2 Kings 17:10

The fall of Samaria takes only a few lines of 2 Kings 17, and the LORD’s reasons for it take the long passage that follows. It opens with “For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God.” The verb ḥāṭāʾ means at root to miss, and in use to sin, to fall short of the way God set and so to stand in the wrong before him. Assyria was the instrument, and the cause lay in Israel’s long unfaithfulness to the covenant.

The sin is measured against what God had done for them. He “had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” The verb ʿālāh means to go up, and in this form to bring up, the plain word for God leading his people up out of Egypt at the exodus (Exodus 12:51). God gave the Ten Commandments in the same order, naming himself first as the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and out of slavery (Exodus 20:2), and only then speaking of other gods. So Israel’s idolatry was ingratitude toward their Redeemer. They sinned with full knowledge, against a God who had shown his power and his love and claimed them as his own. Jeremiah calls it forsaking the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13).

Israel “walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.” The verb yâlak means to walk, and like our own word it describes how a person lives, so this is a settled way of life. The word for statutes, chuqqâh, means something prescribed, an enactment or statute, and it also covers customs and practices, including those of heathen peoples, which is its sense here. The heathen, gôwy, are the nations, chiefly the Canaanite peoples the LORD drove out of the land before Israel.

The bitter irony is that God had driven those nations out for these very practices. His law told Israel to keep clear of the doings of Egypt and Canaan (Leviticus 18:3), and it gave the defiling of the land by such things as the reason the Canaanites were expelled (Leviticus 18:24–28). Moses warned Israel against taking up the ways those nations used in serving their gods (Deuteronomy 12:29–31), and he named their abominations one by one (Deuteronomy 18:9–12). Israel took up the very sins for which the people before them had been judged.

The charge returns in verse 11, where they burnt incense “as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them,” and in verse 15, where they “went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.” Each time the Hebrew word is gôwy. In verse 11 the verb for “carried away” is gâlâh, a word for removal and exile, and the English words “carried away” come back in verse 23, this time for Israel itself.

Israel was meant to be different. Their keeping of God’s statutes was to show the nations a wise and understanding people (Deuteronomy 4:5–8). Instead they became indistinguishable from the nations God had warned them against. Paul traces the same exchange in all humanity, who knew God and turned to worship the creature (Romans 1:18–25).

Verse 8 adds a second source: “and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.” The forbidden ordinances also came from inside Israel. From Jeroboam onward the northern kings set up and kept forbidden worship, beginning with the calves at Bethel and Dan when the kingdom divided (1 Kings 12), and Ahab went further with Baal (1 Kings 16:30–33). The people followed these man-made ordinances in place of God’s.

The children of Israel “did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God.” The verb châphâʼ means to do things secretly, to act covertly. The word for “things” is dâbâr, which means a word or speech and, as a separate sense, a matter or thing, and here it covers the whole range of their wrong practices. They may have hidden them out of shame, or in the hope that what they did would go unseen, yet the LORD is present in every place (Psalm 139:7–12).

What began in secret ended in plain view: “they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.” A high place, bâmâh, is an elevation or height, and the word names a raised site of worship, a natural hill or a built mound with altars, sacred pillars and Asherah poles, where sacrifices and incense were offered. The phrase “from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city” names the two ends of settled life, the lonely watchtower out in the fields and the walled city, to mean everywhere between them. Every corner of the land had its shrine.

Verse 10 names what stood at these sites: “they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree.” The verb nâtsab means to station or set up. The “images” are matstsêbâh, standing pillars or sacred stones. A pillar could be an honest memorial, as when Jacob set up the stone at Bethel (Genesis 28:18), and these were cult pillars raised to gods like Baal. The “groves” are ʼăshêrâh, a word that can mean the Canaanite goddess Asherah, her image, or the wooden pole or sacred tree set up in her worship. Asherah was counted the consort of Baal, and her worship belonged to the fertility cults of Canaan. The law told Israel to break down exactly these things (Deuteronomy 7:5).

The places matter too. “High hill” joins gâbôahh, high or lofty, with gibʻâh, a hill, and the nations around Israel held that heights stood nearer the gods. “Green tree” joins raʻănân, verdant or flourishing, with ʻêts, tree or wood, and great flourishing trees were treated as signs of life, fertility and the presence of a god. The repeated “every” is a deliberate exaggeration, a picture of a land dotted with stone pillars and wooden poles wherever a hill rose or a tree grew green.

