch 30:6; 2Ch 30:10; 2Ch 34:9; Jer 41:5. Furthermore this is supported by the analogy of all similar deportations, in which only the mass of the population was carried off, especially the classes from whom revolts might be expected, and by the fact that, in a mountainous country, it would be impossible to seize every man of the population (Keil). [For the number of persons carried away see the Inscription quoted in the Supp. Note above.] The new inhabitants, however, formed the chief portion of the population. The king of Assyria had brought them from different parts of his kingdom, which was already far extended. They did not, therefore, belong to one, but to many diverse nationalities and races. They worshipped various national divinities, and each nation amongst them had its own cultus which it retained (2Ki 17:29-31). Their common life in the same country produced unavoidably a mixture of the various nationalities with each other as well as with the remnant of the Israelites. A nation was thus formed which lacked all unity of worship, and which, socially and religiously, formed a complete chaos. As the exiles, scattered in different localities, lost their national unity and character, so did also the few Isralites who remained in the country and formed connections with the immigrants. In place of unity there arose a complete dissolution and disintegration of the nationality of the ten tribes. They never regained their unity. The author means to say in the passage from 2Ki 17:24 on that this was the judgment of God upon the covenant-breaking and apostate people which had resisted every chastisement and every warning to reform.
5. The cultus which prevailed in the northern kingdom after the exile of the ten tribes, is commonly designated as an amalgam of Jehovah calf-worship, and heathen idolatry (Keil and others). But the text speaks, not of an amalgamated cultus, but of an amalgamated population (see notes on 2Ki 17:34). Jeroboams Jehovah-worship, although it was illegal, was nevertheless monotheism. As such it simply and utterly excluded polytheism. So, for instance, Jehu, who maintained Jeroboams cultus, rooted out idolatry with violence (2Ki 10:28 sq.). Now a cultus which had for its object the one true God, and at the same time many gods, a cultus in which monotheism and polytheism were combined, is inconceivable, because it involves a fundamental contradiction. [This is unquestionably true in logic, but such inconsistencies are very common in history. The population of Samaria (see bracketed note on 2Ki 17:41 under Exeg.) had no such clear and well-defined devotion to the Jehovah-worship, even under its degraded form, and no such pure consciousness of the bearings of the various parts of their cultus upon one another, as to feel this contradiction and try to escape it. A truer conception of the state of things would be that the Jehovah calf-worship, when reestablished, took its place among the other acknowledged forms of worship. The remains of the ancient Israelitish population cultivated this worship especially, the other nationalties cultivated each its own cultus especially, and thus the various forms existed side by side, doubtless not without mutual influence on one another. This is substantially the view advocated by Bahr below, and it is far more consistent with all we know of the state of things than the amalgamation theory. The latter cannot be disposed of, however, by showing its logical inconsistency.W. G. S.] It seems that the exiles maintained in their banishment the worship of Jehovah through Jeroboams calf images (Tob. i. 5). It is still more probable that those who remained in Samaria did the same. The priest who was sent back to Samaria (2Ki 17:27) was to teach them the manner of the God of the land. He therefore took up his residence at the chief seat of Jeroboams worship, at Bethel, which thus became once more the centre of this worship. It was not, however, the source of a new worship which combined the ancient form with idolatry. That the Jehovah-worship was maintained in the country without mixture with heathenism is shown by the statement of those who, 200 years afterwards, came to Zerubbabel and said: Let us build with you; for we seek your God as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assur, who brought us up hither (Ezr 4:2). In later times this Samaritan people was more strict in its adherence to the Mosaic law than even the Jews (Von Gerlach). How could this have been the case if their cultus had been mixed with idolatry from the time of the Assyrian exile onwards? The form of Jehovah-worship which Jeroboam had introduced, and heathen idolatry, existed, as a consequence of the mixed population, alongside of one another, but not in one another. Although individuals may have tried to practise both worships at once, or may have turned now to one and now to the other, the mass of the Israelites who remained held firmly to the illegitimate Jehovah-worship, so that this gradually gained the upper hand of heathenism. At the time of Christ we hear no more of the latter in Samaria. As the Samaritans recognized the authority of the whole Pentateuch, the Jews could not regard them as idolators. They were not willing, however, to have any intercourse with them, because, in blood, they were no longer pure Israelites, and so were not a portion of the people which was sharply separated, in. blood, from all heathen nations. They were considered, and as such they were held in about the same estimation as the heathen (Luk 17:16; Luk 17:18; Mat 10:5; Joh 4:9; Joh 8:48). The bitter hostility between the Samaritans and the-Jews is to be ascribed, in great part, to the ancient, deep-rooted, never extinguished hatred of the tribes of Judah and Ephraim for one another (see 1 Kings 12, Hist. 1.). On the Samaritans see Winer, R.-W.-B. II. s. 369; Herzog, Real-Encyc. XIII. s. 363.
6. Finally, we may here briefly take notice of the manner in which modern historians represent and judge the fall of the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Samaria, says Duncker (Gesch. d. Alt. s. 443, sq.), defended itself with the energy of despair in the determination either to preserve its independent national existence or to perish. It was only after a siege of three years duration, and the most obstinate resistance, that the capital fell, and with it the kingdom. Without proper preparation or energetic leadership, unsupported by the natural allies in Judah or by Egypt, Israel fell after brave resistance, and so not without honor. Weber speaks in like manner of the glorious fall of Israel. Menzel (Staats- und Religionsgesch. s. 229) passes his judgment as follows: The energetic prophet class, which had had so much to do with the foundation of the kingdom of Israel, had found its grave with Elisha. The prophets Amos and Hosea, who appeared during the reigns of the last kings of the house of Israel, saw their activity limited to rebukes and reproofs. The former was banished from Bethel as an inciter of sedition. The ancient prophets do not seem to have recorded anything which would cast upon the kings or the people of Israel the reproach of an idolatry which was stained by human blood, as the historical and prophetical books do for several of the kings of Judah, although they are severe enough in their denunciations of the vices, and of the illegitimate forms of worship, of the northern kingdom. It is true that the institution of the prophets had shown itself incapable of arresting the decline of the northern kingdom, or of setting up a strong dynasty in the place of the regular succession which had been broken by the overthrow of the house of Omri, and that, in Judah, the duration of the kingdom of the house of David had been preserved, by the help of the priesthood, yet even there the final ruin had only been postponed for a century. As for this last conception of the history, which in fact makes the prophets responsible for the fall of Israel, in the first place it runs directly counter to the entire history of the redemptive scheme, and in so far needs no refutation. It only shows how far astray we may go, if we give up and abandon the stand-point from which alone this history claims to be considered, and from which alone it can be understood. But the first representation quoted above is, to say the least, destitute of foundation, for the text, which says no more than that Shalmaneser, after 2 years siege, took the city, does not by any means intend by this to chant a song of praise and glory over the fallen city. There is no syllable to imply that this siege was lengthened out by the brave and heroic resistance of the inhabitants. The great allied army of the Syrians and the Israelites besieged Jerusalem for a long time, and nevertheless could not take it (2Ki 16:5), though the cowardly Ahaz did not offer heroic resistance. Shalmaneser was at the same time carrying on war with the surrounding people, by which the strength of his army was divided. Moreover, Samaria had a very strong site on a hill. Still other circumstances which are not mentioned may have conspired to lengthen out the siege. Although the city may have been bravely defended, which certainly is very possible, yet it does not follow that the northern kingdom fell with honor. It is impossible to speak of the glorious end of a kingdom which was in a state of anarchy, and which was politically, morally, and religiously rotten and shattered, as the contemporary prophets testify in the plainest and strongest terms. The praise which is awarded, however, is most plainly shown to be undeserved by the review which the ancient historian himself gives of the decline and fall of Israel.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
2Ki 17:1-6. The last King of Israel. a) He did, &c., yet not, &c., 2Ki 17:2. (Though he did not go so far in wickedness as the 18 who preceded him, nevertheless he did not walk in the way of salvation. Half-way conversion is no conversion. In order to bring back the nation from its wicked ways, he should have been himself devoted to the Lord with all his heart. When people are not fully in earnest in their conversion, then there is no cessation of corruption, whether it be the case of an individual or of a State.) b) He makes a covenant with the king of Egypt, 2Ki 17:4. (By this he showed that his heart was not perfect with God. Egypt, the very power out of whose hand God had wonderfully rescued His people, was to help him against Assyria. But: Cursed be the man, &c., Jer 17:5; Jer 17:7; Hos 7:11-13. Woe to them, &c., Isa 31:1. It is better, &c., Psa 118:8-9; Psa 91:1. sq.). c) He loses his land and his people and is cast into prison, 2Ki 17:4-6. (By conspiracy and murder he had attained to the throne and to the highest pitch of human greatness, but his end was disgrace, misery, and life-long imprisonment, Psa 1:1-6. Thus ended the kingdom of Israel, Isa 28:1-4.)Cramer: Godless men think that they will escape punishment though they do not repent. They therefore fall into discontent; as a result of such discontent they have recourse to forbidden means, such as perjury, treachery, and secret plots. They hew them out cisterns that can hold no water, Jer 2:13, for it is vain to make covenants with the godless, and to neglect the true God (Hos 7:11).Starke: Upon him who will not be humbled by small evils God sends great and heavy ones (1Pe 5:6).
2Ki 17:7-23. The fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes. a) It was the result of the sin and guilt of the people. (Separation from the other tribes and dissolution of the national unityrevolt from the national covenant and overthrow of the Lawdegeneration into heathenismpersistence in sinmoral and religious corruption, Mat 12:25; Hos 13:9.) It was a judgment of the just and holy God. (I, the Lord, give to every man according to his ways; Jer 17:10; Rom 2:5-6 : The Lord God, merciful and gracious, etc., Exo 34:6; God is not mocked, Gal 6:7. He guarded the kingdom of Israel for 250 years in patience and long-suffering. He warned, and threatened, and taught, and chastised, and sent messengers to summon them to return. When all proved vain He sent the Assyrians, the rod of His wrath and the staff of His indignation, Isa 10:5-6. He removed them from before His face. The judgment never fails to come. It does not come at once, it is often delayed for centuries, but it comes at last, upon States as well as upon individuals, 1Co 10:11-12.)Berleb. Bibel: Would that men, when they read such passages, would stop and think, and would enter upon a comparison between the people of God of that time and of this, and would thus make application of the lesson of history. The people of Israel were hardly as wicked as the Christians of to-day. The responsibility to-day is far greater, for they were called to righteousness under the old Law, we under the Gospel of free grace. The people of the ten tribes did not reject belief in the God who had brought them out of Egypt, when they founded the kingdom of Israel (1Ki 12:28), but they made to themselves, contrary to the law of this God, an image of Him. This was the beginning of their downfall, the germ of their ruin, which produced all the evil fruits which followed. This led from error to error. They commenced with an image of Jehovah; they finished with the frightful sacrifices of Moloch. He who has once abandoned the centre of revealed truth, sinks inevitably deeper and deeper, either into unbelief or into superstition, so that he finally comes to consider darkness light, and folly wisdom. So it was in Israel, so it is now in Christendom. He who abandons the central truth of Christianity, Christ, the Son of God, is in the way of losing God, for Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father (1Jn 2:23).A nation which no longer respects the word of God, but makes a religion for itself according to its own good pleasure, will sooner or later come to ruin.
2Ki 17:9-12. External rites of worship were not wanting in the land of Israel. In all the cities, on all the mountains and hills, under all the green trees, there were places for prayer, altars, and images, but nevertheless the true God was not known (Act 17:22-23), and no worship of the true God in spirit and in truth existed. Their heart was darkened in spite of all their worship (Rom 1:21; Rom 1:23), because they did not revere the word of God, and placed their light under a bushel. So it was at the time when Luther appeared, and so it is yet everywhere where the light of the Gospel is not set upon a candlestick that it may give light to the whole house. What is the use of crucifixes if the Crucified One dwell not in the heart, and if the flesh with its lusts be not crucified?
2Ki 17:13-14. Starke: Before God sends forth His judgments and chastisements, He sends out true and upright teachers who call the people to repentance (2Ch 36:15-16).The Lord still provides a testimony of Himself, and sends to the unbelieving and perverse world this message by His faithful servants: Turn ye from your evil ways! But, as it was with Israel, so it is still; those who preach repentance are laughed to scorn. He, however, who does not listen to the exhortation to repentance, does not remain as he was, he becomes continually worse and worse. If such a heavy punishment fell upon those who would not hear the prophets, what must those expect who do not listen to the words of the Son of God, but persevere in their unbelief and in their sins? Heb 4:7; Heb 10:29. 2Ki 17:15-17. Contempt for the covenant and for the testimonies of God makes men vain, that is, insignificant and empty, like the heathen whose gods are nothingness. [A heathen god is nothing, a nullity, it is emptiness, a name for something which does not exist, vanity. People who worship them make themselves empty, insignificant, and vain.] The further a man removes himself from God, the more vain and insignificant he becomes, however learned and cultivated he may be, and however highly esteemed he may appear.If an entire people falls into slavery and misery, or even loses its national existence, the reason for it must not be sought merely in external, political circumstances, but, first of all, in its apostasy from the living God and His word.Berl. Bibel: They rejected His ordinances, not indeed by a declaration in words, but by their life and conduct. What can be regarded among us as more explicit rejection and contempt of God, than to assert and to try to convince ones self that it is impossible to keep Gods ordinances? Only look at Christs ordinances in Matthew 5, 6, , 7, and compare them with the maxims which we profess, and then say whether more of us accept than reject the former. How do we keep the covenant which we have made in baptism, to conduct ourselves as those who belong to God (Gal 5:24)? But that covenant is the covenant of a good conscience towards God (1Pe 3:21). If we take up the point of vanity, we may use the words of Ecc 1:2. Our speeches, our works, our dress, our buildings, our food, and all our habits of mind bear testimony of its truth. They served Baal; we serve the belly, mammon, the world, nay, even the devil himself, Rom 6:16. They caused their children to pass through the fire; through how many dangerous fires of worldly lust we cause our children to pass? Most of them are so corrupted by false education, and so much trained to evil by false example, that finally parents and children fall together into the eternal fire.
2Ki 17:18. Kyburz: The kingdom of Israel had nineteen kings, and not one of them was truly pious. Wonder not at the wrath but at the patience of God, in that He endured their evil ways for many hundred years, and at their ingratitude, that they did not allow themselves, by His long-suffering, to be led to repentance. Is it any better nowadays?
2Ki 17:19. Richter: Judah was corrupted by Israel as Germany was by France. Observe: Israel was never improved by the good which still remained in Judah, but Judah was only too often corrupted by the evil in Israel. Evil conquers and spreads faster than good.
2Ki 17:20-23. Pfaff. Bibel: When the measure of sin is full, then at last the judgments of God begin to fall (Psa 7:11-12).Wrt Summ.: We should see ourselves in this mirror and not bring on and hasten the ruin of our fatherland by our sins, for what here befell the kingdom of Israel, or even more, may befall us (Rom 11:21).
2Ki 17:24-41. The Land of the Ten Tribes after their Exile. a) The substitution of foreign and heathen nations for the Israelitish population, 2Ki 17:24-33. b) The religious state of things in the country, which was produced by this. Cramer: It is indeed a great calamity when the inhabitants of a country are expelled, with their wives and children, by the invasion of foreign nations; but it is a still greater misfortune when the devils temple is set up in places where the worship of the true God has been celebrated (Psa 74:3).Wrt. Summ.: The land in which Christ and His Apostles preached has fared as did the land of Israel; the Koran now prevails there. So also have many other cities and States fared, which now hear the doctrines of Antichrist, instead of the doctrines of Christ. Therefore we ought to guard ourselves against contempt of the word of God, that God may not be led to chastise our land and church also (Rev 2:5).
2Ki 17:25-28. The heathen immigrants imagined that, in order to get rid of the plague of the lions, it was necessary to observe particular religious ceremonies. This fancy prevails yet to a considerable extent even in Christendom. People think that they can be delivered from all sorts of evil by practising certain rites, whereas no religious acts are pleasing to Almighty God, or have value, unless they are an involuntary, direct expression of living faith, and of surrender of the heart to God.
2Ki 17:27. The king of Assyria, a heathen, took care that the religious necessities of his subjects should be provided for. He even sent a priest of Jehovah to teach them. Would that all Christian rulers were like him in this! 2Ki 17:29-33. A country cannot fall lower than it does when each man makes unto himself his own god. We are indeed beyond the danger of making to ourselves idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, but we are none the less disposed to form idols for ourselves out of our own imaginations, and not to fear and worship the one true God as He has revealed Himself to us. That is the cultivated heathenism of the present day. Some make to themselves a god who dwells above the stars and does not care much for the omissions or commissions of men upon earth; others, one who can do everything but chastise and punish, or one in whose sight men forgive themselves their own sins; who does not recompense each according to his works, but forgives all without discrimination, and who opens heaven to all alike, no matter how they have lived upon earth (Jer 10:14-15).
2Ki 17:29. Cramer: Sketch of the papacy, under which each country, city, and house has its own divinity, its saint and patron. (O Israel!in me is thine help: Hos 13:9; see also 2Ki 17:39 of this chapter).
