Now God Himself recapitulates this long history of Israel which begins in Exodus and ends in our chapter. Not that it is ended for good; it is ended only as that which concerns this people and its kings, viewed as responsible. The bowels of the prophet Hosea, moved with divine compassion, announce its future restoration: “My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fiercess of mine anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man—the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not come in anger. They shall walk after Jehovah; He shall roar like a lion; when He shall roar, then the children shall hasten from the west: they shall hasten 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). This same God who had given them a king in His anger and taken him away in His wrath (Hos. 13:11) says, “I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death” (Hos. 13:14), and again “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for Mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His shoots shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They shall return and sit under his shadow; they shall revive as corn, and blossom as the vine: the renown thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon” (Hos. 14:4-7).
From 2 Kings 17:7-18 God shows what He had done for Israel since, delivering from Egypt, He had introduced them into Canaan (2 Kings 17:7). He then speaks of that which they had done, first of all acting “secretly” against the Lord, walking according to the idolatry of the nations which God had dispossessed before them, and in the statutes that the kings of Israel, beginning with Jeroboam I, had established in founding and maintaining their national religion of the calves of Dan and Bethel. Moreover, they had erected everywhere in their fortified cities, and even to the watchmen’s tower, high places and male and female idols in greater excess than had Judah, which was content to keep the high places, at one time consecrated to the worship of the Lord, turning them into places of idolatrous practices (2 Kings 17:8-13). The Lord had testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets. Had they listened to these? No, they had forsaken the commandments of the covenant to deliver themselves up to terrible apostasy, described in all its aspects in 2 Kings 17:14-17. Finally, in His wrath God removed them from before His face and “there remained but the tribe of Judah only,” no doubt for a short time, but God still recognized it according to the word of Hosea: “Ephraim encompasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah yet walketh with God, and with the holy things of truth” (Hos. 11:12).
In 2 Kings 17:19-20 God mentions Judah as in passing. This latter had followed the statutes established by the ten tribes, and the Lord was rejecting all the seed of Israel. But from 2 Kings 17:20-24 He returns to Ephraim and to its separation from the house of David. It was doubtless a judgment of the Lord against Solomon, and as such ordered of God, but on the other hand it was the fruit of the evil heart of Israel for whom the temple of God at Jerusalem had little importance when they thought of becoming a nation independent of Judah. Perhaps, notwithstanding, Israel would not have dreamed of forging a new religion for itself from many bits and pieces if the political views of Jeroboam, a complete stranger to the fear of God, had not forced the people to enter upon this path. “Jeroboam violently turned Israel from following Jehovah, and made them sin a great sin” (2 Kings 17:21). But on the other hand, “the children of Israel walked” (they were therefore themselves guilty) “in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them” (2 Kings 17:22). And Israel was carried away to Assyria. We see here in 2 Kings 17:24 and also in 2 Kings 17:6 the enormous extent to which the kingdom had grown. The Assyrian monarch made the people of Babel and of other places come to replace those deported from the cities of Samaria.
These idolatrous nations, brought into the land of Israel, did not fear the Lord. He sent lions among them, which slew them. In spite of its desolation, God was caring for the land of His inheritance. He was asserting His rights over it, not allowing these to be taken away. He would not have the land again fall under the curse from which He had delivered it when He had exterminated the Canaanites. Whatever the ruin might be, the name of the Lord must not be entirely removed from the land of Israel, and that in view of the future, for the remnant, the true Israel, is to inherit the land. Decimated by lions, these poor ignorant pagans who likened the God of Israel to their own false gods understood this judgment. They were more intelligent than the Lord’s people (2 Kings 17:26). The king of Assyria had one of the priests who had been carried away captive sent to them in order to “teach them the manner of the god of the land”; but this priest himself had supported the dreadful mixture of idolatry with the worship of the true God and so was unable to teach them anything but his own corruption, so that on the one hand they learned “how they should fear Jehovah,” whereas, on the other hand, “every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places that the Samaritans had made” (2 Kings 17:29). A corrupted religion—this fact which is so evident must nonetheless be especially insisted upon—cannot lead men on in the truth and will always mold them according to its own pattern. And so it is said, “They feared Jehovah, and made to themselves from all classes of them priests of the high places, who offered sacrifices for them in the houses of the high places” (2 Kings 17:32). Had not Jeroboam done the same thing with regard to the priesthood? That which they learned from the priest of Samaria led them on in that same path, only they go a little further and the priests whom they establish, following the pattern set by Jeroboam, became simply priests of their idols (2 Kings 17:32, cf. 2 Kings 17:29). The Word of God repeats that “they feared Jehovah, and served their own gods after the manner of the nations, whence they had been carried away” (2 Kings 17:33), but it adds in 2 Kings 17:34: “To this day they do after their former customs: they fear not Jehovah, neither do they after their statutes or after their ordinances, nor after the law and commandments that Jehovah commanded the sons of Jacob, whom he named Israel.” Let us not forget that the fear of the Lord, this first step in the path of wisdom, cannot be allied with the idolatry of the world, no more with heathen idols than with those of the present-day world which, in rejecting Christ, has recognized the overlordship of Satan. Those who in appearance fear Him, in fact do not truly fear Him if they do not obey Him, for to fear Him is to obey Him. God does not tolerate mixtures.
Observe in all this passage how the fear of the Lord, this beginning of wisdom, had been brought before the conscience of the people (2 Kings 17:35-40), as well as the nations. The Lord had said to Israel: “Ye shall not fear other gods”(2 Kings 17:35, 37, 38), “Jehovah alone... Him shall ye fear, and Him shall ye worship” (2 Kings 17:36), “but ye shall fear Jehovah your God, and He shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies” (2 Kings 17:39). In this short passage the expression “fear Jehovah” occurs eleven times! All else depended upon this elementary ordinance and still depends on it!
As for these nations, in making them feel His displeasure by the attack of the lions, the Lord had impressed upon them that they turn to Him. Then, following the same principle toward them that He had used with His own people, He left them to their own responsibility. They pay no more attention to this than had Israel. But which of these two groups was the more guilty? When the captives of Judah were restored to their land that they might receive Christ, they deeply despised the Samaritans and had no relationship with them (John. 4:9) But they went further than that, and said to their Messiah, “Thou art a Samaritan!” (John. 8:48). It is thus that the religious man judges other men, he who himself is under the same judgment, and so too he judges God! The rejected Jesus accepted this name that He might in a parable show that despite this position of dishonor which was accorded Him He alone was the dispenser of grace, in contrast with religious men whose self-righteousness prevented them from being a neighbor to wretched Israel, fallen into the hands of the nations who had spoiled it!
Chapters 18-25 –The Last Kings of Judah