2 Kings 17:1–41

17:6 Finally the siege breaks Israel’s resistance, and in 722 BC the “king of Assyria captured Samaria.” Israel’s population is then driven out of the land and transported to multiple locations: “in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” The fact that the Israelites are dispersed provides the human reason that no return from exile ever takes place. The narrative is so understated that it would actually be quite easy to miss the enormity of what has just happened. Five-sixths of God’s own people are essentially wiped out. The area of the Promised Land is drastically reduced. The reliability of God’s promises is called into question. The curses of the covenant are poured out, and the blessings are seemingly lost. The disastrous end to the nation highlights the issues that have dogged them from their rebellious beginnings at the time of Rehoboam—issues that come to the fore in the following verses.

17:7–8 In these verses, the writer of Kings steps out of the shadows to give a rare extended editorial piece. Summing up every hint and subtlety of the book to date, the headlined reason for the exile of Israel is spelled out like this:

This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, . . . and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.

In other words, they thought like, talked like, acted like, and dreamed like everyone else, getting sucked into the anti-God patterns and rhythms of life on earth. The basic crime of Israel was breaking the first commandment, which was rapidly followed by adopting the practices of the Canaanites and then mimicking the deviancy of earlier kings of Israel. Despite the grace of God shown to them in the exodus, Israel had become a nation of serial idolaters, each generation building on the sin of the one before.

17:9–12 In the subsequent verses, Israel’s sins are detailed at some length, reeled off in a long list of ways in which the people displayed their similarity to everyone else around them. Yes, of course, their idolatry is an issue. But beneath their idolatry is a prior rejection of Yahweh, who brought them out of Egypt; beneath their idolatry is the decision to live like everyone else. It is the decision not to love and serve Yahweh that is at fault—the decision to look elsewhere for satisfaction and security. It is what the Bible calls “worldliness.”

The people were basically duplicitous, and “did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right.” These secret things include building “high places in all their towns, . . . setting up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree.” They also “made offerings on all the high places” and “did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they served idols.” The language recalls both 1 Kings 14:23 and 2 Kings 16:4.² These practices were virtually universal, “from watchtower [presumably in the remote border areas] to fortified city.” This kind of behavior identifies Israel with the very nations they had dispossessed during the conquest.

17:13–18 Behind this litany of idolatry and disobedience is a catalog of warnings provided by God to his people—both “Israel and Judah” were alerted “by every prophet and every seer” of the urgent need for repentance. Their message could be summarized as “turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.” It is interesting that, while Elijah and Elisha are prominent in the book of Kings, the writer assumes knowledge of many other prophets as well (presumably including those who have left us a written legacy).

The fundamental error of Israel is that “they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.” Refusal to “listen” (which includes the idea of heeding or obeying) is linked to the fundamental sin of “unbelief.” Only when one denies the power and authority of the one and only God is it possible to think that one can ignore him and win. In verse 15, the “anatomy” of their sin continues, as the writer ramps up his language, asserting, “They despised his statutes and his covenant . . . and the warnings that he gave them.” This contempt was displayed in going after “false idols,” and, as result, they themselves “became false.” Of course, as we have seen throughout 1–2 Kings, the people’s idolatry was the expression of their rejection of God—of their insistence to be like other nations, of their basic “worldliness.” And the result? The word used here is hebel (“false”; two times in v. 15), much favored in Ecclesiastes, with the implication that they had worshiped “breath” and so became “breath” themselves. Sin always rebounds on the sinner, and the worshiper always becomes like the object he worships.

By verse 15, it has become clear that as “they followed the nations that were around them” (contra Deut. 18:9–13), Israel became indistinguishable from the very nations they were called to repudiate. The rising tide of idolatry charts the history of the nation, as they “abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God” and replaced him with “metal images of two calves . . . an Asherah . . . all the host of heaven . . . and Baal.” By verse 17, it is clear that the people of God left the ways of God far behind, as “they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.” The verdict of verse 18 is chilling: “Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.” Israel is destroyed, never to rise again as a separate nation.