2Ki 17:33. Berl. Bib. They feared the Lord and worshipped their own idols! Is not that exactly the state of things amongst us? We want to serve more than one Lord. We have invented a kind of fear of God with which the worship of gold, fame, and worldly enjoyment, and, above all, of selfishness, is not inconsistent, nay, it is rather a component part of it.
2Ki 17:34, sq. Decay in religious matters, lack of unity of conviction in the highest and noblest affairs, prevents a nation from ever becoming great and strong. It is a sign of the most radical corruption. Similarity of faith and community of worship form a strong uniting force, and are the condition of true national unity. The existence of different creeds and confessions by the side of one another is a source of national weakness. It is an error to try to produce this unity by force; it is a blessing only when it proceeds from a free conviction (Eph 4:3-6).J. Lange: The correct application of the lesson of this passage is to abstain from communion with whatever is inconsistent with the Christian religion, for, outside of Christianity there are, besides the errors which undermine the foundation of faith, also those ordinances of men, and service of the world and sin, which, alas! the majority, even in evangelical churches, while they have knowledge of the pure truth of the gospel, yet endeavor to unite with pure religion. Verily, to serve God and sin at the same time is as radical an apostasy from true religion as ever the errors of the Samaritans were.
Footnotes:
[1]2Ki 17:6. [ The stat. const., is used in such cases, where only the second word has the article, in order to form a closer connection between the words. Ew. 287a. 1.
[2]2Ki 17:13.[On the hifil form cf. , Gen 8:13; Gesen. 72. 7.W. G. S.]
[3]2Ki 17:13.The keri for the chetib is in so far correct that the belongs to the following word, , as a copula, and there is no sufficient reason why should have the possessive pronoun and not. The keri is followed by the Vulg. and the Syr. and Arab. versions, and is presented by several codices. Maurer and Keil prefer the chetib, but do not offer satisfactory reasons for it.Bhr.[Ew. 156 e. note 2, says that, if the chetib is to be kept, then is a noun = oracle.
[4]2Ki 17:21.[The chetib, , is hifil from , or, by an interchange of consonants which is frequent in books later than the Pentateuch, . The form does not occur elsewhere from either of those stems. The keri proposes , hif. of . The signification is the same, repel, remove, or seduce (Deu 13:14; Pro 7:21).
[5]2Ki 17:22.[The fem. suff. in refers to the plural . Abstracts are expressed by the plur. or by the fem., and sometimes, where the words are far separated, such an interchange of the one for the other, in relative words, takes place. Cf. Job 39:15; Job 14:19; 2Ki 3:8; 2Ki 10:26. Ew. 317 a.
[6]2Ki 17:28.[Imperf. in an indirect question referring to something which at a past time was regarded as not to come to pass.W. G. S.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This chapter relates to the history of the kingdom of Israel. Hosea’s wicked reign is recorded, and which terminates the Israelitish kingdom; for the captivity takes place in the destruction of Samaria, after a period of about 260 years. A mixture of religions takes place also on the event of the captivity.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Reader will do well, while reading this chapter, to keep in view what the prophets have said concerning the events recorded in those days. The prophets Isaiah and Hosea particularly merit our closest attention. The latter, in his first and second chapters, hath woefully described this unchurching of Israel; : and at the same time comforted the chosen of the Lord with the sure prospects of their becoming a church again. God had indeed called them by the prophet, Lo-ammi, as being no longer his people; but he still promised that after he had brought them into the wilderness, and pleaded with them there, they should be again the Ammi, the beloved of the Lord. Let the Reader study those sweet chapters while looking at this history of Israel, and indeed the whole of Hosea’s prophecy, all of which must have been delivered before the captivity. The siege of three years before Samaria was taken, seemed to speak God’s reluctance to give them up; How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? Hos 11:8 . if the Reader be not thoroughly acquainted with the history of this event of the captivity of Israel, it may not be amiss to observe, that the ten tribes which constituted the kingdom of Israel, were all carried away in this captivity; and though no doubt many of each tribe, as individuals, have been gathered from the general loss, yet never to this hour have they returned. They are, scattered, and perhaps dispersed in every country under heaven; yet a time is promised when the deliverer shall arise from Zion, and to whom, as the glorious Shiloh, the gathering of the people shall be. But from the period of this captivity all the tribes, except Judah and Levi, were taken away and unchurched. Let the Reader consult these precious scriptures which foretell their recovery: Hos 3:4-5 ; Rom 11:26Rom 11:26 ; Rev 7:8Rev 7:8 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Ki 17
1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.
2. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him.
3. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave [rendered] him presents [or, tribute].
4. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought [offered] no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year [omit “year by year”]: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up [comp. Jer 32:2-3 ; Jer 33:1 , Jer 36:3 ] and bound him in prison.
5. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.
6. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them [literally, made them dwell] in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan [on Habor the river of Gozan] and in the cities of the Medes.
7. For so it was [literally, And it came to pass], that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods [such as the Baals and Asherahs of Canaan, which symbolised the productive powers of Nature, and, further, the heavenly bodies (comp. Amo 5:25-26 ; Eze 8:14 , Eze 8:16 ],
8. And walked in the statutes [religious rules or ordinances. (Comp. Exo 12:14 , “statutes;” Lev 20:23 , “manners;” 1Ki 3:3 , “ordinances”)] of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and the kings of Israel, which they had made.
9. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. [The towers are such as are mentioned in 2Ch 26:10 .]
10. And they set them up images [statues], and groves [pillars and Asherahs sacred trunks], in every high hill, and under every green tree:
11. And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things [not merely idolatrous rites, but also the hideous immoralities which constituted a recognised part of the nature-worships of Canaan] to provoke the Lord to anger:
12. For they served idols [And they served the dunglings; a term of contempt], whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing.
13. Yet the Lord testified [gave solemn warning or charge] against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.
14. Notwithstanding they would not hear [and they hearkened not], but hardened their necks [neck. (Comp. Deu 10:16 ; Jer 17:23 ; 2Ch 36:13 )], like to the neck [more than the neck] of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God.
15. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them.
16. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images [1Ki 12:28 : literally, a casting], even two calves, and made a grove [an Asherah ( 1Ki 14:23 , 1Ki 16:33 )], and worshipped all the host of heaven [chap. 2Ki 21:3 ; comp. 2Ki 23:4 ], and served Baal.
17. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire [the cultus of Molech (chap. 2Ki 16:3 )] and used divination and enchantments [Deu 18:10 ; Num 23:23 ], and sold themselves [idolatry is regarded as a servitude (comp. 1Ki 21:20 , 1Ki 21:25 )] to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.
18. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight [by banishing them from his land ( 2Ki 17:23 )]: there was none left but the tribe [ i.e., the kingdom (comp. 1Ki 11:36 )] of Judah only.
19. Also Judah kept not [Judah was no exception to the sins and punishments of Israel; she imitated the apostasy of her sister-kingdom, and was visited with a similar penalty] the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.
20. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.
21. For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave [put far away] Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin.
22. For the children of Israel walked [obstinately persisted, in spite of all warning] in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them;
23. Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. [Comp. Hos 1:6 , Hos 9:16 ; Amo 3:11-12 ; Amo 5:27 ; Isa 28:1-4 .] So was Israel carried away [that the land was not entirely depopulated appears from such passages as 2Ch 30:1 , 2Ch 34:9 ] out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.
24. And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them [made them dwell] in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.
25. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent [the] lions [in the interval between the Assyrian depopulation and the repeopling of the land, the lions indigenous to the country had multiplied naturally enough] among them, which slew some of them.
26. Wherefore they [men; the prefects of the province] spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner [appointed worship] of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.
27. Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry [cause to go] thither one of the priests whom ye brought [carried away] from thence; and let them [him] go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.
28. Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el [because he was a priest of the calf-worship], and taught [and was teaching; implying a permanent work] them how they should fear the Lord.
29. Howbeit [And] every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans [the people of northern Israel (comp. 2Ki 17:24 )] had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.
30. And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima,
31. And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.
32. So they feared [were fearing] the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them [of all orders, or promiscuously (comp. 1Ki 12:31 ). Another indication that it was Jeroboam’s mode of worship which was now restored] priests of the [omit “the”] high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
33. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods [literally, Jehovah they were fearing, and their own gods they were serving], after the manner of the nations whom they carried [who carried them] away from thence.
34. Unto this day they do after the former manners [they still keep up the religious customs of the first colonists]: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel:
35. With whom the Lord had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them:
36. But the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched-out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice.
37. And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore: and ye shall not fear other gods.
38. And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods. [This formula is repeated thrice (2Ki 17:35 , 2Ki 17:37-38 ) as the main point of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel.]
39. But the Lord your God ye shall fear; and he [the pronoun is emphatic: and he, on his part, will deliver you] shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.
40. Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did [continued doing] after their former manner.
41. So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images [a variation of 2Ki 17:33 ], both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.
Genuine Religion
A very significant expression occurs in the twenty-ninth verse of the fifteenth chapter.
“In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.” ( 2Ki 15:29 ).
A very humbling expression! But this is an aspect of providence we cannot afford, if we be wise men, to ignore. Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, came and carried away all these people captive to Assyria simply “carried” them. When men have lost their soul, their spirit, their fire, they are simply carted away like so many hundredweights and tons of dead matter. We are not men if we have lost manliness in other words, if we have lost the indwelling Spirit of God, the force eternal, the seal divine; we are not then conquered, because to be “conquered” would imply some measure of calculated and rational resistance, we are simply carried away, borne off, as men might carry dead matter. This is the lot of all nations that forget God: this is the lot of every man whose heart ceases to be the sanctuary of the living Spirit: he is but so much bulk; name him in pounds avoirdupois, report him in so many inches and feet of stature and girth; he has grieved the Spirit; he has quenched the Spirit; henceforth he is to be driven as one of a herd of dumb cattle; he is to be carried as if he were but so much flesh. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” The Almighty can humble us in many ways unexpected, wholly unforeseen, and absolutely inevitable, so that he who was the crown of his people is trodden under foot, and as for the fine gold, men are struck by nothing so much as by its dimness.
We now come to the incident of Ahaz sending messages to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, complaining to him that the hand of the king of Syria and the hand of the king of Israel had been raised against the king of Judah. Ahaz afterwards paid a visit to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, going to Damascus to meet him; and when he was at Damascus, Ahaz saw an object which attracted his attention. Ahaz reigned wickedly in Judah, but like the rest of mankind he was a strange mixture. Ahaz, while at Damascus, saw a new kind of altar: he took a plan of it; he reported in terms of a literal specification all its curious workmanship; and he told Urijah the priest to have one exactly of that description ready for him by the time he came from Damascus. Here is an interest in religious things. Ahaz takes an interest in an altar. It was an architectural interest. Ahaz was pleased with shapes, forms, colours; he had an eye for artistic beauty; he looked upon the altar as a child might have looked upon a toy: as an artist might have looked upon a picture, as a musician might have regarded a new piece of music. It was, however, a costly interest. Let us do Ahaz full justice. Ahaz could not have this altar without paying for it; and pay for it he did. Are there not men who are exactly like Ahaz today? They see new forms of worship, new programmes of a devotional kind, new clothing for the priests who minister at the altar, new ways of lighting the sacred edifice, new plans of opening and closing doors, new systems of ventilation, administration; and seizing all these things, and being willing to pay for the execution of their own fancies and ideas, it might easily be supposed that they were religious men. There is no artistic religion; that is to say, there is no religion that begins and ends in mere art, method, mechanism, arrangement. Yet how many there are who can only worship in certain places! They do not know the gospel unless they hear it uttered by certain men. They live by the voice, not by the truth. How many there are who can only be comfortable in religious worship in proportion as they are surrounded by familiar persons! Any derangement of the usual environment would mean impoverishment of the prayer, the upset of religious calmness, the utter depletion of Christian virtue: the whole service would simply go for nothing, because the surroundings had been altered or modified. Is ours a merely artistic interest in the service of God? Are we struck by new forms only or do we hold every one as with a light hand, saying, They are nothing but as they express an inward and spiritual grace and force? To these questions every man must make his own answer. But the lesson is general, namely, that we may take an interest in religious things without being under the influence of a truly religious spirit. It is possible to spend a lifetime in collecting rare editions of the Bible. A man may have a thousand Bibles, and yet not have one revelation. But surely the man is religious who collects editions of the Bible, in all manner of type, and paper, and binding; who would spend much money in getting a rare edition that contained some particular phrase or word not known to other editions? To regard such a man as not religious would surely be a violation of charity? Not of necessity. All depends upon other circumstances. The man may be most pious, devoted, simple-minded, holy, but he is not all these simply because he spends so much time and money in collecting rare editions of the Bible. Any edition of the Bible will do when a man wants with his whole soul to know which is the greatest commandment of the law. He will be sure to secure an edition containing the gospel, then let all that is curious, rare, valuable from an artistic point, come in as it may, or not come in at all, he has the Bible, he knows the commandments, and keeps them. Are there not those who take a great interest in embellishing the house of God? They wish to have everything beautiful round about them. All this is right. We cannot but sympathise with this spirit. God does not want any of our disorder, slovenliness, or neglect of things that are true and beautiful; God himself condescends to accept all our efforts to make the place of his feet glorious: but we may have only an artistic interest in the house of God. He builds God’s house who builds a man’s true life. He loves the sanctuary who accepts its stones as but symbols: altars that do nothing themselves, but help men to pray steadfastly and hopefully in the name of the eternal Son of God. Let us be quite clear about this teaching. It is delightful when men are interested in any department of the sanctuary; it is encouraging to find that persons do take a deep enthusiastic interest in all that pertains to Christian ministry, Christian worship, and Christian evangelisation; the only thing that the most zealous devotee has to take care of is this: lest he expend his enthusiasm in that which is external. We are right when we combine the inward with the outward, when we give a beautiful soul expression in beautiful form, but the form is nothing if the power be not.
Turning now from Judah to Israel, we find a noticeable point in the seventeenth chapter:
“And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city” ( 2Ki 17:9 ).
Again we come upon this report which we have had as it were a thousand times in identical terms. What is the wonderful charm of evil? Surely the philosophers have not answered that enquiry completely. There must be some peculiar inexpressible charm in evil, or men would not do it, and do it with both hands earnestly, and live in the doing of it, and reap in its execution some kind of harvest of contentment and gladness. What is this charm? Men repeat the evil even whilst denominating it iniquity and marking it as vile. In this matter we are curiously and wondrously made. We go back to the evil. The devil seems to be more attractive than God. One would have thought that one vision of truth, beauty, heaven’s own light, would have for ever fascinated us, and made us incapable of meanness, wrongdoing, untruthfulness, or any form or colour of iniquity. But it is not so. The devil is most charmful! We know he tells lies, but he tells them eloquently. We are aware that he cannot keep any promise that he ever made, yet when he puts out his black hand to us we grope for it in the dark, and think the fellowship not without advantage! Who can explain this? Is the explanation in the heart? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” But what of this infinite infatuation of evil-doers? It is not in theory. The world has not gone so far wrong in theory as some pessimists may have imagined; if even the bad man were set down to write a book which lie would like his own children to peruse, and follow out in daily practice, he would not begin his book by saying, “Serve the devil.” No. Surely the very worst man having taken upon himself the task of directing his own children, would write good theories, and would come quite near to quoting and repeating God’s own commandments. Yet ere he laid the pen down he would be purposing in his heart to keep an appointment with the devil! Who can sound the heart? Who can find out human nature to perfection? Often we say, “Who can find out God unto perfection?” But let us alter the enquiry and say, “Who can find out human nature fully, to its last line, thought, motive, and flash of will and desire?” Man is mysterious: because God is mysterious. It would seem impossible for men to make a correct distinction between crime and sin. Many men commit sin who would be shocked if they were charged with crime. This would seem to be a lesson hardly ever learned, even by the most spiritual men. There is probably hardly a man in a thousand who attends regularly the services of the sanctuary who could be charged with crime. This is regarded as “respectability.” It has come to this, within the shadow of Christ’s own cross, that if a man be not chargeable with crime he accounts himself respectable! The inquest should be spiritual. What of motive, thought, unexpressed inclination, unuttered desire? What of the life of the soul? What of those things we would do if we dare? The word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Oh that thrust of heaven’s steel, that look of heaven’s righteousness! Who can bear that judgment?
Here we join hands with the children of Israel and of Judah, and with human nature all over the world, owning the charm of evil. But the infatuation is more remarkable than the charm. The children of Israel did “secretly” those things that were not right. Ask them this question: Does God see all things? and the answer would be, Yes. Are the darkness and the light both alike unto him? And the reply would be, Certainly. Are his eyes as a flame of fire? The reply would be, Truly: no fire burns like those eyes of judgment. Then why do you blind yourselves with the mortal infatuation that you can do anything “secretly” against the Lord? Theoretically the reply would be It is impossible to do anything secretly, for heaven sees every deed and the motive out of which it comes. Still, there remains the fact the very mystery of psychology, the very despair of spiritual teaching that even the wisest men imagine that they at least take off part of the iniquity by the secrecy of its perpetration.
