Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
King Hoshea was the last king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. The writer tells us that he did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as bad as the kings who preceded him. But God did not exile the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom because of the sins of Hoshea, or even because of the sins of the kings which preceded him. God exiled them because of their own sins. The writer condemns them for following the practices of the people they had displaced in the land, practices which God had explicitly told them not to follow. He condemned them for imitating the peoples around them, which God had explicitly told them not to do. The the writer gets into more specific complaints about their behavior. He writes that they forsook all of God’s commands, embracing various kinds of idolatry. They crafted two golden calves to represent God, they built an Asherah pole. It is worth noting that Asherah was viewed as the wife of and co-creator with the male god of creation in Canaanite mythology (there are today those who want to introduce a female creator alongside God into Christianity). They bowed down to the starry hosts and worshiped Baal. I have always understood the worship of the starry hosts to be a form of nature worship which focuses on the splendor of the night sky. The writer goes on to tell us that they sacrificed their children, their sons and daughters. And he finishes off their list of sins by saying that they sold themselves to do evil. I was going to comment on those sins, but I will allow you to think about how the writer’s condemnation of the Israelites may, or may not, apply to our society today.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
Hoshea became the last king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. The writer tells us that he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not as bad as his predecessors. Nevertheless, God had the Assyrians take the people of Israel into exile because of their sins. God had told the Israelites to live holy lives and forbade them from imitating the nations around them. Yet they did not listen and desired to be like those around them. There are two different points I want to make here, maybe they will come together into one. Initially the people of the Northern Kingdom made their own gods to worship, but kept most of the practices which God had commanded them. But, over time they began to worship the gods of their neighbors. First, those whose worship was somewhat similar to that which God commanded, but with sexual licentiousness. Soon, they went on to gods whose worship called for them to kill their own children. They had been called to live as an example to others, but they didn’t want to be different. Rather than trust God to care for them, they tried to obtain success by being like the people around them. This is a mistake that we make again and again, both as individuals and as nations.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
We are told that Hoshea, the last king of Israel, did evil in the sight of the Lord, but was not as bad as his predecessors. Nevertheless, the sins of the people of Israel had reached the point where God had had enough and He sent them into exile. The writer suggests that the sins of the people of Israel were worse than any were aware of until after the fact. He writes that they secretly against the Lord that were not right. This suggests to me that the people of Israel were not aware of how prevalent the sins they themselves were committing were among their countrymen.
The writer lists out the reasons that God sent the nation of Israel into exile. He tells us that they worshiped idols and rejected God’s decrees. They made idols for themselves and set up an Asherah pole. They bowed down to the starry host and worshipped Baal. They sacrificed their sons and daughters. They imitated the nations around them. All of this strikes me as a warning we should take to heart today. I think the line which should be our greatest warning is the one I used to title today’s blog: “They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.” All human beings have value, but that value derives from our being made in the image of God. If we stop trying to reflect his image and instead reflect the image of an idol, we will become worthless.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
Israel’s last king was less evil than his predecessors, but he still did evil in God’s sight. Important note: being less evil is not the same as doing good. As we read through the account of each of the kings of Israel it would be easy to miss the extent of the people’s sin. The writer makes that extent clear here in today’s passage. They adopted the practices of the people whom God had driven out of the land and worshiped idols, setting up pagan shrines in all of their settlements. I want to note that the writer makes a distinction between following the practices of other peoples and idolatry. Yes, idolatry was practiced by the people to whom the writer refers, but by listing it as a separate sin from following their practices he makes it clear that they had other practices which were detestable to God. As the writer summarizes the various forms of idolatry they practiced, he singles out sacrificing their own children as going above and beyond other forms of idolatry.