Verse 11 tells what they did there: “And there they burnt incense in all the high places.” Incense had its place in the worship God himself commanded at the tabernacle, where it went up as an offering to him. Burned on the high places, it carried that same devotion to false gods. They “wrought wicked things,” with ʻâsâh, the ordinary verb for doing or making, and raʻ, bad or evil. All of it went “to provoke the LORD to anger.” The verb kaʻaç in this form means to vex or provoke to anger, and verse 17 ends on the same result.

Verse 12 sets the whole practice against God’s plain word: “For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing.” The word for idols, gillûwl, is properly a log or block, and one lexicon renders it “logs, blocks, shapeless things,” a scornful name for what Israel bowed down to. To serve, ʻâbad, is to work, labour, serve and worship, and the same verb returns in verse 16, “and served Baal.” The name rendered “the LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own covenant name, which speaks of his self-existence and his faithful bond with Israel. On one side stands a block of wood, and on the other the living God who had chosen them.

“Ye shall not do this thing” gathers up all that God had said against idols, in the commandments given at Sinai (Exodus 20), in Moses’ warnings against idolatry (Deuteronomy 4:15–19), and in the commandments repeated before Israel entered the land (Deuteronomy 5:7–9). Their sin was committed against a clear command, by people who knew it. The LORD alone is God (Deuteronomy 6:4), and his glory is his alone (Isaiah 42:8). Moses’ call to love the LORD asks for the whole heart (Deuteronomy 6). The psalmist shows how helpless idols are (Psalm 115:4–8), and Moses had warned where serving such gods would lead (Deuteronomy 4:28). Idolatry also carried moral corruption with it, because the worship of these gods brought immorality, violence and injustice in its train.

“Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers.” Before any of the judgment came, God warned. The verb ʻûwd means to repeat, and so to protest or testify by saying it again, and it carries the weight of a formal charge, the way a case is laid out in court. A prophet, nâbîyʼ, is one called to speak for God, and a seer, chôzeh, one who receives his word in visions. Elijah, Elisha, Amos and Hosea were among these messengers to the north. The word “all” keeps returning in the verse, and it tells of a long line of voices over generations, which left the people without excuse.

Their message was plain: “Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes.” To turn (shuv in Hebrew) is the Bible’s word for repentance, a turning away from sin and back to God. The prophets brought the law already given “to your fathers” and pressed it on each new generation, so their call was an old one renewed. It was the same word Moses spoke when he set life and death before Israel and urged them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).

The verse names Judah alongside Israel, so the same justice reaches both kingdoms. Jeremiah later spoke of God sending his prophets to Judah day after day to a people who would not listen (Jeremiah 7:25–26), and after the exile Nehemiah’s prayer praised God’s patience through many years of warning (Nehemiah 9:30). Paul says the same of God’s goodness now, that it leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

“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.” The verb shâmaʻ means to hear, and in Scripture hearing God includes heeding and obeying him, so refusing to hear was refusing to obey. The phrase for hardened necks joins qâshâh, hard, severe or stubborn, with ʻôreph, the neck. The picture is an ox that stiffens its neck against the yoke and goes where its master leads only by force. At Horeb the LORD said of Israel, “it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 32:9), Moses reminded them of it (Deuteronomy 9:6), Jeremiah met the same stubbornness in his day (Jeremiah 7:24), and Stephen laid the same charge on the leaders of his own day (Acts 7:51).

“Their fathers” points back to the wilderness generation, who saw God’s wonders and still refused to trust him (Numbers 14:11). The word for believe, ʼâman, is the one from which “Amen” comes, and here it means to trust and rely on God. Unbelief lay at the root, and the disobedience grew from a refusal to rest their weight on the LORD their God. So stubbornness passed from one generation to the next.

Verse 15 lists what Israel threw away: “They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them.” The verb mâʼaç means to reject or spurn, a deliberate casting away. The covenant, bᵉrîyth, is a binding agreement, a covenant or treaty, here the one God made with Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19–24). It promised blessing for obedience and set out curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). The testimonies, ʻêdûwth, are his solemn declarations and warnings, the ones the prophets of verse 13 brought. Statutes, covenant and testimonies together take in everything God had given them.

Verse 20 answers with the same verb: “the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel.” Israel rejected the LORD’s covenant, and in the end the LORD rejected Israel.

“They followed vanity, and became vain.” The word hebel means breath or vapour, and in use futility or a worthless idol. Israel chased what was empty air and grew as empty as the thing they chased. Jeremiah says the same of Israel’s fathers (Jeremiah 2:5), and Moses had warned them against forgetting the covenant and making images (Deuteronomy 4:23–26). They “went after the heathen that were round about them,” though Moses had told them before they entered the land to keep away from the nations’ abominations (Deuteronomy 18:9).