Was all this done in Israel, or in Judah, in times of ignorance? The answer is in the seventeenth chapter:
“Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets” ( 2Ki 17:13 ).
The people did not perish for lack of knowledge. The ministry was not short in that day. Prophets came in great numbers, or in great force, and seers were ready to interpret the invisible and the distant; the land was full of a teaching ministry. Yet the people sinned against all this light! How much can be resisted by the desperately wicked!
“Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger” ( 2Ki 17:14-17 ).
How much men can resist when their hearts are set within them to do despite to the Spirit of God and the offers of his grace! Talk about God’s almightiness, is there not a certain omnipotence in evil-doing entrusted to the human heart? The almightiness of God is without doubt in relation to all physical control and domination, but is not God as weak as any creature he has made when he comes to deal with the obdurate human heart, the rebellious human will? Then he is like a crying mother reasoning with her children, baptising them with her hot tears, expostulating with them in pungent tones, able only to say, “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?” The book of God does not conceal the weakness of God, if we may so name it, in regard to this contest as between himself and the human heart. He says, “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” “It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Is there no resistance now? The man who dies out of Christ now dies a thousand deaths. He is surrounded by Christian atmosphere, and by Christian influences; he is followed by Christian prayer; he is pursued by Christian importunity and remonstrance. He must force his way past God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; he must tread down the cross, trampling under foot the blood of the everlasting covenant, counting it an unholy or unworthy thing; he must be a very miracle of wickedness the devil’s supreme achievement in the dehumanisation of the race! Grieve not the Spirit. Quench not the Spirit. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Notice one vital point. Just as the education and discipline of man became spiritual did man turn away from the living God. What was it that God had introduced into the education of the race? The names are given in chapter 2Ki 17:13 “commandments, statutes, law.” Had it come to this? Yes. It had to this certainly come. No fire, no sword, no thunder, no miracle of judgment; the spiritual education of the race had been brought up to this point “commandments, statutes, law” a spiritual education and a spiritual appeal. It seems sometimes that if God would only teach by miracles we might be converted, and upon this we should be inclined to insist if Jesus Christ had not given the suggestion the flattest contradiction, saying, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them…. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” Sometimes in heart-ache, and spiritual despair of an intolerable kind, we say, oh that God would teach by signs written upon the blue heavens, by great and visible judgments, by smiting the wicked man when his deed was half done, by crowning the righteous man in the very midst of his prayer, then surely the world would believe! But against this Jesus Christ has set his great and irrevocable judgment. Miracles have been tried: they have had their place, they have done their work, they have passed; and now we have come to spiritual training. It was just so in Christ’s own ministry. When he approached the spiritual point, the people rose as it were from their seats and left his church. So long as he was performing miracles, distributing loaves and fishes, showing mighty signs, then the people came around him in great multitudes; but when he said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” they said, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” how can it be done? The moment he came to a spiritual appeal, and to an insistance upon spiritual religion, they turned round; and he said to his disciples who lingered at his side, “Will ye also go away?” The people had mistaken his purpose; they thought him a mighty conjurer, the prince of miracle performers, a marvellous magician without an equal in known history; but when he came to truth, purity, mercy, justice, submission, resignation, worship of the invisible God, they became weary of his teaching, and left him. This is the distress of every ministry. Who can lay hold upon spiritual affection, spiritual loyalty, and be surrounded and supported by people who say We love the word of God as you proclaim it, because it affects us spiritually, ennobles our very soul, lifts our thought from the dust and time, and takes us into the upper city and the very eternity of God? Here is a test of judgment, here is a standard of measurement: let there be no mistake about this: we are to grow in grace not in miracle-doing and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ not in the criticism of his miracles or the admiration of his wonders: ours is to be a soul growth, a spiritual liberation, a mental development, a whole-hearted consecration. Spirit of the living God, crown thy miracles by this, the greatest of all!
“The king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof” ( 2Ki 17:24 ).
The king of Assyria intended here is not Shalmaneser or Esar-haddon, as is generally supposed, but Sargon. It is not doubted that Esar-haddon sent colonists into the country, from whom the new Samaritans were, at least in part, descended. It is believed that there was a previous colonisation by the conqueror of the country. We must regard these men as strangers; and so regarding them, their judgment upon the religious condition of the people is the more remarkable. They noticed, for example, that at the beginning of their dwelling in the country, the people “feared not the Lord.” It should be a rule with us in life to know that even those who do not share our own religious sentiments may yet be observing how those sentiments affect our personal conduct. Probably there is hardly a deeper humiliation than that the people of God, at least nominally so regarded, should have been judged as impious by men who came from a far off land and who professed only a heathenish religion. It is noticeable that one of the very first things observed by the Assyrians was that the people were not faithful to their religion. There is evidently something deeper than a mere form of religious faith; otherwise the Assyrians could not have noticed a discrepancy between doctrine and practice; the nominal people of God had so far descended into corruption and licentiousness as to care absolutely nothing for the opinion of heathen critics. Their piety had been displaced not only by impiety, as representing a negative condition of mind, but by absolute contempt and defiance. It is not to be supposed, because our life-work lies amongst men who do not profess religion, that therefore we can afford to dispense with our own religion and not incur the disapprobation of observers. There is an honesty even apart from spiritual religion; that is to say, there is a spirit in man which instinctively revolts at inconsistency, treachery, and all forms of practical lying in reference to high religious obligations. This should be noticed by men who enjoy spiritual emoluments and advantages which they have not earned by merit or by honest labour. All kinds of religious promotion should be jealously regarded as being under the criticism of men of the world. We might so far become victims of infatuation as to suppose that men of the world would rather applaud us for so using ecclesiastical position and privilege as to consolidate our financial and social position. Men of the world, however, do nothing of the kind; although they do not profess to be pious, they yet have clear ideas as to honesty and integrity. To be condemned by men of the world for want of faithfulness to our religious convictions is one of the severest judgments which can befall our religious life.
The report which the colonists gave to the king of Assyria is here recorded “The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land” ( 2Ki 17:26 ). They supposed that every locality had its own deity. At this notion it has become customary to smile in a complacent way: but is there not another aspect of this ignorance which ought rather to secure our best interest, and no small degree of our confidence? Better that men should have a local deity than that they should have no deity at all. The Samaritans may have supposed that because they themselves did not know the spirit and law of the local deity that therefore the offended deity had sent lions amongst them. The word “therefore” occurs in the Authorised Version in the twenty-sixth verse, but it is not in the original: instead of the word “therefore” substitute the word “and,” because there is no argument intended: nothing is designed but a narrative of events.
The king of Assyria was ready to attend to the report of his people, and his method of meeting the difficulty was that one of the priests should be carried back to the land that he and his assistants might dwell there and teach them the manner of the God of the land. One of the priests was probably one of Jeroboam’s priests, not remarkable for dignity or holiness of character. This arrangement is to be put to the credit of the king of Assyria, for it does not appear that he attempted to proselytise the people to his own religion. There was a kind of rude regard paid to what we now term the right of private judgment. Nor is the arrangement adopted by Sargon destitute of a principle of philosophy. He might well suppose that the people would take more kindly to his domination if some concession were made to them on the ground of religion: Sargon said in effect Let the people practise their own religious rites, put themselves into a proper relation to their own God, amend their character as well as they can: because the more faithful they are to their own God the less likely are they to rebel against myself. Even wicked kings are not destitute of practical wisdom in all matters which affect their supremacy: that is to say, they make sentimental concessions, they are willing that any number of abstract resolutions should be passed, and that men should be quieted by that species of indulgence which does not interfere with political subservience and obedience. Benevolence of this kind should always be narrowly scrutinised. Sometimes men appear to be giving large liberties, when in reality they are not adding to substantial freedom.
It appears from the history that even the priest and his assistants did not succeed in their mission
“Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt” ( 2Ki 17:29 ).
The Babylonians were polytheists, and did not fear to multiply their gods in all the nations which they took in war. Instead of adopting the local religion they set up their own altars. The history reads very strangely at this point:
“And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim” ( 2Ki 17:30-31 ).
All these names are without significance to us, but being translated we seem to see to what depths of degradation heathenism brings its votaries. Succoth-benoth was made in the form of a hen taking care of her chickens; Nergal is supposed to signify a wood-cock, or a roost-cock; whilst Ashima is a goat or wolf, Nibhaz a dog, and Tartak an ass. Adrammelech and Anammelech were made in the shape of a horse and a mule. These descriptions may indeed be caricatures of the Babylonian religion, and are not to be too closely criticised. We should be restrained in all our endeavours to travesty even the religion of heathenism by a remembrance that the Christian religion itself has been caricatured and covered with contempt. On the other hand, it is to be remembered that idolaters have not been ashamed of their gods, and it is possible that though the symbol may have been rude, grotesque, and even offensive, yet the mind might even in spiritual bewilderment be looking beyond to the spiritual thought and the higher reality. Our laughter must be sometimes restrained in” the presence of some forms of idolatry. Men are not to be ridiculed out of their false religions. There will come a time in their education when they will understand the most mocking laugh, but until that time has come better treat even superstition with some measure of religious respect.
A curious instance is here seen of what we cannot better describe than as a double life:
“So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence” ( 2Ki 17:32-33 ).
Men made unto themselves of the lowest of the people priests of the high places. By the expression “the lowest of the people” we are not to understand the lowest classes or the most vulgar section of the community; we are rather to understand all ranks, so that the priesthood was really representative and not taken from one particular line or family. Notwithstanding all this priest-making, the people “served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.” All this sounds grotesque, but, rightly comprehended, it represents our own experience in a very awful and tragical light. We do not carry the God of the sabbath throughout all the days of the week with reverent and faithful consistency. Every man must decide for himself whether he does not really leave his God in the church at the close of the sabbath day’s exercises. It would seem as if in many instances our religion, or religions, corresponded with the clothes we wear; we have one suit for Sunday, another for holidays, another for festive occasions, and another for the ordinary work of life; how far it may be so in the matter of religious conviction and consistency must be left to every man to determine in his own particular case. When we read that the nations feared the Lord and served their graven images, we are really reading part of our own history. We have magnificent theories, but the epithet cannot be carried over to our practices. We have orthodoxy of the sublimest quality, nor will we permit any violent hand to be laid upon it at any point, for we regard it as altogether sacred; yet it is perfectly possible for us to have a theoretical orthodoxy and a practical heterodoxy, to be absolutely sound and unimpeachable in all our theological phrases, and yet to be rotten at the core when it comes to disposition, temper, and social conduct.
Prayer
Almighty God, if thou wilt look upon us our hearts will take hope again and be strong and fearless, and our whole nature shall go out in sacrifice and labour. But without thy look we cannot live. Thou hast called upon us to look unto thee and be saved, but the power to look must come from thee. We are undone, we are lost men; we know not of ourselves in what direction to look: for, behold, when we have looked we have seen nothing but a great cloud. It belongeth unto the Lord to point us to the saving One, the uplifted cross, the dying, atoning Son of God. We bless thee that we have heard of him, and that having sat at his feet, and heard his words, and having become accustomed to his method of teaching, we feel that he knows us altogether, every word is inspired by love as well as wisdom, and that his whole purpose is to save our souls. We see now what sometimes we have not seen. Thy Son could have had but one purpose. He was despised and rejected of men. We gave him small hospitality. He came unto his own, but his own received him not. He has been kept waiting outside, knocking upon the barred door, and seldom heard or cared for. Himself bore our sins, and carried our iniquities. He died for us, the just for the unjust All these were mysteries to us; we understood them not: we said, Beauty will attract attention, and goodness will win confidence, and benevolence will disarm criticism, and if this man be the Son of God, who could shut him out of the human heart? So foolish were we before thee, and utterly ignorant of ourselves, and of the inmost truth, and the larger reality of things: for we saw but appearances, and were misled by accidents, and so did we utter the fool’s speech. Now light has come; we see what sin is, we see what hardness of heart really means; we know now that it is possible and we burn with shame whilst we say it for the human heart to forget the eternal God. We have done the things we ought not to have done; all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way. We have done the things which we now confess to be wrong. Unless we do them again, Holy Spirit, dwell with us. We are not sure of ourselves even now. From the sanctuary we could throw ourselves down into great depths; from the very pinnacle of the temple we could leap into hell. Lord, protect us; Christ, defend us: Eternal Spirit, hear our cry! Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XVI
THE REIGNS OF HOSHEA (OF ISRAEL) AND HEZEKIAH (OF JUDAH)
2Ki 16:20-17:41
The reign of Hoshea is another new dynasty since Pekah was murdered; his dynasty has ended and Hoshea comes to the throne. Tiglath-Pileser says in his inscriptions that it was at his instigation that Hoshea rose up against Pekah and murdered him, and that it was upon his word that Hoshea was placed upon the throne and established there. So say the monumental inscriptions. This is the last dynasty and the last king in this awful history of the downfall of Israel. We come now to look at the first six years of the reign of Hezekiah. From this part of his reign we gather the following points:
First of all, let us look at his character as described thus: “He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him and he prospered whithersoever he went forth.” On Sunday night when I was a young pastor in Waco, I announced that as my text, “Nehushtan,” meaning, “It is only a piece of brass.” Moses made the serpent and it served admirably for -the healing of the people, and it was right to wish to keep a memorial of such a marvelous thing as the deliverance from the snakes in the desert, but there is a spirit in the world to worship the antique, to gather relics and to worship them, and so in later days that happened. The serpent that Moses had made became an object of worship. It became one of their gods. Now Hezekiah says, “It is just a piece of brass,” and he brake it in pieces. In the sermon I applied that to the misuses that are made of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; that when a priest stands over a wafer and mumbles a few words and says to the bread, “Thou art my God,” then it is time to say, “It is just a piece of bread”; time to say, “Nehushtan,” and when a man magnifies baptism until he finds the remission of his sins in a pool of water, and when it becomes such a sacrament that just to touch a wet finger to the brow of an unconscious babe will make it a member of Christ, then it is time to say, “Nehushtan.” That was the direction of my sermon.
Now let us see the great things done by Hezekiah. In his reformation he destroyed those high places throughout the whole country, so that Jehovah only was worshiped. Second, he destroyed not only the brazen serpent but he brought about a widespread spirit of iconoclasm. “Icon” means an image, and “Iconoclast,” an image breaker. One of the most notable features of the revolts against the Spaniards and against Rome in the lower countries was that the Iconoclasts came to the front. Crosses, images, anything in the world that men bow down to and worship violates the command, “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image and bow down before it to worship it”; all these the Iconoclasts broke to pieces. It intensified the bitterness between the Protestants in the Low Country and the Spaniards, and there were periods of Iconoclastic outbreakings in many other countries, but Hezekiah determined so far as he was concerned in the sense of his responsibility to God that no image however sacred in its memory, even as sacred as that of the brazen serpent, should be the object of worship, and to prevent it he would destroy the image. Image worship is exceedingly convenient. History tells us about an ancient people whose god was a piece of dough, flour dough, molded into form. There was this virtue about that god: that in a time of famine they could eat him. Isaiah uses sarcasm where he describes the image worship and how those gods were made; that having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not. Bob Ingersoll was fond of quoting rather than originating the saying, “A god is the noblest work of man.” In other words, he was saying that gods are made by men, and not men by gods. Well, anyhow, the gods that men make are not deities and we should break them as fast as we come to them.
The next thing that he did was to cleanse and renovate the Temple, inasmuch as his father had defiled it by putting in a new altar and closing up the holy place and breaking up all the services. So Hezekiah cleansed the Temple with great formality and publicity, and then reconsecrated it to the service of God. He put all of its furniture back into its proper place. He revised every important part of the worship, even the service of music. He re-established the Levitical choir and the Levitical instruments of praise and the use of the psalter was in existence before Hezekiah’s time. Then as the clouds were darkening around the Northern Kingdom, as their doom was impending, he sent out an invitation to all the true worshipers of God in the Northern Kingdom inviting them to come and join him in the great passover to be celebrated according to the law of Moses, and the record tells us that a multitude of the Northern Kingdom did come and align themselves with him in the observance of the Passover, and in connection with that we have this Scripture: “A multitude of the people even men of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written; but Hezekiah prayed for them saying, The Lord God pardon every one, that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary, and the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.” I call attention to that passage particularly on account of the use made of it by pedobaptists in replying to Baptists on the subject of communion. They say, “You Baptists insist upon the water cleansing before communion; that a man should not partake of the communion unless there has been the previous ablution of baptism. And as the communion was established on a Passover occasion it meant a transition from the Passover of the Old Testament to the Lord’s Supper of the New Testament, and as here in the days of Hezekiah were people who did partake of the Passover not according to the law, and God forgave them, so it ought to be in the communion.” The Baptist reply to it is, “You should not plead in defense of a custom of historical violation of the law, confessed to be a violation of the law, confessed to be a sin, a sin that had to be presented to God and for which pardon had to be obtained. Your Hezekiah case is against you.” So the Baptists have the best of it in this case.