After the conquering Samaria and taking many of the people in the Northern Kingdom into exile, the King of Assyria settled peoples from other lands in that territory. These peoples had problems with lions attacks, which led them to conclude that they did not know the proper customs for worshiping God. I think this suggests that there were Israelites remaining in the land, but those who had been educated (in particular about God’s laws, but also everyone who had been educated) had been exiled. How else would the new people in the land know there were different customs for worshiping God than what they knew? In any case, once a priest was brought back from among those who had been taken into exile, these new immigrants began to worship the Lord. But, they did not give up their worship of other gods, the gods they had worshiped in their homeland. From what is written here it seems likely that the compiler of this book was a post-Exile Jew. His understanding of the worship practices of those who were in the land when the Exiles returned certainly colored his understanding of what he wrote here from the stories he collected into this document.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
In Judah, Hezekiah ascended to the throne. The writer tells us that King Hezekiah was fully devoted to God in everything that he did. He went beyond any of his predecessors by destroying the pagan shrines at which the people worshiped, leaving the Temple in Jerusalem as the only place of worship in the land. I wonder if King Hezekiah recognized the importance of a centralized, unified worship of God from what happened to his north after the fall of Samaria. Or, perhaps, King Hezekiah did this because he desired the people to worship God fully and completely. Certainly everything the Bible tells us about King Hezekiah tells us that he put his faith fully in God.
King Hezekiah rebelled against Assyria at about the same time as King Hoshea of the Northern Kingdom did. Perhaps Hezekiah’s rebellion was what inspired King Hoshea to rebel. In any case, King Hezekiah was able to extend his control over what we now know as the Gaza strip. I must add that the passage does not make clear that King Hezekiah rebelled against Assyria around the same time as King Hoshea. That is just the conclusion I reach from where in the passage it tells that he did and that he would have been unlikely to do so after the fall of Samaria. In any case, several years after taking the people of the Northern Kingdom into exile, the King of Assyria decided to re-exert his authority over Judah. When the King of Assyria invaded Judah King Hezekiah gave him a large payment and offered to resume paying tribute.
The passage does not say so explicitly, but the King of Assyria appears to have decided to take at least some of the people of Judah and settle them elsewhere (and bring others in to replace them as he had in the Northern Kingdom). What exactly was his intention, he sent a large army to Jerusalem in support of his representatives whom he sent to confront King Hezekiah. The Assyrian emissaries initially presented their demands to Hezekiah’s representatives, but they did so in a way which was heard and understood by the people on the walls of Jerusalem. In these initial demands they were respectful of God, suggesting that King Hezekiah could not rely on God because he had insulted Him by tearing down the shrines throughout the land (side note: This suggests, as happens at a few other places in the Old Testament, that the worship at these shrines was not completely idolatrous).
However, when King Hezekiah’s representatives asked them to speak so that the people on the walls would not understand them, the Assyrian emissaries addressed the people of Jerusalem directly. This time they revealed their true attitude towards God. This second statement sounds a lot like the words of a prophet. The emissaries called on the people to choose life instead of death. They told the people that if they accepted the commands of the King of Assyria they would receive many good things. Then the emissaries told the people that God was not powerful enough to save them from the King of Assyria. They claimed dominion over all others for the King of Assyria. As I read this it reminded me of many secular promises of Utopia. When they promised good things for the people if they followed the commands from the King of Assyria (the government they would establish), they did not actually promise anything the people did not already have. They merely promised that after completely disrupting their lives they would make things just as good again. Then they used the fact that the King of Assyria could spare from his army more military supplies than King Hezekiah could field men to use to show how God could not stand against them. They used the argument that just look at the way things are, how could the King of Assyria fail at anything he tried to do. Tomorrow, we will read about how King Hezekiah responded and how that turned out.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
When the Assyrians conquered they took a large number of the Israelites and settled them elsewhere. Then they brought in people whom they had conquered elsewhere and settled them in the land. This was, and is, a practice conquerors often use to minimize the risk of rebellion in conquered territories; break up the bonds among the people living in the conquered territory and introduce people with no loyalty to those living there. Like many of the people of the day, the Assyrians believed that many gods were local. So, when things went badly for the new settlers, they brought back some of the priests from exile to teach the settlers how to worship the god of this land, who happened to be God. The religion which these priests taught the settlers was the origin of the Samaritan religion. The settlers worshiped according to the teachings of these priests, but continued to also worship the gods of the lands they came from. Despite the differences between the practices of the people of Israel and the practices taught in the law of Moses, and the differences introduced by these foreign settlers, by the time of Christ the Samaritan religion had become a corrupted form of worship of the one true God. One which looked back to Moses and forward to the Messiah. The Samaritans were at least as receptive to Jesus’ teachings as the Jews.
