2 Kings 17:7 - Meaning and Application

Although the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes is told only briefly, the historian explains it at length here and gives its true cause. He does not blame only human reasons, such as Israel’s weakness, poor leadership, or Assyria’s rising power. He points to the first cause, the Lord himself. It was the Lord who removed Israel from his sight, though Assyria was the instrument. This was destruction from the Almighty; Assyria was only the rod of his anger (Isaiah 10:5).

It was the Lord who rejected the people of Israel, or their enemies could never have overpowered them (2 Kings 17:20). Who gave Jacob up as plunder and Israel to robbers? Was it not the Lord? (Isaiah 43:24). We lose the lesson of national judgments if we do not see God’s hand in them and notice how Scripture is fulfilled. The writer carefully says that the Lord removed Israel out of his favor and out of their own land, just as he had warned through all his servants the prophets (2 Kings 17:23). Heaven and earth would pass away sooner than one word of God fail.

When we compare God’s word with his works, we find that they not only agree, they explain each other. But why would God destroy a people he had raised up by miracles and established by his own word? Was it only an act of raw power? No, it was an act of just judgment. They provoked him by their sin. Their ruin came from their own evil ways, and their own wickedness corrected them.

The historian explains this carefully so that it will be clear God did them no wrong, and so that others may hear and fear. We are meant to see what caused their ruin and crushed their honor. It was sin, and nothing else, that separated them from God. Here the cause of Israel’s desolation is opened up in a very moving way.

First, the writer shows what God had done for Israel to lead them into faithful service. God gave them freedom. He brought them out from under Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who oppressed them. He claimed them as his own people, as a father claims his son, and he set them free by his mighty power. Because he had broken their chains, they owed him gratitude and obedience. The God who rescued them from Egypt would not, except because of their sin, hand them over to the king of Assyria.

Second, God gave them his law and ruled them as their king. They lived directly under God’s rule. So they could not plead ignorance of right and wrong, because God had clearly warned them against the very sins he now charges them with, especially not to act like the nations around them (2 Kings 17:15). They also had no reason to question their duty, because these were the commands and statutes of the Lord their God (2 Kings 17:13). No room was left to argue whether they should keep them. He had not dealt so with other nations (Psalm 147:19-20).

Third, God gave them their land. He drove out the nations before them (2 Kings 17:8) to make room for Israel. Those nations had been removed for their idol worship, and that should have warned Israel not to follow their example.

Then the historian turns to what Israel did against God, even after all these obligations. In general, they sinned against the Lord their God (2 Kings 17:7). They did what was evil (2 Kings 17:9), and they did it in secret. They were so set on their sinful practices that when they could not carry them out openly, they did them in private, whether from shame or fear. This showed practical unbelief, as if they thought hidden acts were outside God’s sight and would not be judged.

They also did evil in open defiance of God’s law, as if they meant to provoke the Lord to anger (2 Kings 17:11). They rejected God’s statutes and his covenant (2 Kings 17:15). They would not be bound either by his command or by the agreement they had themselves accepted. Since they threw off both, God justly rejected them too (2 Kings 17:20). They left all the commandments of the Lord their God (2 Kings 17:16), abandoning the path and the work those commands laid out for them. In the end, they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, which means they gave themselves over entirely to sin, like slaves sold into service. By clinging to sin, they hardened their hearts so deeply that recovery became morally impossible.

More specifically, the sin named here is idolatry. They were guilty, no doubt, of many moral sins and broke all the commands dealing with how people treat one another. Still, the writer mentions only their idolatry, because this was the sin that most easily trapped them and most deeply offended God. It was spiritual adultery, the breaking of their covenant with God, and it opened the door to every other evil. That is why it is repeated again and again as the sin that destroyed them.