Following that Passover he kept an additional seven days and this is said about it: “So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people; and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to the holy dwelling place, even unto heaven.” To me this account of the reformation wrought by Hezekiah has always been a most interesting section of the Bible to read and a most profitable one. I never read it without being impressed in my mind profoundly with the good that comes in going back to the first principles, in going back to God’s written word and there on the strength of that word sending up a petition to the throne of grace for mercy and being convinced that mercy and help and the power of God will come down upon us.
The next item in his reformation is that he restores all the original Levitical services and the whole tithe system for the support of those services. Now that is all I have to say here about the reign of Hezekiah.
We learn from the prophets that three mighty natural events occurred in this period. In 1:1 we have the statement that Amos commenced his prophecy in the second year before the great earthquake. There was an earthquake that figured in the memory of the people for a long time. In Zechariah 14 a much later prophecy, we find a reference to that great earthquake that came to pass during this period. Then in Amo 8:9 we have an account of an eclipse of the sun at midday which took place in this period, about 763 B.C. The sun went down at noon. That eclipse is not only mentioned in the Bible, but we find in the inscriptions on the monuments raised by neighboring nations a reference to that eclipse at that very date. Not only that, but modern astronomers by a mathematical calculation prove that just at that date an eclipse became visible to all parts of Palestine, a total eclipse of the sun.
Another great event that occurred during this period was the visit of the locusts set forth in Joel, one of the most vivid descriptions in human literature. There is much literature on the subject of locust plagues, from Moses’ account of them in the plague on Pharaoh to the latest account by travelers in Africa, but Joel’s description is the most remarkable in the world, except the one in Revelation which is a plague of symbolic locusts.
In connection with the reigns of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah there comes out on the stage the greatest of the prophets. The most evangelistic of all the prophets, Isaiah. The record tells us that he wrote the latter part of the history of Uzziah. Now it is in Isaiah particularly that we find the best description of the moral condition of the people during this period.
Now let us turn to Hoshea and the Northern Kingdom. In order to maintain the integrity of his kingdom, Hoshea pays tribute to Tiglath-Pileser. On the death of Tiglath-Pileser and the ascendancy of Shalmaneser he continues to pay a heavy tribute: “Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and brought him presents,” which means the paying of heavy tribute. He might have been secure upon his throne for years had he continued to pay this tribute, but he did not. He began to conspire with Egypt to throw off the yoke of Shalmaneser: “And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to the king of Egypt, and offered no presents to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year.” He conspired with the king of Egypt and refused to pay his tribute to Shalmaneser. This is the occasion of the downfall of Hoshea and of the end of the Northern Kingdom. Shalmaneser at once set in motion his armed force. Samaria is encompassed and besieged, and after a terrible siege with all the horrors attendant upon a siege in that country and age, Samaria fell into the hands of Shalmaneser. Shalmaneser dies and is succeeded by Sargon who captures Samaria and deports the inhabitants, and he says in one of his inscriptions that he carried off 27,290 people and placed them in the land of Assyria, leaving only the poorer classes in the country. This occurred in 722 B.C., the date of the fall of Samaria, and the end of the Northern Kingdom. We have the causes which led to it pictured in the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. Hoshea’s conspiring with Egypt and refusing to pay tribute to Assyria is the occasion for the destruction of the kingdom.
Notice the repeopling of the country: “And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Awa, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.” Now notice that the population is so scattered that the wild animals increase, the lions become so plentiful that they devour them, and the people feel that they haven’t the right god. They do not know the god of these hills, and they want to be taught how to worship him in the right way. So they appeal to the king of Assyria and he sends them a priest to teach them how to worship the good of this land, and the result is that we have a mixture, a conglomeration, a mongrel race, and a mongrel religion, described thus: “Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. . . . They feared the Lord and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.” They feared Jehovah whom they thought to be the god of this hill country, but they served other gods. So we have the strange mixture of these people brought from the various parts of Assyria, Jews who were residents of Israel, and all these other various forms of gods mixed up with Jehovah worship, a strange mixture indeed. These were the forerunners, or ancestors of the Samaritans, whom we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and in the New Testament. We know something of their attitude toward Israel. They have remained there from the time they were transported by Sargon unto this day, and today there is a colony of them there, about one hundred and seventy people, the remnant of this old mongrel race. They still have their old customs, their patriarchs, the Pentateuch, the law of Moses, and they keep the sabbath even more strictly than the Pharisees did. This closes the history of northern Israel.
QUESTIONS
1. Who was the last king of Israel and what was his character?
2. Who was king of Judah when Israel was carried into captivity and what was his character?
3. What did he do that no other king had done since the division of the kingdom?
4. What relic of Moses was worshiped by Israel and what did he do with it?
5. In what particulars did his religious reformation consist?
6. What were the essential points in the cleansing of the Temple?
7. Describe the reconsecration service.
8. Describe his keeping of the Passover, (1) as to the preparation, (2) as to celebration, (3) as to “other seven days,” (4) as to the results.
9. What were the essential points in Hezekiah’s further religious
10. What three remarkable events fall within this period and what their significance? .
11. What great prophet comes on the stage here and what was his greatest characteristic? , .
12. What was his relation to Uzziah and to this period of history!
13. What was the condition of Israel at this time, how did Hoshea try to extricate himself and what was the result?
14. Who was the king of Assyria at this time and where did he carry the children of Israel? .
15. What were the sins of Israel for which they were carried away into captivity? . .
16. What were God’s efforts to save them from their sins and what were the results?
17. How was Samaria repeopled?
18. What was their idea of God?
19 How did God rebuke the disregard of him by the new inhabitant?
20. What of the mixed character of the religion of the Samaritans?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
XVI
THE REIGNS OF HOSHEA (OF ISRAEL) AND HEZEKIAH (OF JUDAH)
2Ki 16:20-17:41
The reign of Hoshea is another new dynasty since Pekah was murdered; his dynasty has ended and Hoshea comes to the throne. Tiglath-Pileser says in his inscriptions that it was at his instigation that Hoshea rose up against Pekah and murdered him, and that it was upon his word that Hoshea was placed upon the throne and established there. So say the monumental inscriptions. This is the last dynasty and the last king in this awful history of the downfall of Israel. We come now to look at the first six years of the reign of Hezekiah. From this part of his reign we gather the following points:
First of all, let us look at his character as described thus: “He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him and he prospered whithersoever he went forth.” On Sunday night when I was a young pastor in Waco, I announced that as my text, “Nehushtan,” meaning, “It is only a piece of brass.” Moses made the serpent and it served admirably for -the healing of the people, and it was right to wish to keep a memorial of such a marvelous thing as the deliverance from the snakes in the desert, but there is a spirit in the world to worship the antique, to gather relics and to worship them, and so in later days that happened. The serpent that Moses had made became an object of worship. It became one of their gods. Now Hezekiah says, “It is just a piece of brass,” and he brake it in pieces. In the sermon I applied that to the misuses that are made of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; that when a priest stands over a wafer and mumbles a few words and says to the bread, “Thou art my God,” then it is time to say, “It is just a piece of bread”; time to say, “Nehushtan,” and when a man magnifies baptism until he finds the remission of his sins in a pool of water, and when it becomes such a sacrament that just to touch a wet finger to the brow of an unconscious babe will make it a member of Christ, then it is time to say, “Nehushtan.” That was the direction of my sermon.
Now let us see the great things done by Hezekiah. In his reformation he destroyed those high places throughout the whole country, so that Jehovah only was worshiped. Second, he destroyed not only the brazen serpent but he brought about a widespread spirit of iconoclasm. “Icon” means an image, and “Iconoclast,” an image breaker. One of the most notable features of the revolts against the Spaniards and against Rome in the lower countries was that the Iconoclasts came to the front. Crosses, images, anything in the world that men bow down to and worship violates the command, “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image and bow down before it to worship it”; all these the Iconoclasts broke to pieces. It intensified the bitterness between the Protestants in the Low Country and the Spaniards, and there were periods of Iconoclastic outbreakings in many other countries, but Hezekiah determined so far as he was concerned in the sense of his responsibility to God that no image however sacred in its memory, even as sacred as that of the brazen serpent, should be the object of worship, and to prevent it he would destroy the image. Image worship is exceedingly convenient. History tells us about an ancient people whose god was a piece of dough, flour dough, molded into form. There was this virtue about that god: that in a time of famine they could eat him. Isaiah uses sarcasm where he describes the image worship and how those gods were made; that having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not. Bob Ingersoll was fond of quoting rather than originating the saying, “A god is the noblest work of man.” In other words, he was saying that gods are made by men, and not men by gods. Well, anyhow, the gods that men make are not deities and we should break them as fast as we come to them.
The next thing that he did was to cleanse and renovate the Temple, inasmuch as his father had defiled it by putting in a new altar and closing up the holy place and breaking up all the services. So Hezekiah cleansed the Temple with great formality and publicity, and then reconsecrated it to the service of God. He put all of its furniture back into its proper place. He revised every important part of the worship, even the service of music. He re-established the Levitical choir and the Levitical instruments of praise and the use of the psalter was in existence before Hezekiah’s time. Then as the clouds were darkening around the Northern Kingdom, as their doom was impending, he sent out an invitation to all the true worshipers of God in the Northern Kingdom inviting them to come and join him in the great passover to be celebrated according to the law of Moses, and the record tells us that a multitude of the Northern Kingdom did come and align themselves with him in the observance of the Passover, and in connection with that we have this Scripture: “A multitude of the people even men of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written; but Hezekiah prayed for them saying, The Lord God pardon every one, that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary, and the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.” I call attention to that passage particularly on account of the use made of it by pedobaptists in replying to Baptists on the subject of communion. They say, “You Baptists insist upon the water cleansing before communion; that a man should not partake of the communion unless there has been the previous ablution of baptism. And as the communion was established on a Passover occasion it meant a transition from the Passover of the Old Testament to the Lord’s Supper of the New Testament, and as here in the days of Hezekiah were people who did partake of the Passover not according to the law, and God forgave them, so it ought to be in the communion.” The Baptist reply to it is, “You should not plead in defense of a custom of historical violation of the law, confessed to be a violation of the law, confessed to be a sin, a sin that had to be presented to God and for which pardon had to be obtained. Your Hezekiah case is against you.” So the Baptists have the best of it in this case.
Following that Passover he kept an additional seven days and this is said about it: “So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people; and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to the holy dwelling place, even unto heaven.” To me this account of the reformation wrought by Hezekiah has always been a most interesting section of the Bible to read and a most profitable one. I never read it without being impressed in my mind profoundly with the good that comes in going back to the first principles, in going back to God’s written word and there on the strength of that word sending up a petition to the throne of grace for mercy and being convinced that mercy and help and the power of God will come down upon us.
The next item in his reformation is that he restores all the original Levitical services and the whole tithe system for the support of those services. Now that is all I have to say here about the reign of Hezekiah.
We learn from the prophets that three mighty natural events occurred in this period. In Amo 1:1 we have the statement that Amos commenced his prophecy in the second year before the great earthquake. There was an earthquake that figured in the memory of the people for a long time. In Zechariah 14 a much later prophecy, we find a reference to that great earthquake that came to pass during this period. Then in Amo 8:9 we have an account of an eclipse of the sun at midday which took place in this period, about 763 B.C. The sun went down at noon. That eclipse is not only mentioned in the Bible, but we find in the inscriptions on the monuments raised by neighboring nations a reference to that eclipse at that very date. Not only that, but modern astronomers by a mathematical calculation prove that just at that date an eclipse became visible to all parts of Palestine, a total eclipse of the sun.
Another great event that occurred during this period was the visit of the locusts set forth in Joel, one of the most vivid descriptions in human literature. There is much literature on the subject of locust plagues, from Moses’ account of them in the plague on Pharaoh to the latest account by travelers in Africa, but Joel’s description is the most remarkable in the world, except the one in Revelation which is a plague of symbolic locusts.
In connection with the reigns of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah there comes out on the stage the greatest of the prophets. The most evangelistic of all the prophets, Isaiah. The record tells us that he wrote the latter part of the history of Uzziah. Now it is in Isaiah particularly that we find the best description of the moral condition of the people during this period.
Now let us turn to Hoshea and the Northern Kingdom. In order to maintain the integrity of his kingdom, Hoshea pays tribute to Tiglath-Pileser. On the death of Tiglath-Pileser and the ascendancy of Shalmaneser he continues to pay a heavy tribute: “Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and brought him presents,” which means the paying of heavy tribute. He might have been secure upon his throne for years had he continued to pay this tribute, but he did not. He began to conspire with Egypt to throw off the yoke of Shalmaneser: “And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to the king of Egypt, and offered no presents to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year.” He conspired with the king of Egypt and refused to pay his tribute to Shalmaneser. This is the occasion of the downfall of Hoshea and of the end of the Northern Kingdom. Shalmaneser at once set in motion his armed force. Samaria is encompassed and besieged, and after a terrible siege with all the horrors attendant upon a siege in that country and age, Samaria fell into the hands of Shalmaneser. Shalmaneser dies and is succeeded by Sargon who captures Samaria and deports the inhabitants, and he says in one of his inscriptions that he carried off 27,290 people and placed them in the land of Assyria, leaving only the poorer classes in the country. This occurred in 722 B.C., the date of the fall of Samaria, and the end of the Northern Kingdom. We have the causes which led to it pictured in the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. Hoshea’s conspiring with Egypt and refusing to pay tribute to Assyria is the occasion for the destruction of the kingdom.
Notice the repeopling of the country: “And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Awa, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.” Now notice that the population is so scattered that the wild animals increase, the lions become so plentiful that they devour them, and the people feel that they haven’t the right god. They do not know the god of these hills, and they want to be taught how to worship him in the right way. So they appeal to the king of Assyria and he sends them a priest to teach them how to worship the good of this land, and the result is that we have a mixture, a conglomeration, a mongrel race, and a mongrel religion, described thus: “Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. . . . They feared the Lord and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.” They feared Jehovah whom they thought to be the god of this hill country, but they served other gods. So we have the strange mixture of these people brought from the various parts of Assyria, Jews who were residents of Israel, and all these other various forms of gods mixed up with Jehovah worship, a strange mixture indeed. These were the forerunners, or ancestors of the Samaritans, whom we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and in the New Testament. We know something of their attitude toward Israel. They have remained there from the time they were transported by Sargon unto this day, and today there is a colony of them there, about one hundred and seventy people, the remnant of this old mongrel race. They still have their old customs, their patriarchs, the Pentateuch, the law of Moses, and they keep the sabbath even more strictly than the Pharisees did. This closes the history of northern Israel.
QUESTIONS
1. Who was the last king of Israel and what was his character?
2. Who was king of Judah when Israel was carried into captivity and what was his character?
3. What did he do that no other king had done since the division of the kingdom?
4. What relic of Moses was worshiped by Israel and what did he do with it?
5. In what particulars did his religious reformation consist?
6. What were the essential points in the cleansing of the Temple?
7. Describe the reconsecration service.
8. Describe his keeping of the Passover, (1) as to the preparation, (2) as to celebration, (3) as to “other seven days,” (4) as to the results.
9. What were the essential points in Hezekiah’s further religious
10. What three remarkable events fall within this period and what their significance? .
11. What great prophet comes on the stage here and what was his greatest characteristic? , .
12. What was his relation to Uzziah and to this period of history!
13. What was the condition of Israel at this time, how did Hoshea try to extricate himself and what was the result?
14. Who was the king of Assyria at this time and where did he carry the children of Israel? .
15. What were the sins of Israel for which they were carried away into captivity? . .
16. What were God’s efforts to save them from their sins and what were the results?
17. How was Samaria repeopled?
18. What was their idea of God?
19 How did God rebuke the disregard of him by the new inhabitant?
20. What of the mixed character of the religion of the Samaritans?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
2Ki 17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.
Ver. 1. Began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign. ] Heb., He reigned, sc., as an absolute king, and no longer a vassal or tributary to the king of Assyria as before. a
Over Israel nine years,
a Vatab.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
twelfth year. There was anarchy for nine years between Pekah and Hoshea. For, in 2Ki 15:30, Hoshea conspired against Pekah in the twentieth year of Jotham, which was the third year of Ahaz (20 – 12 = 8): for Ahaz began in Pekah’s seventeenth year (2Ki 16:1), and Hoshea began in Ahaz’s twelfth year. But Pekah’s twenty years end in Ahaz’s third year. (See App-50.
nine years: reckoned from twelfth of Ahaz. Hoshea kept under by the Assyrians till then. Compare Hos 10:14, where Shalman[eser] spoiled Betharbel in his first expedition, and would spoil Beth-el at his second,
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Kings, chapter seventeen. In the seventeenth chapter, we come to the death of the northern kingdom, the nation of Israel.
In the twelfth year when Ahaz was the king in Judah ( 2Ki 17:1 ),
That’s the king of the southern kingdom.