This evolution of the Samaritan religion reminds me of something which C.S. Lewis wrote in his “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. In the book, “The Last Battle” he wrote that no service which is vile can be done to Aslan (who is an analogy of Jesus and God) and no service which is not vile can be done for Tash (who is an analogy for Satan, and other idols). Which is another way of saying what Jesus said in the 2Sermon on the Mount, ” Keep on seeking, and you will find.” Those who seek God will eventually find Him. My observation is that, if the people who follow a false religion genuinely seek goodness, over time that false religion will begin to more and more resemble true Christianity. The Holy Spirit can, and will, use even the least smidgen of Truth to reveal more Truth to those who seek that Truth.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.
The Northern Kingdom went into captivity. The writer tells us that this happened because they had rejected God’s commands. The writer spends quite a bit of time emphasizing their sins of worshiping other gods. The writer does not go into detail for the most part, but we know that many of those worship practices were sins in and of themselves. He does however bring special attention to the fact that the people of Israel had sacrificed their own children as part of their worship of idols. Their greatest failing resulted from wanting to be like everybody else. The same thing is the greatest danger facing Christians today. Just like it did for the ancient Israelites, wanting to be like our neighbors will lead us into sin.
After the Assyrians settled other people in the lands of the Northern Kingdom something happened which influenced their attitude when they later invaded the Southern Kingdom. After initial problems they sent priests they had removed from that land back to teach the new settlers “what the god of the land requires.” When they did this the problems diminished. As a result, they viewed the God of Abraham as just another regional deity. This led them to two false conclusions. First, they thought that Hezekiah’s insistence that people worship God only at the Temple in Jerusalem was a slight against God which would reduce His interest in protecting the people of Judah. Second, they thought that their victory over other peoples with local gods indicated that God had no power to stop them. The failure of the people of Israel to faithfully follow God led the Assyrians to a false understanding of the nature of God. The failure of the Israelites to faithfully follow God led the Assyrians to hold Him in contempt. In the same way, our failure to faithfully serve God may lead non-believers to hold Him in contempt.
Every time I read this passage I am struck by how the author finds it horrifying that the people of Israel, and then those who were brought into the land to replace them, sacrificed their own children to their idols. About the Israelites before the Assyrians took them into exile:
They EVEN sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire.
Then about the people the Assyrians settled in the land to replace them:
…EVEN burned their own children as sacrifices to their gods…
I can just hear that in my mind as the author says it, “Can you believe it? How depraved would you have to be to sacrifice your OWN children?” I am convinced that the author would view our society with similar horror and disbelief about the way we practice abortion. I want to make clear that I see other cultures in our world sacrificing their children in a similar manner. God’s patience with us will not last much longer. The day of His judgment is coming. Let us get down on our knees and pray that God’s Spirit will change hearts before it is too late.
I am convinced from reading this that the people whom the Assyrians settled in the land of Israel had the opportunity to be merged into the people of God, the people of Israel. When they first came into the land, things went badly. So, the king of Assyria sent a priest from among the exiles to teach them about God. The priest taught them about God and they began to worship God, but they refused to give up their worship of other gods. The author then reminds us that God had entered into the following covenant with the descendants of Jacob
Do not worship any other gods or bow before them or serve them or offer sacrifices to them. But worship only the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt with great strength and a powerful arm. Bow down to him alone, and offer sacrifices only to him.
Immediately after writing this, the author tells us that the new residents would not listen and continued to follow their former practices. Let us not follow their example. Rather let us be careful to obey the decrees, regulations, instructions, and commands which God has given us. Let us fall on our knees and beg Him for mercy and seek how we can serve Him, and Him alone.