They feared other gods (2 Kings 17:7), meaning they worshiped them and paid them honor as though those gods had real power to punish them. They followed the customs of the nations, which were against God’s commands (2 Kings 17:8), and they did what the heathen did (2 Kings 17:11). They copied the nations around them (2 Kings 17:15), giving up the special calling that was meant to set them apart. Those who had been taught by God went to school to the nations that had been left in darkness.

They also followed the practices of the idolatrous kings of Israel (2 Kings 17:8), and all the sins of Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom (2 Kings 17:22). When their kings claimed the right to change God’s worship and add to his institutions, the people submitted. They seemed to think the command of their rulers could excuse disobedience to the command of God.

They built high places in every city (2 Kings 17:9). Even if there was only a watchtower in the countryside, or a shepherd’s hut, they would honor it with a high place and an altar. If it was a fortified city, they would add this false worship as another form of defense.

After they had left God’s one chosen place, they made no end of high places. There, each person followed his own idea and worshiped whatever god he wanted. In this way, sacred things were treated as common, and their altars became like piles in the furrows of a field (Hosea 12:11).

They also set up images and sacred poles, or perhaps wooden idols, as the Hebrew word may mean. Others think it refers to Ashtaroth, false goddess images. In either case, this went against the second commandment (2 Kings 17:10). They served idols (2 Kings 17:12), the work of their own hands and the invention of their own minds, even though God had warned them very clearly not to do this.

They burned incense at every high place to honor strange gods, and in doing so they dishonored the true God (2 Kings 17:11). They followed emptiness. Idols are called empty because they can do neither good nor harm, and they are the most useless things imaginable. Those who worship them become like them, empty and worthless too (2 Kings 17:16). Their worship was foolish and degrading, and it made their whole way of life empty as well.

Besides the carved and molten images, including the two calves, they worshiped all the host of heaven, meaning the sun, moon, and stars. The passage does not mean angels, for they had already sunk too low to think so high. They also served Baal, the false god the nations honored, often through heroic figures they turned into gods (2 Kings 17:16).

They made their children pass through the fire as a sign that they were giving them to their idols. They also used divination and enchantments, hoping to get guidance from the gods they worshiped. In this way, they turned from trusting God to seeking answers from dark and forbidden practices.

God did not leave them without warning. He spoke against them and showed them their sin through all the prophets and seers, the people then called prophets, and he urged them to turn from their evil ways (2 Kings 17:13). We read of prophets in one reign after another. Though they had abandoned God’s family of priests, he still did not leave them without prophets, who kept teaching them the knowledge of the Lord. But it was all wasted on them (2 Kings 17:14).

They would not listen. Instead, they made their necks stiff and kept on in their idol worship. They were like their fathers, who would not bow to God’s yoke because they did not believe him or trust his promises. This points back, at least in part, to their fathers in the wilderness. The same unbelief that kept that generation out of Canaan was now driving this people out as well.

God then punished them for their sin. He was very angry with them (2 Kings 17:18), because in the matter of worship he is a jealous God and deeply offended when people give to creatures the honor that belongs to him alone. He afflicted them and handed them over to plunderers (2 Kings 17:20), in the days of the judges, Saul, and many of their kings after that, hoping these judgments would wake them up and lead them to change. But when correction did not drive out their foolishness, God first tore Israel away from the house of David, under which they might have been happy.

That split weakened Judah, and it also corrupted Israel, because they made a man king who led them away from following the Lord and caused them to commit great sin (2 Kings 17:21). This was a national judgment and the result of their earlier idol worship. At last, God removed them completely from his sight (2 Kings 17:18, 2 Kings 17:23), giving no hope of a return from captivity.

There is also a charge against Judah in the middle of all this (2 Kings 17:19). Judah did not keep God’s commands either. They were not yet as corrupt as Israel, but they followed Israel’s ways. That made Israel’s sin worse, because they spread their evil to Judah (Ezekiel 23:11). Those who bring sin into a nation or a family bring trouble with it, and they will answer for all the harm that follows.