Hoshea began to reign in Samaria over Israel. He reigned for nine years. He did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD ( 2Ki 17:1-2 ),
So, unfortunately, Israel did not have one single king of which it was not testified that he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Not one king of Israel followed after the Lord from the very beginning of Jeroboam, when the kingdom was divided into the northern and southern kingdom. From Jeroboam onward, all of the kings did evil in the sight of the Lord. It is interesting that as the king goes, so went the nation so often. And the nations following after God or turning from God was largely dependent upon the influence of the king. And so the Assyrians came up against them.
Shalmaneser the king of Assyria; and Hoshea became a servant; he began to pay tribute unto Shalmaneser. But the king of Assyria found him conspiring: for they had sent to the king of Egypt for help ( 2Ki 17:3-4 ).
They had taken the money that they were supposed to send for tribute, and they sent it to the king of Egypt to hire mercenaries to come and to fight against Assyria.
So the Assyrians came again [and they circled the city and they captured it and they bound him up and placed him in prison] after sieging Samaria for three years ( 2Ki 17:5 ).
And in the ninth year Hoshea the king of Assyria.
In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, in Habor by the river Gozan, and the city of the Medes ( 2Ki 17:6 ).
Now God begins to enumerate His indictment against Israel and lists the reasons why Israel, a once great and powerful nation. The people who were once known as the people of God and have been a strong and powerful nation. But God lists His indictment against them, the reasons why they became weak. The reasons why they were defeated and fell to their enemies.
And so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of the Pharaoh, and they feared other gods ( 2Ki 17:7 ),
The first indictment is their failure to be what God wanted them to be, the missing of the mark. They sinned against the Lord, and they served… they began to reverence and worship and serve other gods. This was caused partially by a misinterpreting of their history. They failed to realize that it was God that made them great. It was their relationship to God that made them strong. It was God who brought them out of Egypt. It was God who brought them through the wilderness. It was God who brought them in the land. It was God who caused them to possess the land and to defeat their enemies. But they began to misinterpret their history and they began to attribute their greatness and their victories to other things: to other gods.
They build the golden calf, two of them. Set one in Dan and one in Bethel, and the king said, “These are the gods that brought you out of Israel.” And they began to forsake the true and the living God and worshipped the gods that they had made with their own hands.
Now a man has to worship something. It’s just innate within us; I’ve got to worship something. There is a void within that I am seeking to fill. It is a spiritual void. I’ve got to fill it with something. And if I don’t fill it with the true and the living God, I’m going to fill it with garbage, the garbage of nonsense. I will, as the humanistic philosophy says today, I will take my leap of faith. I must take the leap of faith. For they say the lower story of reality is only despair and man can’t live in despair. So man must take the leap of faith into the upper story of a non-reasoned religious experience. And the world today is filled with non-reasoned religious experiences.
I read in this month’s issue of The Reader’s Digest of the Scientology and how the whole thing started. Some guy was a writer, and he was writing for a penny a word. And he said writing for a penny a word, you’ll never make any money. And so he said the only way to make money is to develop a new religion. And so he developed Scientology with the purpose of making himself wealthy. And he succeeded, because there’s a bunch of stupid people who are willing to let their minds be bent to become the robots and the merchandisers for these purveyors of ignorance. And Dianetics and all of this kind of things and his supposed stories and all. And Reader’s Digest really has quite an article on the background and all of Scientology, this month’s issue. You might find it, I did, very, very fascinating indeed. But it only helps point out how, when man forsakes the true and the living God, he is an open sucker for anything that will come along. He’ll believe in stupidity. He’ll believe in nothing. He’ll worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. He begins to worship his body needs and body appetites and the fulfillment thereof.
So the children of Israel sinned against the Lord. They turned from God, but they sought to fill the void in the worship of the other gods. They misinterpreted their history, and they began to attribute the greatness to characteristics of their own nationality. “We’re tough people. We’re hearty people. We’re smart people. We have a democratic system of government. We have a free enterprise system. This is what makes a nation great. This is what makes the nation strong.” And we begin to attribute the greatness and the strength to these other things rather than to the fact that we were a nation founded in God. And that God was the strength because God was the heart of the nation, and thus, there was strength because of the moral strength that was in the heart of the nation because the people worshipped and served God.
But when the planks that hold the people and the nation together, when these moral planks begin to decay, and begin to rot, then the nation surely cannot stand much longer and the planks have become so rotten. The moral decay have become so great in Israel that the nation could no longer stand.
And so the children of Israel did secretly those things which were not right in the eyes of God, they built the high places in the cities, and the towers in order to worship the strange gods. They set up images. And they burned incense in all the high places, until the LORD carried them away captive: they served the idols, whereof the LORD said, You should not do this thing. The LORD testified against them, He sent His prophets unto them to warn them but they failed to listen to the prophets of God. They did not hearken to the servants, the prophets said, Turn you from your evil ways, keep God’s commandments and statutes. But they would not hear, they hardened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenants that he had made with their fathers, and the testimonies which he had testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain ( 2Ki 17:9-15 ).
That is always the effect of following vanity. You become vain. The word vanity is emptiness. Following emptiness, you become empty. Now, it is interesting that people today are following after emptiness in their pursuit of happiness. It seems that the goal of man today is to be happy. And we all have in our own minds that mental concept of what it will take to make me happy. Happiness is… you know, and each of you can finish that sentence yourself, because each of you have in your mind that which you think it would take to make you happy. Happiness is a million dollars in the bank. The bank may fold tomorrow. Happiness is a yacht. Happiness is a house on Lido Island. Happiness is, you know.
Happiness is an experience that results in the right relationship with God. The rest is the pursuit of happiness. But in our pursuit, we are oftentimes pursuing after things that, in themselves, are empty and unfulfilling. They may bring us moments of excitement and moments of pleasure, moments of joy, but no true lasting happiness.
Through my mind races the college years and all of the things that we used to do for excitement and to have an exciting evening. And I would hate to share them because some young kids might get things in their mind they hadn’t thought of before. We used to grease the street car tracks at an incline and just sit on the side and just laugh and roll as the thing just was there spinning its wheels, you know. I only say that because the kids don’t have streetcars anymore. When it’s parked downtown, just run up behind it and pull the thing off the wire, you know. Hear the bell ringing and the lights go out in the streetcar and all that. And you just run up the street again, do anything, and you just laugh, and big joke, you know. Oh, it was fun, but the next night, you’re looking for something else. You know, it doesn’t last. It’s good for ten, fifteen minutes. But there’s nothing lasting to it.
The pursuit of the world: following after emptiness, they’ve become empty.
and they went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD charged them, you should not do like them ( 2Ki 17:15 ).
Now, here is one thing that we’ve got to be careful about, because there is strong pressure today for us to do exactly this. To do like the world around us. Today the world around us is governed by a humanistic philosophy, which declares that there is nothing really evil or wrong in and of itself. For there is no absolute good or bad. It is all relative to your culture, to your background, to the area where you live, to the mores of society, and the mores are always that which determines what is right and what is wrong within a society. And so the sociologists point to the mores of the New Guinea culture, or the mores of some South American Indian tribe, or the mores of the Eskimos, and so forth. And they can prove that any kind of a relationship is accepted and is good in particular societies. So it all depends upon your society whether or not a relationship is right or wrong.
Wrong. There are absolutes as far as morals are concerned. God has laid down the absolutes, but the men of Israel, the people of Israel had made the mistake of following the mores of the society around them, and following the mores of that society, they became corrupted before God. And being corrupted before God, they were destroyed. And the greatness and the strength of the nation was sapped and they became weak morally. Weak spiritually, and then it only follows that they were to be destroyed as a nation. For the true strength of any nation lies in the moral planks upon which that nation stands.
God sent his servants, the prophets. They cried out against the way the people were living. But they were accused of being bigoted, narrow-minded, old fashioned, prudent, and the people would not hearken. And thus, the nation fell. Now God had given them other warnings; God had allowed them to fall, really, in the battle even against small nations. Not totally defeated, but they were once ruling over Moab, and the Moabites rebelled against them. The Moabites were not a big people. They were not a strong people. They were just a little nation. But Israel had become so weak they could not subdue Moab and bring it back under their control.
And seeing that Moab had made a successful incursion against them, then the Edomites decided to rebel from their control. And the other small nations, one by one seeing and being encouraged by the weakness of Israel began to pick on Israel. Began to battle against them, and they were unable to win a decisive victory over them. And even then, they didn’t recognize their weakness. Even then, they were deceived as Samson, who, once his hair was cut off and his vow before God was broken, knew not that he was weak as other men. And when Delilah said, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you.” He said, “I will shake myself as at other times and go out against them.” And he did not know that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. And he fell before the hands of the Philistines, because without the power of God’s Spirit, he was weak just like anybody else.
And without God, our nation is weak just like anybody else. And our nation is turned from God. We have turned from actually having God at the heart and the center of our national life. And though we still print on the coin, “In God we trust,” it seems almost a travesty. And though the Bible was the first textbook, and the only textbook in the first public school in America, yet now, because of the decisions of the Supreme Court, we cannot even have a Bible class in a public school that the children can attend at their own discretion. Nor can there be public prayers offered within the schoolroom. Of course, the kids violate that every time a test comes along.
The nation has become weak. And now the little nations are beginning to pick on us. North Korea, unable to defeat them. South and North Vietnam, they defeated us. Iran, they are mocking us. They’re taking advantage of us. They know we’re too weak to react, to respond, and it will be some other nation next. And after that, another. Because we have proven our inability to react or to respond. And it is only encouraging the enemy, and it is only a matter of time until Russia makes her move. And believe me, if we can’t defeat the little vassals of Russia, how in the world do we ever expect to defeat Russia? We can’t.
Again, the Reader’s Digest, this month’s issue has another very interesting article concerning the policies of our President Carter, which has led us into this dilemma, and how impossible it is for us to get out of it even with our greatest efforts until at least 1985. You’ll find that in a very fascinating article, this month’s Reader’s Digest. I don’t get a commission on that magazine either.
So the death of a nation. It’s always sad. It’s always tragic to see a nation that was once strong, once mighty, once glorious, to see it die. To watch it in its agony of death. To stand helplessly by and know there is nothing you can do. We see our nation today in the agony of death. The same conditions that prevailed in Israel prevail in our nation today. We have turned our backs upon God. We have made materialism, pleasure, intellectual pursuits the master passions of our lives. We have turned from the true and the living God. We’ve become weak. We failed to realize that it was God that made us strong. That it was God’s grace that was shed upon us that made us a mighty nation. And we’ve began to attribute the greatness to other things and to declare the praises of the free enterprise system or of the democratic system of government and all, rather than to praise and thank God for His strength and what He has done. And I am convinced that unless there is a great spiritual revival and a turning to God in the United States, that we will fall before 1985.
So God gives His indictment against them, and in verse twenty-three he concludes.
Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day ( 2Ki 17:23 ).
In 721 BC, the northern kingdom fell to Assyria. And the king of Assyria had a practice of taking the people, all of them, out of the land, and taking them to other places, scattering them, and then re-populating them in strange places.
It would be like if Russia should defeat us now, and they move all of the people out of the United States to various provinces in Russia, down into the area of the Caucasus, and down through the areas of Estonia, and up through Latvia, and to Siberia. And all of a sudden you’re living in a city where maybe there are only three other Americans and there’s a hundred thousand Russians. You can’t speak their language and everything is strange. It’s strange culture and all. You’re completely alienated. You’re demoralized. There’s no way you can get together to rebel against this kind of pardon. Thus was the practice of the Assyrians.
So subduing their enemies that there is no recovering from it. As they re-populate them into other areas where they have no chance of getting together and forming a united kind of a rebellion against what has happened to them. And so, thus happened with the nation Israel by Assyria, and they became scattered, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom.
Now the Assyrians then took other nations that they had conquered and they brought the people from those other nations and they established them in this strange area to them, the area of Samaria. Totally uprooted them, brought them into an area that they were totally unfamiliar with. And they set them in the area of Samaria.
And so it was when they these other people first began to dwell in the land of Samaria [the land of Israel there, the northern part], that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, and began to destroy the people ( 2Ki 17:25 ).
And so they came to the king of Assyria and they said, “Hey, we don’t understand the ways of the gods of the land. And lions and wild beasts are killing our people. So send someone to teach us the ways of the gods of the land so that we can live in that land.” And so the king got one of the priests and he sent him back unto Samaria, and the priest taught them the ways of the Lord. And then there is a very interesting scripture. So it said,
And they feared the LORD, but served their own gods ( 2Ki 17:33 ),
Oh, what a picture of so many people today. They respect the Lord. They acknowledge the Lord. They give obeisance to the Lord. But they serve their own gods. They may even sing praises unto the Lord. They may listen to the records about the Lord. They acknowledge the Lord that He exists. But when it comes down to their life and their lifestyles, they’re actually serving other gods. Now Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters: you’re either going to love the one, and hate the other; or hold to the one, and despise the other. And you cannot serve God and mammon” ( Mat 6:24 ); which was, of course, another god of those days. The god of power represented by money.
How many people today reverence, fear the Lord, but yet, they serve other gods. It’s like Bob Dillon saying, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” And it isn’t the one that you really are reverencing so much as the one that you’re actually serving that really counts. Who are you serving? Are you serving the gods of your own creation? Your own lust? Your own desires? Or are you serving the true and the living God, obedient unto His Word and to His commands? And so a real paradox here. “Fear the Lord, serve their own gods.”
“
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
2Ki 17:1
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
While Ahaz occupied the throne of Judah, Hoshea, by the murder of Pekah, succeeded to the throne of Israel. His reign, too, was evil, although he did not descend to the depths of some of those who had preceded him. He was the last of the kings of Israel.
The stroke of the divine judgment, long hanging over the guilty people, fell at last, and Shalmaneser came up against Israel, first making the people tributary, and after three years carrying them away captive.
In this chapter the historian is at great pains to declare why they were thus carried away. The charge is explicitly stated in verses seven to twelve. Disobedience to Jehovah, conformity to the nations from which they had been separated, secret practice of abominations, and eventually public idolatry–these were the sins which finally brought down the stroke of national destruction. These evils they did, moreover, in spite of God’s patience and warning. “The Lord testified unto Israel, and unto Judah, by the hand of every prophet, and of every seer.”
These messages they would not hear. They rejected His statutes, they forsook His commandments, they practiced all the abominations of the heathen. Therefore. “the Lord was very angry,” and cast them out. Their sin was first against law, but finally it was against patient love.
In this chapter also we have a remarkable passage having no direct connection with the history which is being traced. It is the story of an attempt made by the king of Assyria to colonize Samaria, from which he had taken captive the children of Israel. It is not easy for any people to take possession of what a divinely appointed nation failed to possess. As the colonists set up their own evil worship, divine judgment fell on them. They endeavored to accommodate their practices to what they conceived to be the manner of the God of the land. It is of these people that the remarkable words were written, “They feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” The result necessarily was the degradation of the land and the people.
A most solemn and heart-searching lesson is taught by this paragraph. If God’s witnesses fail, the issue is worse than previous conditions. The dreadful mixture of heathen practice and abomination with an attempt to make use of divinely revealed religion produces a corruption more fearful than anything else. Instances of the working of this principle in the history of the Christian Church have not been wanting.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Cause of Israels Weakness
2Ki 17:1-12
This chapter reads like a page from the books of the great white throne. Hoshea, the last king of Israel, did not follow in all the evil deeds of his eighteen predecessors, but the degeneracy of the nation was too far advanced for anything to arrest its collapse. The dry-rot had eaten its way through the specious covering. Worldly policy was the immediate cause of the nations downfall. Had they obeyed God simply and absolutely, they could have trusted Him to maintain their independence. But they chose to enter into alliances, now with Syria, and then with Egypt, and so became entangled in the wars of their allies. See Hos 7:11; Hos 9:3; Hos 9:6; Hos 12:1, etc.
Let us read carefully the bill of divorce which the Heavenly Husband gave to the recreant people whom he put away. It is a pathetic document from 2Ki 17:7 onward; but none can say that Jehovah had not good and sufficient cause for acting as he did. The wonder is that He bore so long with the apostate race. Read Hos 1:1-11; Hos 2:1-23; Hos 3:1-5 to learn how the divine heart was rent when the hour of separation came: but let us not forget the assurances of Rom 11:1-36, that the true Israel shall ultimately be saved.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Hoshea
(Deliverer)
2Ki 15:30; 17:1-6
Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath.-Pro 29:8
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. He was the last of the nineteen kings who ruled (or, rather, misruled) Israel. An interregnum of at least eight years (see Hezekiah) occurred between the murder of Pekah, his predecessor, and his actual assumption of the throne. Why this kingless interval, we have no means of knowing, nor how the time was occupied. Josephus, even if we could always trust him, gives us no help here (the usual way of re-writers, or would-be improvers, of Scripture history), for he passes the subject over in silence. But Gods word has chronicled Hosheas wickedness thus: And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. There is nothing in the last clause of the above that could be construed to Hosheas credit, for the Assyrian plunderers had in all probability removed and carried away the golden calves of Dan and Bethel. See Hos 10:5-8. If he did not worship them, or other abominations, it was not because he abhorred idols (Rom 2:22).