17:19–23 Given the fact that the primary audience of Kings is Judean exiles, it is no surprise that even as the reasons for Israel’s destruction are spelled out, the implications for Judah are also highlighted. The fact that “Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced” sounds an ominous note promising a similar fate should Judah not heed the warnings—surely they too will be “rejected . . . and afflicted” and even “cast . . . out of his sight.” This is made plain in verse 20: “The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers.” The text is deliberately vague on the identity of “all the descendants of Israel” here, but the language sounds patriarchal and therefore draws in both Israel and Judah.

The writer, however, is quick to say that the end of Israel should not have come as a surprise. From day one, when “they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king,” they have been on the same idolatrous, rebellious trajectory. Verse 22 makes it very plain: “The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them, until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets.” Yahweh has not abandoned or ignored his people—he has continued to speak, governing their fate through his word, but they have not listened. The permanence of the final statement of this section is chilling: “So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.” The implication is that the same fate awaits Judah should they not listen and repent.

The issue with Ahaz, like the nation that he leads, is that he is an idolater. The problem with idolatry, of course, is that it is symptomatic of a rejection of God.³ Both king and nation have rejected all the ways of Yahweh. They have steadfastly refused to be different, spurning the God who made them his treasured possession (cf. Ex. 19:5–6). This rejection of Yahweh was part of Israel’s sinful DNA from the very beginning, as 2 Kings 17:21–23 makes clear. The nation began with the arch-idolater Jeroboam and consistently followed the same trajectory throughout its history, refusing to walk in the ways of Yahweh. Once that happens, the only option is to fall into step with everyone else.

17:24–25 Unlike the later Babylonians, the Assyrians pursued a “destroy and replace” policy, and so, having crushed Israel, “the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim” who “took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities.” People both from the other end of the Assyrian Empire (Babylon) and also from near neighbors (Hamath, assuming this is the same place mentioned in 2 Kings 14:28) are forced to occupy this newly acquired territory together. However, replacing God’s people (even God’s people under judgment) is a risky move, not least because this land still belongs to Yahweh. As these people “did not fear the Lord. . . . the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.” In Kings, covenant lions occasionally make appearances to underline the cost of despising Yahweh and his covenant with his people (1 Kings 13:24–28; 20:36).

17:26–28 The settlers draw the right conclusions, which they communicate back to headquarters: these nations “do not know the law of the god of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” The foreign settlers are repeating the errors of Israel. The king of Assyria attempts to solve this problem using local labor, sending “one of the priests whom you carried away from there” back to what was Israel with the express commission to “dwell there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” This is an admirable plan, but given Israel’s past record, one wonders how orthodox (or effective) this teaching might be. However, according to verse 28, this priest returned to “Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord.”

17:29–40 No sooner has this hope appeared than it is quashed. The priest (of Yahweh?) succeeds only in adding the God of the former Israel to the pantheon of deities worshiped by the incomers: “But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made.” The litany of idolatry in verses 30–33 is without parallel in the OT:

The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

To this array of idols, Yahweh himself is added:

They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places. . . . So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.

The new inhabitants of Israel are rapidly proving to be no different from those displaced by the Assyrians. This syncretism is one of the defining marks of this new society: “To this day they do according to the former manner” (v. 34). God appears to relate to this eclectic mix of Assyrian imports as if they were his people, expecting from them the same response as he did from the former occupants of the land: “They do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel.” God holds them accountable in this way perhaps because they still insist on pledging allegiance to Yahweh (alongside many other gods). In verses 35–36, the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai is cited:

The Lord made a covenant with them and commanded them, “You shall not fear other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm. You shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice.”

This is then backed up with Mosaic preaching from Deuteronomy calling them to obey and in particular to “fear the Lord”:

The statutes and the rules and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You shall not fear other gods, and you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear the Lord your God, and he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. (vv. 37–38)

In the same way that Israel refused to listen, “these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children’s children—as their fathers did, so they do to this day” (v. 41). The emerging nation of Samaria, while not consisting solely of Israelites, will mimic their behavior indefinitely, as they fail to worship Yahweh as he has commanded. Even during the Babylonian exile, the basic problem will still endure: the land of Yahweh is occupied by people who neither know nor obey him.