“And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God.” The verb ʻâzab means to loosen, let go, forsake, and here Israel lets go of the whole of God’s law. The verse then lists what took its place, heaping one sin on another with “and” after “and”.

“Molten images, even two calves.” The word maççêkâh means a casting, an image of poured metal. The two calves are those Jeroboam set up at Bethel and Dan when the kingdom divided, so that his people would stop going up to worship at Jerusalem, where their hearts might turn back to the house of David (1 Kings 12:25–33). He presented the calves to Israel as the gods who had brought them up out of Egypt, which handed the LORD’s great act of verse 7 to two metal images, in plain breach of the command against images (Exodus 20:4). The verb “made” is ʻâsâh, the same verb as “wrought” in verse 11.

“And made a grove”: ʼăshêrâh again, the Asherah pole of verse 10, now named beside the calves. “And worshipped all the host of heaven”: the sun, moon and stars. The verb shâchâh means to bow down, to lie prostrate in homage. Moses had warned Israel against worshipping the heavenly bodies (Deuteronomy 4:19), and to bow to them was to give the Creator’s honour to things he had made.

“And served Baal.” Baʻal was the chief god of the Canaanites and Phoenicians, a god of storm and fertility, and the great rival of the LORD in Israel after Ahab and Jezebel pressed his worship on the nation (1 Kings 16:30–33). The verb is ʻâbad again, as in verse 12.

“And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire.” The verb ʻâbar means to cross over or pass through, and here it names the offering of children in fire to false gods, Molech and Baal among them. Some have asked whether it meant only a rite of dedication, and the law’s own words point to sacrifice: God forbade giving children to Molech (Leviticus 18:21) and counted the practice among the abominations of the nations (Deuteronomy 18:9–12). Jeremiah condemned the same thing in Judah (Jeremiah 32:35), and the psalmist mourned Israel’s idolatry and the sacrifice of their children (Psalm 106:35–39). This was the lowest point of the fall, an assault on the very lives God had given them.

“And used divination and enchantments.” Divination, qeçem, is fortune-telling, reading omens and signs to learn the future or hidden things. Enchantments were spells and sorcery, attempts to work on unseen powers. Both sought guidance and power from sources opposed to God, among a people to whom God had given his prophets and his word.

“And sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD.” The verb mâkar means to sell, to hand over in exchange, and figuratively to surrender. Here it is reflexive, “sold themselves,” a surrender to evil of their own doing, the same thing said of Ahab (1 Kings 21:20). The verse ends where verse 11 ended, “to provoke him to anger,” and the psalmist tells Israel’s history the same way (Psalm 78:58).

“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.” “Therefore” ties the judgment to all that came before it. The verb ʼânaph means at root to breathe hard or snort, and so to be angry, and mᵉʼôd, “very,” makes it strong. The verb for “removed” is çûwr, to turn off or take away, and “out of his sight” is literally from before his face, pânîym, a word that also means presence. God had dwelt among them and watched over them, and to be taken from before his face was to lose his favour and protection.

Verse 20 tells the same judgment in steps: “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.” He rejected them, with the same mâʼaç that described their rejecting him in verse 15. He afflicted them, ʻânâh, humbling them and bringing them low through defeat and hardship. He gave them into the hand of spoilers, the Assyrians, who plundered the land and deported its people, and so he used a foreign empire to carry out his word. And at last he cast them out of his sight, pânîym once more.

Verse 23 closes the account: “Until 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.” “Removed” is again sûr, the verb of verse 18, and “sight” is again pānîm. Amos had warned of exile beyond Damascus (Amos 5:27), and Hosea that Israel would lose its dwelling in the LORD’s land (Hosea 9:3). Long before them the law had warned that disobedience would end with the people scattered among the nations (Deuteronomy 28:63–64, Leviticus 26:33). Samaria fell to Assyria in 722 BC, and God’s word was kept to the letter. “Unto this day” uses yôwm, the ordinary word for day, and marks how things still stood when the history was written. The northern tribes were still in exile as a people. Judah went into exile later and returned, and Israel’s exile was the end of the northern kingdom.

“Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.” To keep, shâmar, means to guard, observe and preserve, and Judah failed to guard what had been entrusted to it. The commandments, mitsvâh, are God’s binding precepts. The statutes are chuqqâh, the same word as in verse 8, here the man-made practices of the north. Judah had the temple, the lawful priesthood and David’s line, and it had watched its sister kingdom fall, yet it took up the north’s high places, pillars, poles and even child sacrifice.

Ezekiel later pictured the two kingdoms as two unfaithful sisters, Aholah and Aholibah (Ezekiel 23:1–49). Jeremiah warned Judah that obedience mattered more than sacrifice (Jeremiah 7:21–26) and that God would cast Judah out as well (Jeremiah 7:15). The same covenant curses hung over Judah (Deuteronomy 28:15–68), and in time it too went into exile, to Babylon.