But his evil doings, whatever their character, speedily brought the Assyrian, the rod of Gods anger, upon him and his iniquitous subjects. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. He who conspired against his weaker Israelitish master attempted the same (to his sorrow) with his powerful Gentile lord. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.
What follows, in reference to the siege of Samaria, occurred, in point of time, before Hosheas imprisonment, though recorded after. Hosheas imprisonment was not before the capture of Samaria, but the sacred writer first records the eventual fate of Hoshea himself, then details the invasion as it affected Samaria and Israel (Fausset). Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. This siege and capture of Samaria are recorded on the monuments of Assyria just as they are narrated here in 2 Kings 17. What finally became of Hoshea is not revealed, unless he is the king meant in the prophets poetic allusion, As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the wa- ter (Hos 10:7). His name means deliverer, and may have a prophetic significance, as a gracious reminder to the now long scattered nation, of that great Deliverer who shall come out of Zion (Gods grace) and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And then, and so, all Israel shall be saved (Rom 11:26).
A brief review of Israels course and its consequences is now given us: as in 2Ch 36:15-23 the end Judahs kingdom is given us, with a glimpse, there, of coming mercy to a remnant.
So instructive and touching is the inspired review given of Israels downward course, in the passage following what has been already quoted (in reference to the siege and capture of Samaria), that we cannot forbear repeating it here in full:
And it was so, because the children of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods; and they walked in the statutes of the nations that Jehovah had dispossessed from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly against their God things that were not right; and they built them high places in all their cities, from the watchmens tower to the fortified city. And they set them up columns [or statutes] and Asherahs on every high hill and under every green tree; and there they burned incense on all the high places, as did the nations that Jehovah had carried away from before them, and they wrought wicked things to provoke Jehovah to anger; and they served idols, as to which Jehovah had said to them, Ye shall not do this thing. And Jehovah testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the prophets, all the seers, saying, Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments, my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through My servants the prophets. But they would not hear, and hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, who did not believe in Jehovah their God. And they rejected His statutes, and His covenant which He had made with their fathers, and His testimonies which He had testified unto them; and they followed vanity and became vain, and [went] after the nations that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them. And they forsook all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images, two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the host of the heavens, and served Baal; and they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger. Therefore Jehovah was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight. There remained but the tribe of Judah only. Also Judah kept not the commandments of Jehovah their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they had made. And Jehovah rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hands of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight. For Israel had rent [the kingdom] from the house of David; and they had made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king; and Jeroboam violently turned Israel from following Jehovah, and made them sin a great sin. And the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them: until Jehovah had removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said through all His servants the prophets, and Israel was carried away out of their own land to Assyria, unto this day (2Ki 17:7-23, N. Tr.).
It has been truly observed that the most dismal picture of Old Testament history is that of the kingdom of Israel. Of the nine distinct dynasties that successively ruled the dissevered tribes, three ended with the total extirpation of the reigning family. The kingdom continued for a period of about two hundred and fifty years, and the inspired records of those eventful two-and-a-half centuries of Israels kings and people furnish us with little more than repeated and fearful exhibitions of lawlessness and evil. Out of the nineteen kings that reigned from the great schism to the deportation to the land of Assyria, only seven died natural deaths (Baasha, Omri, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II., and Menahem); seven were assassinated (Nadab, Elah, Joram, Zachariah, Shallum, Pekaiah, and Pekah); one committed suicide (Zimri); one died of wounds received in battle (Ahab); one was struck by the judgment of God (Jeroboam); one died of injuries received from a fall (Ahaziah); and the other, and last (Hoshea), apparently was cut off as foam upon the water. To this not unmeaning array of facts must be added two prolonged periods of anarchy, when there was no king in Israel, every man doing, in all likelihood, that which was right in his own eyes.
The kingdom of Judah continued for more than a century and a quarter after the kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist, making its history fully one-third longer than that of the ten tribes. Then it too, like its sister-kingdom, fell into disintegration and decay, and was given up to the first universal empire, under the renowned Nebuchadnezzar. This world-monarchy began the times of the Gentiles, during which the Most High ruleth over [not in, as in A. V.] the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will (Dan 4:25)-setting up over it, at times, even the basest of men (as Belshazzar, the last Darius, Alexander, Nero, etc.). Since that day empire has superseded empire, dynasty has supplanted dynasty, and king succeeded king, as God has said, I will overturn, overturn, overturn it! This also shall be no [more], until He come whose right it is; and I will give it [to Him] (Eze 21:27, N. Tr.). It is till He come, which, we hope, will be very soon; and then the eye of weeping, waiting Israel shall see the King in His beauty.
But before this, one, the wilful king, the profane, wicked prince of Israel (the Antichrist), must come. And from his unworthy head shall be removed the mitre-crown (see Eze 21:25, 26, N. Tr.), to be placed, with many others, on the once thorn-crowned brow of Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. That, Christian reader, will be our highest joy and glory, to see Him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, honored and owned by all, as Gods First-born, higher than the kings of the earth.
The Ruler over men shall be just,
Ruling in the fear of God;
And He shall be as the light of the morning,
Like the rising of the sun,
A morning without clouds,
When, from the sunshine after rain,
The green grass springeth from the earth.
For this is all my salvation,
And every desire
(2Sa 23:3-5, N. Tr.)
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
7. Assyria Conquers Israel and the Captivity
CHAPTER 17
1. Hoshea, Israels last king (2Ki 17:1-2)
2. Shalmaneser imprisons Hoshea (2Ki 17:3-4)
3. Israel carried into captivity (2Ki 17:5-6)
4. Retrospect and Israels sins (2Ki 17:7-23)
5. The colonization of Samaria (2Ki 17:24-41)
Israels last king was Hoshea. His name means deliverance. It indicates what might have been had he and the people repented of their sins. The record of his character is brief. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel before him. This does not mean that he improved. The golden calves had been taken away by the Assyrian from Bethel and Dan, so that he could no longer sin like Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and the other kings of Israel. Hosea had predicted this (Hos 10:5-8).
Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, then came against him, and Hoshea became his servant. The Biblical account is meager, but the Assyrian inscriptions have a great deal to say about this period. Shalmanesers name is given in these inscriptions as Salmanu-ussir and Hosheas as A-usi. From these inscriptions we learn that after the siege of Samaria had lasted two years Shalmaneser was succeeded by Sargon, who took Samaria in the first year of his reign. While Sargon is not mentioned in the record here it is significant that the capture of Samaria is not attributed to Shalmaneser. Both passages, 2Ki 17:6; 2Ki 18:10-11, speak only of the king of Assyria. These inscriptions declare that Sargon captured Samaria, led away 27,290 of its inhabitants and appointed a governor over Samaria. There is also a record of the deportation of Israel and the colonization of the land. What would these interesting ancient inscriptions mean if it were not for the Bible? Again we say they are proven true because the Word of God confirms them.
Hoshea had, after he had become the vassal of the king of Assyria, made a conspiracy against the king by sending messengers to So, king of Egypt, and then he refused to pay the tribute. (The proper reading of So is given as Seve or Sava. By the Greeks he is called Saba Kon on the monuments Shabaka, in cuneiform inscriptions Shabi-i.) He was imprisoned and we hear nothing whatever of his fate. (Hos 10:7 tells of his death.) Samaria completely in the hands of the king of Assyria, the people were carried away captives into Assyria. The places are given, but beyond this little is known. Nor do we know anything about their subsequent history. They did not return from the captivity. Various attempts have been made to locate them. The American Indians, the Afghans, Armenians, Nestorians and others have been mentioned as the descendants of the ten tribes, but no substantial evidence can be given to verify this supposition. The so-called Anglo-Israel theory is so full of unreasonable speculations and inventions that it does not deserve any consideration. God knows where they are located, and in His own time He will surely gather them and together with the remnant of the house of Judah bring them back to their land. At that time the many unfulfilled promises made to Israel and to Judah will all be literally fulfilled.
There is next given a solemn retrospect of the history of the house of Israel. Judah is also mentioned. The record shows the awful apostasy and the great patience of Jehovah in delaying the threatened judgment.
The account of the colonization of Samaria by the King of Assyria is interesting. It gives the history of the Samaritans, which emanated from this mixture of races and religions and which were responsible for much trouble after the return of the Jewish remnant from the exile. The priest who was returned from Assyria to teach religious rites to the colonists settled in Bethel, where Jeroboam had instituted the idolatrous worship, which had dragged Israel down, produced a new religion, partly Israelitish and partly heathenish, like the mixed multitude which dwelt in the land.
Thus ended the Kingdom of Israel. Out of the nineteen kings which reigned seven were murdered, one died from wounds received on the battlefield, one died from a fall out of the window, one was struck down by the judgment of God and one committed suicide.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
am 3274, bc 730
In the twelfth: In 2Ki 15:30, this is said to be “the twentieth year of Jotham,” which Calmet thus reconciles: “Hosea conspired against Pekah, the 20th year of the reign of this prince, which was the 18th of Jotham, king of Judah. Two years after this, that is, the 4th of Ahaz and the 20th of Jotham, Hosea made himself master of a part of the kingdom, according to 2Ki 15:30. Finally, the 12th year of Ahaz, Hosea had peaceable possession of the whole kingdom, agreeably to 2Ki 17:1.”
Hoshea: “After an interregnum, 2Ki 15:30, 2Ki 18:9.” 2Ki 17:1
Reciprocal: Deu 28:52 – General 1Ki 16:24 – the name of the city 2Ki 18:1 – in the third Hos 8:8 – swallowed Hos 13:11 – General Zec 1:18 – four
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Ki 17:1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz, began Hoshea to reign He usurped the kingdom in Ahazs fourth year; but either was not owned as king by the generality of the people, or was not accepted and established in his kingdom till Ahazs twelfth year. Nine years After his confirmation and peaceable possession of his kingdom; for in all he reigned seventeen or eighteen years; twelve with Ahaz, who reigned sixteen years, and six with Hezekiah.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2Ki 17:1. The twelfth year of Ahaz. Hoshea did not get confirmed in the kingdom of nine years, for in 2Ki 15:30 it is said that he began to reign the twentieth year of Jotham. Either there is some mistake in the transcriber, or there was an interregnum.
2Ki 17:4. So, king of Egypt. Dean Prideaux is confident, out of Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, that this So is Sabacon, an Ethiopian by birth, who swayed the sceptre of Egypt.
2Ki 17:6. Placed them in Halah and in Habor. These are called rivers, which run into the Caspian sea. They were also dispersed in the cities of the Medes, almost a thousand miles east of Samaria. Thus was fulfilled the prophecies of Moses against the apostate race of Israel. The Assyrians were at this time masters of the Medes, and the cruel policy of that bloody nation was to break the heart of all captives, and remove them away like cattle. Enquiries have in all ages been made for remnants of this dispersion of the ten tribes. Dr. Claudius Buchanan, twelve years a missionary in India, and a learned traveller, says, There exists a nation of Jews in India called Affgans. This nation hitherto reputed Mahomedans, are really Jews, and in complete possession of the old testament. The doctor adds, there are two other colonies of Jews in Cochin, the one white, and the other black. Their number is about sixteen thousand. They possess the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the book of Job. They seem to know nothing of the prophets, but still hope for the Messiah. The Samaritans were also mixed remnants of the ten tribes.
2Ki 17:25. The Lord sent lions among them. The destructive character of the Assyrian wars had so depopulated the countries, that the wild beasts of mount Lebanon multiplied.
2Ki 17:28. One of the priests, a son of Aaron, true to his God, succeeded ultimately in teaching those strangers, and in prevailing with them to put away their idols, which could not defend Samaria, nor now protect them from the lions.
2Ki 17:30. Succoth-benoth. The learned Selden relieves us here, by saying that the Greeks, as is usual with them, changed the letters B for V, which makes Venoth, Venos, or Venus. The rabbins read here, tabernacula filiarum, daughters of the tabernacle, stars or satellites, or sanctified harlots that surround the temple of the goddess. Herodotus says, that at the festivals the worshippers assemble before the temple, when the lower sort of people prostitute themselves to the goddess, but that the better sort attend only to pay their respects to her.
2Ki 17:31. Burnt their children to Adrammelech. It should read, Adram- Moloch, and Anam-Moloch, as we often find Baal joined to the name of the place where the idol was adored. Thus ended the kingdom of the ten tribes; it began in apostasy and strife, was perpetuated by wars, by superstition, and rivers of blood. This kingdom, according to Usher, continued about two hundred and fifty four years. What other end can be expected of a nation, guided by evil counsel, and supported by wicked means.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2Ki 17:1-6. Reign of Hoshea and Destruction of Samaria.Hoshea has been previously mentioned (2Ki 15:30). According to the inscription of Tiglath-pileser, Hoshea was put on the throne by the Assyrians. Shalmaneser V (pp. 59, 70) reigned from 727 to 722 B.C., and the fall of Samaria was in 722. So, king of Egypt (2Ki 17:4), has been identified with Sabako, the founder of the 25th Dynasty. Our narrative presents considerable historical difficulties. Shalmaneser is said (2Ki 17:3) to have attacked Hoshea because he refused tribute, and to have shut him up in prison. Then (2Ki 17:5) the king came and besieged Samaria for three years, and in the ninth year of Hoshea he took it. But the short reign of Shalmaneser leaves little time for three years siege and an earlier expedition. The king of Assyria who took Samaria was Sargon (722706 B.C.).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
HOSHEA REIGNING IN ISRAEL
(vv.1-4)
Hoshea had conspired against and killed Pekah (ch.15:30), so that Hoshea began to reign over Israel in the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah. He reigned only nine years. In common with previous kings of Israel, he did evil in the sight of the Lord, but did not sink to the same wicked level as others had (v.2).
At this time Assyria was becoming more and more aggressive and Hoshea found it necessary to submit to the king of Assyria by paying him tribute (v.3). However, the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had sent messengers to Egypt, evidently with the desire that Egypt should back up Israel in resisting Assyria. Hoshea apparently thought that with this backing he could cease sending tribute to Assyria, but the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison (v.4). No record is given of Hoshea’s death.
THE CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL BY ASSYRIA
(vv.5-23)
In Chapter 15:29 we have read of Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria taking captive the Israelites east of Jordan and all the land of Naphtali. Now we read that the king of Assyria besieged Samaria for three years, finally taking it and all Israel, moving captives to areas in Assyria, Halah and the cities of the Medes. This was a sweeping judgment of God against His people Israel, and the ten tribes have never been restored to their land since that time. It was evidently before this, during the first six years of Hezekiah’s reign in Judah that Hezekiah sent messengers to Israel to invite them to come to Jerusalem for his great Passover. Compare 1Ki 18:10; 2Ch 30:1-11). Now that God has allowed this great dispersion of the ten tribes, only a miraculous intervention of God at the end of the Tribulation will bring His people Israel back to their land.
A RECAPITULATION OF ISRAEL’S HISTORY
(vv.7-23)
Verse 7 now reminds Israel that though God had kindly brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the bondage of Pharaoh, yet from that time they continually sinned against the Lord and had feared other gods (v.7). They had followed the statutes of the nations the Lord had expelled from the land of Canaan before the children of Israel (v.8). Though warned against this many times. Israel paid no attention to God’s warnings.
Adding to their disobedience, they did secretly things they knew were not right against the Lord (v.9). Were they so dense they did not consider the Lord sets “our secret sins in the light of His countenance?” (Psa 90:8). But unbelief does not give credit to God for being who He is. They also built for themselves (not for God) high places in all their cities. These high places were for professed worship, but God had told them their worship must be in the place that He would choose, – Jerusalem.
They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on high bills and under green trees. They would no doubt say that these things were to remind them of God, but God had forbidden such things, and using them always lowered God in their estimation, so that the things themselves eventually became the objects of their worship. They burned incense (which speaks of worship) in the high places “like the nations” who were dispossessed for such evil, and did wicked things that provoked the anger of the Lord (v.11).
They served idols in spite of the Lord’s warnings not to do such things and in spite of His testifying against them when they did so, sending many prophets to command them to turn from their wicked ways and keep God’s commandments (vv.12-13).
Over and over again they refused every appeal of the Lord and stiffened their necks in stubborn rebellion against His authority (v.14). Thus, having given up any respect for God Himself, they were quite free to reject His statutes and His covenant that He had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Thus, they wanted freedom to do their own will, following the folly of other nations, not realising that that kind of freedom was only painful bondage to sin (v.15).
Leaving the commandments of God, what else could they find as a substitute? Only the worship of idols. Thus, verse 16 refers back to the great sin of Jereboam in making two golden calves, one put in Bethel, the other in Dan, and making these the centres of Israel’s worship. But when once a thing like this is done, the evil does not stop there. They then began to worship all the host of heaven, having “many gods and many lords” (1Co 8:5), and Baal became a favourite idol.
This evil worship led to other abuses, such as causing their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, offering them as sacrifices, thinking that such horrible evil would gain favour with God or with their gods (v.17). Witchcraft and soothsaying accompanied such abuses. Witchcraft was used in invoking curses on people. Soothsaying is predicting the future with the object of soothing people. This is the way evil spirits claim to predict the future, to make people feel good, as the false prophets did in trying to make Ahab comfortable in going to fight for Ramoth Gilead (1Ki 22:12). Only Michaiah prophesied the truth, that Ahab would die in his attempt to gain Ramoth Gilead (1Ki 22:17). Israel “sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord,” that is, they virtually sold themselves as slaves to satanic power.
Though the Lord bore patiently with Israel for years, yet the day finally came when He removed them from their land, leaving only the tribe of Judah at that time (v.18). Yet Judah is mentioned also as having failed to keep the commandments of the Lord, following too in the way of Israel. So the writing was on the wall for Judah also, but the godliness of some of their kings delayed the captivity of Judah for some years.
Verse 20 goes back to Israel, however, to speak of God’s rejection of these 10 tribes, afflicting them and delivering them into the hand of plunderers, culminating in their captivity by Assyria. It was God who tore Israel from the house of David after Solomon’s death, when Jereboam was made king and drove Israel from following the Lord, causing them to commit a great sin. Their bad condition was exposed by their willingness to follow a wicked leader and accept all his sinful decrees and actions (v.22). Thus the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as the prophets had foretold, and gave them up to the captivity of Assyria.
STRANGERS SETTLED IN SAMARIA
(vv.24-41)
The king of Assyria was purposed to see that the Israelites could not again take possession of their land, so that he brought people from other areas east of Canaan to replace the Israelites (v.24). But God was jealous for His land, and because the new settlers had no fear of God, He sent lions among them, killing some of them (v.25). This awakened some fear in their minds that it was the God of the land they had to deal with, and the people had no knowledge of His ways.
When foreigners replaced Israel in their land, the Lord allowed Lions to attack and kill some of them. They supposed this was because they did know the character of “the god of the land.” Their fears were not moved by conscience toward God, but by superstition. All they needed, they considered, was to know the rituals of the religion of Israel (v.26). The king of Assyria knew no better, so he commanded that a priest from Israel should go back to the land to teach the people the rituals of the god of the land (v.27). How could this be when they had no centre such as God had decreed? – the centre being symbolical of Christ, the only way of approach to God. But unbelief is impervious to Him, and the priest himself had little knowledge of God, for he had been linked with the idolatry of Jereboam and all Israel had long ago left God’s centre – Jerusalem – to establish a religion that had 2 golden calves as its symbol. This priest taught the people how they should fear the Lord (v.28), but his instruction would be painfully lacking.
Thus the people from these other nations who settled in the land brought their own religion with them and made idols, placing them in shrines in high places which the Samaritans had before established, so that Samaria became something like the United States at that time, a residence for every kind of contradictory religion. The Babylonians had their idol, the men of Cuth another idol, the men of Hamath another, the Avvites two more, while the Sepharvites burned their children as sacrifices to two gods of Sepharvaim (vv.29-31).
Outwardly they feared the Lord (v.32), but contradicted that fear by appointing “for themselves” priests of the high places. They liked to copy the fact of God appointing priests, but God’s appointment was only of the sons of Aaron, and they were priests of God in connection with God’s temple, not the high places. Today the same evil is seen all around us. People claim to respect God, but their works are in flat contradiction to His Word, often adopting the rituals of foreign nations.
Verse 34 puts the whole matter in a true perspective. Though verse 33 says, “they feared the Lord,” yet verse 34 says they continued following their former rituals, “they do not fear the Lord.” Their claim of verse 33 was false and empty. Thy did not really fear the Lord, nor did they follow the statutes and ordinances of the Lord, or the law and commandment which the Lord had commanded the children of Jacob, otherwise named Israel. With them God had made a covenant, charging them, “You shall not fear other gods, nor bow down to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them” (v.35). But now Samaria had become totally corrupted by this false worship of various descriptions.
We are reminded that the land really belonged to the nation God had brought up from the land of Egypt with manifest power, and Israel was to fear Him (v.36). His statutes, laws and ordinances they were told to be careful to observe and to refuse to fear other gods. They were not to forget the covenant the Lord had made with them, but fear the Lord, who would honour their subjection and preserve them from the bondage of their enemies (vv.37-39).
But now the land was given over to those who paid absolutely no attention to the commands of God. These nations who entered the land therefore showed an appearance of fearing the Lord, but actually served their carved images. Their children and their children’s children followed the same course of evil. Samaria continued to have a sprinkling of Israelites among them, but they did not relieve the picture of guilty despising of God’s law. It only added to the mixture of many elements of evil.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
16. Hoshea’s evil reign in Israel 17:1-6
Hoshea was the Northern Kingdom’s last king. He reigned in Samaria for 9 years (732-722 B.C.). He was a bad king, but he was not as bad as his predecessors. A seal of Abdi, an official of Hoshea, has been discovered that bears the name of this Israelite king, who was heretofore unmentioned outside the Bible. [Note: See Andre Lemaire, "Name of Israel’s Last King Surfaces in a Private Collection," Biblical Archaeology Review 21:6 (November-December 1995):49-52.]
Shalmaneser V (727-722 B.C.) had succeeded his father Tiglath-Pileser III on Assyria’s throne. Hoshea became the servant of Assyria rather than of Yahweh (2Ki 17:3). However, he was not a faithful servant even of Shalmaneser (2Ki 17:4). This led to the end of his freedom and the siege of his capital (2Ki 17:4-5). Samaria fell to Assyria in 722 B.C., and a second deportation of the population to various parts of the Assyrian empire followed in harmony with Assyria’s policy toward conquered peoples (cf. 2Ki 15:29). [Note: See Luckenbill, 2:2, 26-27. See Rodger C. Young, "When Was Samaria Captured? The Need for Precision in Biblical Chronologies," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47:4 (December 2004):577-95, for a reexamination of Thiele’s dates; and idem, "Tables of Reign Lengths from the Hebrew Court Recorders," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48:2 (June 2005):225-48.]
"So" (2Ki 17:4) may be the Hebrew pronunciation of the Egyptian capital, Sais, rather than the name of a pharaoh. [Note: H. Goedicke, "The End of So, King of Egypt," Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 171 (1963):64-66.] The verse so translated would read ". . . who had sent messengers to So [to the] king of Egypt," as in the NIV margin. Alternatively "So" may have been Pharaoh Tefnakht [Note: John Day, "The Problem of ’So, King of Egypt’ in 2 Kings 17:4," Vetus Testamentum 42:3 (July 1992):289-301.] or Pharaoh Piankhy. [Note: Alberto R. W. Green, "The Identity of King So of Egypt-An Alternative Interpretation," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52:2 (April 1993):99-108. On the subject of Egyptian history during this period, see Hallo and Simpson, pp. 287-92.]
As God had promised, the Israelites’ apostasy had resulted in their scattering among other peoples (Deu 28:64). According to 1 Chronicles 7, some members of the ten northern tribes returned to the Promised Land at the end of the 70-year Babylonian Captivity. Apparently most of the Northern Kingdom exiles intermarried and lost their identity among the other Semitic people among whom they went to live. There is no evidence that the "ten lost tribes" became the American Indians, the Afghans, the Armenians, the Nestorians, or the English, as various modern cults claim. [Note: See The New Scofield Reference Bible, p. 446.]
Israel had suffered for 209 years under 20 different kings from 9 different families, sometimes called dynasties. The heads of these ruling families were Jeroboam I (two kings), Baasha (two kings), Zimri (two kings), Omri (four kings), Jehu (five kings), Shallum (one king), Menahem (two kings), Pekah (one king), and Hoshea (one king). Seven of these kings died at the hands of assassins: Nadab, Elah, Jehoram, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah. All of them were evil. They did not comply with the will of Yahweh as contained in the Mosaic Law and the revelations of His prophets.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
HOSHEA, AND THE FALL OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM
B.C. 734-725
2Ki 17:1-41
“As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon: the water.”
Hos 10:7
As a matter of convenience, we follow our English Bible in calling the prophet by the name Hosea, and the nineteenth, last, and best king of Israel Hoshea. The names, however, are identical, and mean “Salvation”- the name borne by Joshua also in his earlier days. In the irony of history the name of the last king of Ephraim was thus identical with that of her earliest and greatest hero, just as the last of Roman emperors bore the double name of the Founder of Rome and the Founder of the Empire-Romulus Augustulus. By a yet deeper irony of events the king in whose reign came the final precipitation of ruin wore the name which signified deliverance from it.
And more and more, as time went on, the prophet Hosea felt that he had no word of present hope or comfort for the king his namesake. It was the more brilliant lot of Isaiah, in the Southern Kingdom, to kindle the ardor of a generous courage. Like Tyrtaeus, who roused the Spartans to feel their own greatness-like Demosthenes, who hurled the might of Athens against Philip of Macedon-like Chatham, “bidding England be of good cheer, and hurl defiance at her foes”-like Pitt, pouring forth, in the days of the Napoleonic terror, “the indomitable language of courage and of hope,”-Isaiah was missioned to encourage Judah to despise first the mighty Syrian, and then the mightier Assyrian. Far different was the lot of Hosea, who could only be the denouncer of an inevitable doom. His sad function was like that of Phocion after Chaeroneia, of Hannibal after Zama, of Thiers after Sedan: he had to utter the Cassandra-voices of prophecy, which his besotted and demented contemporaries-among whom the priests were the worst of all-despised and flouted until the time for repentance had gone by forever.
True it is that Hosea could not be content-what true heart could?-to breathe nothing but the language of reprobation and despair. Israel had been “yoked to his two transgressions,” but Jehovah could not give up His love for His chosen people:
“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I treat thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me; I am wholly filled with compassion! I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim: For I am God, and not man. The Holy One in the midst of thee! I will not come to exterminate!”
“They shall come after Jehovah as after a lion that roars! For he shall roar, and his sons shall come hurrying from the west, They shall come hurrying as a bird out of Egypt, And as a dove out of the land of Assyria; And I will cause them to dwell in their houses, Saith Jehovah.” {Hos 11:8-11}
Alas! the gleam of alleviation was imaginary rather than actual. The prophets wish was father to his thought. He had prophesied that Israel should be scattered in all lands. {Hos 9:3; Hos 9:12; Hos 9:17; Hos 13:3-16} This was true; and it did not prove true, except in some higher ideal sense, that “Israel shall again dwell in his own land” {Hos 14:4-7} in prosperity and joy.
The date of Hosheas accession is uncertain, and we cannot tell in what sense we are to understand his reign as having lasted “nine years.” We have no grounds for accepting the statement of Josephus (“Antt.,” IX 13:1), that Hoshea had been a friend of Pekah and plotted against him. Tiglath-Pileser expressly says that he himself slew Pekah and appointed Hoshea. His must have been, at the best, a pitiful and humiliating reign. He owed his purely vassal sovereignty to Assyrian patronage. He probably did as well for Israel as was in his power. Singular to relate, he is the only one of all the kings of Israel of whom the historian has a word of commendation: for while we are told that “he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,” it is added that it was “not as the kings of Israel that were before him.” But we do not know wherein either his evil-doing or his superiority consisted. The Rabbis guess that he did not replace the golden calf at Dan which Tiglath-Pileser had taken away; {Hos 10:6} or that he did not prevent his subjects from going to Hezekiahs passover. “It seems like a harsh jest,” says Ewald, “that this Hoshea, who was better than all his predecessors, was to be the last king” But so it has often been in history. The vengeance of the French Revolution smote the innocent and harmless Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette-not Louis XIV, or Louis XV and Madame du Pompadour.
His patron Tiglath-Pileser ended his magnificent reign of conquest in 727, soon after he had seated Hoshea on the throne. The removal of his strong grasp on the helm caused immediate revolt. Phoenicia especially asserted her independence against Shalmaneser IV He seems to have spent five years in an unavailing attempt to capture Island-Tyre. Meanwhile, the internal troubles which had harassed and weakened Egypt ceased, and a strong Ethiopian king named Sabaco established his rule over the whole country. It was perhaps the hope that Phoenicia might hold out against the Assyrian, and that the Egyptian might protect Samaria, which kindled in the mind of Hoshea the delusive plan of freeing himself and his impoverished land from the grinding tribute imposed by Nineveh. While Shalmaneser was trying to quell Tyre, Hoshea, having received promises of assistance from Sabaco, withheld the “presents”-the minchah, as the tribute is euphemistically called-which he had hitherto paid. Seeing the danger of a powerful coalition, Shalmaneser swept down on Samaria in 724. Possibly he defeated the army of Israel in the plain of Jezreel, {Hos 1:5} and got hold of the person of Hoshea. Josephus says that he “besieged him”; but the sacred historian only tells us that “he shut him up, and bound him in prison.” Whether Hoshea was taken in battle, or betrayed by the Assyrian party in Samaria, or whether he went in person to see if he could pacify the ruthless conqueror, he henceforth disappears from history “like foam”-or like a chip or a bubble-“upon the water.” We do not know whether he was put to death, but we infer from an allusion in Micah that he was subjected to the cruel indignities in which the Assyrians delighted; for the prophet says, “They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.” {Mic 5:1} Perhaps in the title “Judge” (Shophet, suffes) we may see a sign that Hosheas royalty was little more than the shadow of a name.
Having thus got rid of the king, Shalmaneser proceeded to invest the capital. But Samaria was strongly fortified upon its hill, and the Jewish race has again and again shown-as it showed so conspicuously in the final crisis of its destiny, when Jerusalem defied the terrible armies of Rome-that with walls to protect them they could pluck up a terrible courage and endurance from despair. Strong as Assyria was, the capital of Ephraim for three years resisted her beleaguering host and her crashing battering-rams. About all the anguish which prevailed within the city, and the wild vicissitudes of orgy and starvation, history is silent. But prophecy tells us that the sorrows of a travailling woman came upon the now kingless city. They drank to the dregs the cup of fury. {Hos 13:13} The saddest Northern prophet, “the Jeremiah of Israel,” sings the dirge of Israels saddest king.
“I am become to them as a lion; As a leopard will I watch by the way; I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps, And rend the caul of their heart, And there will I devour them like a lioness: The beast of the field shall tear them Where now is thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities? And thy judges, of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and prince? I give thee a king in Mine anger And take him away in My wrath.”
For three years Samaria held out. During the siege Shalmaneser died, and was succeeded by Sargon, who-though he vaguely talks of the kings his ancestors, and says that he had been preceded by three hundred and thirty Assyrian dynasts-never names his father, and seems to have been a usurping general.
Sabaco remained inactive, and basely deserted the miserable people which had relied on his protection. In this conduct Egypt was true to its historic character of untrustworthiness and inertness. Both in Israel and in Judah there were two political parties. One relied on the strength of Egypt; the other counseled submission to Assyria, or-in the hour when it became necessary to defy Assyria-confidence in God. Egypt was as frail a support as one of her own paper-reeds, which bent under the weight, and broke and ran into the hand of every one who leaned on it.
Sargon did not raze the city, and we see from the “Eponym Canon” that its inhabitants were still strong enough some years later to take part in a futile revolt. But we have one dreadful glimpse of the horrors which he inflicted upon it. They were the inevitable punishment of every conquered city which had dared to resist the Assyrian arm.
“Samaria shall bear her guilt, For she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword: Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, And their women in child shall be ripped up.” {Hos 13:16}
Sargons own record of the matter on the tablets at Khorsabad is: “I besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried into captivity twenty-seven thousand two hundred and eighty of its inhabitants. I changed the former government of this country, and placed over it lieutenants of my own. And Sebeh, Sultan of Egypt, came to Raphia to fight against me. They met me, and I routed them. Sebeh fled.” The Assyrians were occupied in the unsuccessful siege of Tyre between 720-715, during which years Sargon put down Yahubid of Hamath, whose revolt had been aided by Damascus and Samaria. In 710 he marched against Ashdod. {Isa 20:1} In 709 he defeated Merodach-Baladan at Dur-Yakin, and reconquered Chaldaea, deporting some of the population into Samaria. In 704, in the fifteenth year of his reign, he was assassinated, after a career of victory. He inscribes on his palace at Khorsabad a prayer to his god Assur, that, after his toils and conquests, “I may be preserved for the long years of a long life, for the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart. May I accumulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all countries, the products of mountains and valleys.” Assur and the gods of Chaldaea were invoked in vain; the prayer was scattered to the winds, and the murderers dagger was the comment on Sargons happy anticipations of peace and splendor.
Israel fell unpitied by her southern neighbor, for Judah was still smarting under memories of the old contempt and injury of Joash ben-Jehoahaz, and the more recent wrongs inflicted by Pekah and Rezin. Isaiah exults over the fate of Samaria, while he points the moral of her fall to the drunken priests and prophets of Jerusalem. “Woe,” he says, “to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are smitten down with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one [i.e., the Assyrian]; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty water overflowing, shall he cast down to the earth with violence. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden underfoot: and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.” (Isa 28:1-4) Israel had begun in hostility to Judah, and perished by it at last.