The last verses go back to where the northern kingdom began. “For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king.” The verb qâraʻ means to tear or rend, often violently, as cloth is torn. “He” is the LORD. The division came from him, as the prophet Ahijah had told Jeroboam beforehand (1 Kings 11:29–39), and it was his judgment on Solomon’s turning away. The human side is told in 1 Kings 12:1–15, where Rehoboam refused the people’s plea for relief from Solomon’s heavy burdens and the northern tribes broke away from the dynasty God had promised to David (2 Samuel 7:12–16). The people then made Jeroboam their king, and Hosea later condemned both the kings and the idols Israel made for itself (Hosea 8:4–6).

“And Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin.” The verb nâdach means to push off or thrust away, and also to lead astray. The words for “great sin” are chăṭâʼâh, sin or guilt, and gâdôwl, great, and the weight lies in that word great. Fearing that worship at Jerusalem would win his people back to the house of David, Jeroboam set up the calves and his own shrines (1 Kings 12:25–33). He put his political safety ahead of obedience, nearly every king after him kept the calves, and Kings names “the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat” again and again. One leader’s choice shaped a people for more than two centuries.

“For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them.” The verb is yâlak again, walking as a way of life, and the word for sins, chaṭṭâʾâh, means both sin and sin offering. “Departed” is çûwr, the same verb used for the LORD removing Israel in verses 18 and 23. Israel would not turn away from Jeroboam’s sins, and so the LORD turned Israel away out of his sight.

This chapter shows a people who broke the covenant at every point, and it points to the one who kept it. Jesus is the true and faithful Israel. Matthew applies God’s call of his son out of Egypt to him (Matthew 2:15). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17) and all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), doing always the will of the Father who sent him (John 6:38). He was tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and obedient to death on the cross (Philippians 2:8). Offered all the kingdoms of the world, he would worship God alone (Matthew 4:8–10). Where Israel feared other gods, he feared and obeyed the one true God.

He also bore the judgment this chapter describes. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), set forth as the propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25), who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4) and redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13). All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), but God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). On the cross Jesus cried out as one forsaken (Mark 15:34), so that those who are in him are free of condemnation (Romans 8:1) and will never be cast out of God’s sight.

Israel served idols and became their slaves. Jesus sets free those who are slaves to sin (John 8:34–36), and his blood purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:11–14). Whoever confesses sin finds him faithful and just to forgive (1 John 1:9). His people turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10), flee idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14) and keep themselves from idols (1 John 5:21). Paul names covetousness as idolatry (Colossians 3:5), calls us to put off the old man and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24) and to be transformed instead of conformed to this world (Romans 12:2), and warns against empty deceit, since all the fulness of God dwells in Christ (Colossians 2:8–10).

Where Israel hardened its neck, God promised a new heart and his own Spirit within, so that his people would walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:26–27). That is the new covenant Jeremiah foretold, with the law written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and it is made through Christ, the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6–13). By his Spirit the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit (Romans 8:3–4), and we walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). The worship the high places corrupted is now offered in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24), through Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

The prophets of verse 13 pointed ahead to the Prophet like Moses whom God promised to raise up (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18:18). In Jesus the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), and he began his preaching with the prophets’ old call, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). And where the LORD tore Israel from the house of David, he kept David’s line alive in Judah. Jesus is the son of David (Matthew 1:1–17), given the throne of his father David, and “of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32–33). In him God gathers one people from Jew and Gentile alike (Galatians 3:28–29, Ephesians 2:11–22), a chosen generation and a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), the distinct people Israel was called to be.

This passage shows a God who redeems first and asks for loyalty after. Before he said a word about other gods, he had brought Israel up out of Egypt, and every command he gave them rested on that rescue. It shows a God who warns long and patiently, sending prophet after prophet with the same plain words, “Turn ye from your evil ways,” to one generation after another. And it shows a God who keeps his word, so that the exile came “as he had said by all his servants the prophets.” The same faithfulness that carried out his warnings keeps his promises, and the line of David he guarded in Judah led to Christ.

The chapter also shows how a people drifts from God. It began with one king’s choice and a pair of calves, grew through secret sins into shrines on every hill, and ended with children in the fire and a nation sold to evil. Israel followed vanity and became vain, and the gods they trusted carried them nowhere. Over against all of it stands the LORD their God, whose word does what it says. In Christ the God who removed Israel from his sight has brought us near, and the warning of this chapter reaches us together with that grace.