Such, then, was the end of the once brilliant kingdom of Israel-the kingdom which, even so late as the reign of Jeroboam II, seemed to have a great future before it. No one could have foreseen beforehand that, when, with the prophetic encouragement of Ahijah, Jeroboam I established his sovereignty over the greater, richer, and more flourishing part of the land assigned to the sons of Jacob, the new kingdom should fall into utter ruin and destruction after only two and a half centuries of existence, and its tribes melt away amid the surrounding nations, and sink into a mixed and semi-heathen race without any further nationality or distinctive history. It seemed far less probable that the mere fragment of the Southern Kingdom, after retaining its separate existence for more than one hundred and sixty years longer than its more powerful brother, should continue to endure as a nation till the end of time. Such was the design of God’s providence, and we know no more. The Northern Kingdom had, up to this time, produced the greatest and most numerous prophets-Ahijah, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Nahum, and many more. It had also produced the loveliest and most enduring poetry in the Song of Songs, the Song of Deborah, and other contributions to the Books of Jashar, and of the Wars of Jehovah. It had also brought into vigor the earliest and best historic literature, the narratives of the Elohist and the Jehovist. These immortal legacies of the religious spirit of the Northern Kingdom were incomparably superior in moral and enduring value to the Levitic jejuneness of the Priestly Code, with its hierarchic interests and ineffectual rules, which, in the exaggerated supremacy attached to rites, proved to be the final blight of an unspiritual Judaism. Israel had also been superior in prowess and in deeds of war, and in the days of Joash ben-Jehoahaz ben-Jehu had barely conceded to Judah a right to separate existence. More than all this, the apostasies of Judah, from the days of Solomon downwards, were quite as heinous as Jezebels Baal worship, and far more deadly than the irregular but not at first idolatrous cultus of Bethel. The prophets are careful to teach Judah that if she was spared it was not because of any good deservings. Yet now the cedar was scathed and smitten down, and its boughs were rent and scattered; and the thistle had escaped the wild beasts tread!
In the former volume we glanced at some of the causes of this, and the blessings which resulted from it. The central and chiefest blessing was, first, the preservation of a purer form of monotheism, and a loftier ideal of religion-though only realized by a few in Judah-than had ever prevailed in the Northern Tribes; secondly, and above all, the development of that inspiring Messianic prophecy which was to be fulfilled seven centuries later, when He who was Davids Son and Davids Lord came to our lost race from the bosom of the Father, and brought life and immortality to light.
And it was the work purely of “Gods unseen providence, by men nicknamed Chance,” which, dealing with nations as the potter with his clay, chooses some to honor and some to dishonor. For, as all the prophets are anxious to remind the Judaean Kingdom, their success, the procrastination of their downfall, their restoration from captivity, were not due to any merits of their own. The Jews were and ever had been a stiff-necked nation; and though some of their kings had been faithful servants of Jehovah, yet many of them-like Rehoboam, and Ahaz, and Manasseh-exceeded in wickedness and inexcusable apostasy the least faithful of the Worshippers at Gilgal and Bethel. They were plainly reminded of their nothingness: “And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation.” {Deu 26:5}
“Fear not, thou worm Jacob: I will help thee.” {Isa 41:14} But this was the end of the Ten Tribes. Nor must we say that Hoseas prediction of mercy was laughed to scorn by the irony of events, when he had given it as Gods promise that-
“I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not again destroy Israel For I am God, and not man.” {Hos 11:9}
The words mean that mercy is Gods chiefest and most essential attribute; and, after all, a nation is composed of families and individuals, and in political extinction there may have been many families and individuals in Israel, like that of Tobias, and like that of Anna, the prophetess of the tribe of Asher, who found, either in their far exile, or among the scattered Jews who still peopled the old territories, a peace which was impossible during the distracted anarchy and deepening corruption of the whole period which had elapsed since the founding of the house of Omri. In any case God knows and loves His own. The words,
“I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger; For I am God, and not man,”
might stand for an epitome of much that is most precious in Holy Writ. Gods orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though mans orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it. What hope has any man, even a St. Paul-what hope had even the Lord Himself-before the harsh, self-interested tribunals of human judgment, or of that purely external religionism which has always shown itself more brutal and more blundering than secular cruelty? What chance has there been, humanly speaking, for Gods best saints, prophets, and reformers, when priests, popes, or inquisitors have been their judges? If God resembled those generations of unresisted ecclesiastics, whose chief resort has been the syllogism of violence, and whose main arguments have been the torture-chamber and the stake, what hope could there possibly be for the vast majority of mankind, but those endless torments by the terrors of which corrupt Churches have forced their tyranny upon the crushed liberties and the paralyzed conscience of mankind? The Indian sage was right who said that “God can only be truly described by the words No! No!”-that is, by repudiating multitudes of the ignoble and cruel basenesses which religious teachers have imagined or invented respecting Him. Because God is God, and not man-God, not a tyrant or an inquisitor-God, with the great compassionate heart of unfathomable tenderness, -therefore, in all who truly love Him, perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. Sin means ruin; yet God is love.
The historian of the Kings here digresses, in a manner unusual to the Old Testament, to give us a most interesting glimpse of the fate of the conquered people, and the origin of the race which was known to after-ages by the name “Samaritan.”
Sargon, when he had sacked the capital, carried out the policy of deportation which had now been established by the Assyrian kings. He achieved the double purpose of populating the capital and province of Nineveh, while he reduced subject nations to inanition, by sweeping away all the chief of the inhabitants from conquered states, and settling them in his own more immediate dominions. There they would be reduced to impotence, and mingle with the races among whom their lot would henceforth be cast. He therefore “carried Israel away” into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, north of Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, and in Habor, the river of Gozan-i.e., on the river in Northern Assyria which still bears the name of Khabour, and flows into the Euphrates-and in the cities of the Medes. He replaced the old population by Dinaites, Tarpelites, Apharsathchites, Susanehites, Elamites, Dehavites, and Babylonians, after carrying away the great bulk of the better-class population.
After this the historian pauses to sum up and emphasize once more the main lesson of his narrative. It is that “righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is the reproach of any people.” God had called His son Israel out of Egypt, delivered His chosen from Pharaoh, given them a pleasant land; but “Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen.” They had failed therefore in fulfilling the very purpose for which they had been set apart. They had been intended “to uplift among the nations the banner of righteousness” and the banner of the One True God. Instead of this, they were seduced by the heathen ritual of
“Gay religions full of pomp and gold.”
They decked out alien institutions, and alike in unfrequented and populous places-“from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city”-set up matstseboth (A.V, “pillars”) and Asherim on every high hill. The green trees became obum bratrices scelerum, the secret bowers of-their iniquities. They burnt incense on the bamoth, and served idols, and wrought wickedness. Useless had been the voices of all the prophets and the seers. They went after vain things, and became vain. Beginning with the two “calves,” they proceeded to lewd and orgiastic idolatries. Ahab and Jezebel seduced them into Tyrian Baal-worship. From the Assyrians they learnt and practiced the adoration of the host of heaven. From Moab and Ammon they borrowed the abominable rites of Moloch, and used divination and enchantments by means of belomancy {Eze 21:21-22} and necromancy, and sold themselves to do wickedness.
Nor was this all. These idolatries, with their guilty ritualism, were not confined to Israel, but also
“Infected Zions daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah.”
And thus, when Jehovah afflicted the seed of Israel and cast them out of His sight, Judah also had to feel the stroke of retribution.
And it is idle to object that even if Israel had been faithful she must have inevitably perished before the superior might of Damascus, or Nineveh, or Babylon. How can we tell? It is not possible for us thus to write unwritten history, and there is absolutely nothing to show that the surmise is correct. In the days of David, of Uzziah, of Jeroboam II, Judah and Israel had shown what they could achieve. Had they been strong in faithfulness to Jehovah, and in the righteousness which that faith required, they would have shown an invincible strength amid the moral enervation of the surrounding people. They might have held their own by welding into one strong kingdom the whole of Palestine, including Philistia, Phoenicia, the Negeb, and the Trans-Jordanic region. They might have consolidated the sway which they at various times attained southwards, as far as the Red Sea port of Elath; northwards over Aram and Damascus, as far as the Hamath on the Orontes; eastwards to Thapsacus on the Euphrates; westward to the Isles of the Gentiles. There is nothing improbable, still less impossible, in the view that, if the Israelites had truly served Jehovah and obeyed His laws, they might then have permanently established the monarchy which was ideally regarded as their inheritance, and which for brief and fitful periods they partially maintained. And such a monarchy, held together by warrior statesmen, strong and righteous, and above all secure in the blessing of God, would have been a thoroughly adequate counterpoise, not only to dilatory and distracted Egypt, which had long ceased to be aggressive, but even to brutal Assyria, which prevailed in no small measure because of the isolation and mutual dissension of these southern principalities.
But, as it was, “Assyria and Egypt-the two world-powers in the dawn of history, the two chief sources of ancient civilization, the twin giant-empires which bounded the Israelite people on the right hand and on the left-were cruel neighbors, between whom the ill-fated nation was tossed to and fro in wanton sport like a shuttlecock. They were cruel friends before whom it must cringe in turns, praying sometimes for help, suing sometimes for very life-alternate scourges in the hand of the Divine wrath. Now it is the fly of Egypt, and now it is the bee of Assyria, whose ruthless swarms issue forth at the word of Jehovah, settling in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes, with deadly sting, fatal to man and beast, devastating the land far and wide. Holding the poor Israelite in their relentless embrace, they threatened ever and again to crush him by their grip. Like the fabled rocks which frowned over the narrow straits of the Bosporus, they would crash together and annihilate the helpless craft which the storms of destiny had placed at their mercy. Israel reeled under their successive blows. As was the beginning, so was the end. As the captivity of Egypt had been the cradle of the nation, so was the captivity of Assyria to be its tomb.”
In any case the principle of the historian remains unshaken. Sin is weakness; idolatry is folly and rebellion; uncleanness is decrepitude. St. Paul was not thinking of this ancient Philosophy of History when he wrote his Epistle to the Romans; yet the intense and masterly sketch which he gives of that moral corruption which brought about the long, slow, agonizing dissolution of the beauty that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome, is one of its strongest justifications. His view only differs from the summary before us in the power of its eloquence and the profoundness of its psychologic insight. He says the same thing as the historian of the Kings, only in words of greater power and wider reach, when he writes: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings,” the very word used in the LXX in 2Ki 17:15, “and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (words which might describe the expediency policy of Jeroboam I, and its fatal consequences), “and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. For this cause God gave them up to passions of dishonor, and unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity,”-and so on through a long catalogue of iniquities which are identical with those which we find so burningly denounced on the pages of the prophets of Israel and Judah.
“Even a Machiavelli, cool and cynical and audacious as was his skepticism, could see and admit that faithfulness to religion is the secret of the happiness and prosperity of states. An irreligious society tends inevitably and always to be a dissolute society; and a dissolute society is the most tragic spectacle which history has ever to present-a nest of disease, of jealousy, of dissensions, of ruin, and despair, whose last hope is to be washed off the world and disappear. Such societies must die sooner or later of their own gangrene, of their own corruption, because the infection of evil, spreading into unbounded selfishness, ever intensifying and reproducing passions which defeat their own aim, can never end in anything but moral dissolution.” We need not look further than the collapse of France after the battle of Sedan, and the cause to which that collapse was attributed, not only by Christians, but by her own most worldly and skeptical writers, to see that the same causes ever issue and will issue in the same ruinous effects.
In order to complete the history of the Northern Kingdom, the historian here anticipates the order of time by telling us what happened to the mongrel population whom Sargon transplanted into central Ephraim in place of the old inhabitants.
The king, we are told, brought them from Babylon-which was at this time under the rule of Assyria; from Cuthah-by which seems to be meant some part of Mesopotamia near Babylon; from Avva, or Ivah-probably the same as Aha-vah or Hit, on the Euphrates, northwest of Babylon; from Sepharvaim, or Sippara, also on the Euphrates; and from Hamath, on the Orontes, which had not long remained under Jeroboam. It must not be supposed that the whole population of Ephraim was deported; that was a physical impossibility. Although we are told in Assyrian annals that Sargon carried away with him so vast a number of captives, it is, of course, clear that the lowest and poorest part of the population was left. We can imagine the wild confusion which arose when they found themselves compelled to share the dismantled palaces and abandoned estates of the wealthy with the horde of new colonists, whose language, in all probability, they but imperfectly understood. There must have been many a tumult, many a scene of horror, such as took place in the long antagonism of Normans and Saxons in England, before the immigrants and the relics of the former populace settled down to amalgamation and mutual tolerance.
Sargon is said to have carried away with him the golden calf or calves of Bethel, as Tiglath-Pileser is said by the Rabbis to have carried away that of Dan. He also took away with him all the educated classes, and all the teachers of religion. No one was left to instruct the ignorant inhabitants; and, as Hosea had prophesied, there was neither a sacrifice, nor a pillar, nor an ephod, and not even teraphim to which they could resort {Hos 3:4} Naturally enough, the disunited dregs of an old and of a new population had no clear knowledge of religion. They “feared not Jehovah.” The sparseness of inhabitants, with its consequent neglect of agriculture, caused the increase of wild beasts among them. There had always been lions and bears in “the swellings of Jordan,” {See Jer 49:19; Jer 49:1 Pro 22:13, etc.} and in all the lonelier parts of the land; and to this day there are leopards in the woods of Carmel, and hyenas and jackals in many regions. Conscious of their miserable and godless condition, and afflicted by the lions, which they regarded as a sign of Jehovahs anger, the Ephraimites sent a message to the King of Assyria. They only claimed Jehovah as their local god, and complained that the new colonists had provoked the wrath of “the God of the land” by not: knowing His “manner” that is, the way in which He should be worshipped. The consequence was that they were in danger of being exterminated by lions. The kings of Assyria were devoted worshippers of Assur and Merodach, but they held the common belief of ancient polytheists that each country had its own potent divinities. Sargon, therefore, gave orders that one of the priests of his captivity should be sent back to Samaria, “to teach them the manner of the god of the land.” The priest selected for the purpose returned, took up his residence at the old shrine of Bethel, and “taught them how they should fear Jehovah.” His success was, however, extremely limited, except among the former followers of Jeroboams dishonored cult. The old religious shrines still continued, and the immigrants used them for the glorification of their former deities.
Samaria, therefore, witnessed the establishment of a singularly hybrid form of religionism. The Babylonians worshipped Succoth-Benoth, perhaps Zirbanit, wife of Merodach or Bel; the Cuthites worshipped Nergal, the Assyrian war-god, the lion-god; the Hittites, from Hamath, worshipped Ashima or Esmun, the god of air and thunder, under the form of a goat; the Avites preferred Nibhaz and Tartak, perhaps Saturn-unless these names be Jewish jeers, implying that one of these deities had the head of a dog, and the other of an ass. More dreadful, if less ridiculous, was the worship of the Sepharvires, who adored Adrammelech and Anammelech, the sun-god under male and female forms, to whom, as to Moloch, they burnt their children in the fire. As for ministers, “they made unto them priests from among themselves, who offered sacrifices for them in the shrines of the bamoth.” Thus the whole mongrel population “feared the Lord, and served their own gods,” as they continued to do in the days of the annalist whose record the historian quotes. He ends his interesting sketch with the words, that, in spite of the Divine teaching, “these nations” – so he calls them, and so completely does he refuse to them the dignity of being Israels children-feared the Lord, and served their graven images, their children likewise, and their childrens children, -“as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.”
The “unto this day” refers, no doubt, to the document from which the historian of the Kings was quoting-perhaps about B.C. 560, in the third generation after the fall of Samaria. A very brief glance will suffice to indicate the future history of the Samaritans. We hear but little of them between the present reference and the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. By that time they had purged themselves of these grosser idolatries, and held themselves fit in all respects to cooperate with the returned exiles in the work of building the Temple. Such was not the opinion of the Jews. Ezra regarded them as “the adversaries of Judah and Israel.” The exiles rejected their overtures. In B.C. 409 Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest expelled by Nehemiah for an unlawful marriage with a daughter of Sanballat, of the Samaritan city of Beth-horon, built the schismatic temple on Mount Gerizim. The relations of the Samaritans to the Jews became thenceforth deadly. In B.C. 175 they seconded the profane attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to paganize the Jews, and in B.C. 130 John Hyrcanus, the Maccabee, destroyed their temple. They were accused of waylaying Jews on their way to the Feasts, and of polluting the Temple with dead bones. They claimed Jewish descent, {Joh 4:12} but our Lord called them “aliens,” {Luk 17:18} and Josephus describes them as “residents from other nations.” They are now a rapidly dwindling community of fewer than a hundred souls-“the oldest and smallest sect in the world”-equally despised by Jews and Mohammedans. The Jews, as in the days of Christ, have no dealings with them. When Dr. Frank, on his philanthropic visit to the Jews of the East, went to see their celebrated Pentateuch, and mentioned the fact to a Jewish lady-“What!” she exclaimed: “have you been among the worshippers of the pigeon? Take a purifying bath!” Regarding Gerizim as the place which God had chosen, {Joh 4:20} they alone can keep up the old tradition of the sacrificial passover. For long centuries, since the fall of Jerusalem, it is only on Gerizim that the Paschal lambs and kids have been actually slain and eaten, as they are to this day, and will be, till, not long hence, the whole tribe disappears.