Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Kings · About this commentary
Because They Would Not Hear
2 Kings 17:7-23
7 It was so because the children of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, · WEB
The book stops the story to say why — and the answer is not Assyria's strength but a covenant broken, warned about, and defended to the end.
It was so because the children of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt 2 Kings 17:7.
The explanation opens with the exodus, and the logic of that is the whole passage. This is not a small nation losing to a large one; it is a rescued people refusing the God who rescued them. The empire is the instrument, and the account never once treats it as the cause.
The indictment is then laid out in order: they feared other gods, walked in the statutes of the nations God had driven out, built high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city 2 Kings 17:9, set up pillars and Asherah poles on every hill and under every green tree, burned incense at all of them, and served idols about which God had said plainly, you shall not do this thing 2 Kings 17:12.
Note the phrase secretly did things that were not right 2 Kings 17:9. The public apostasy of the calves was matched by a private one, in every town, at a scale nobody legislated.
"Yet Yahweh testified to Israel and to Judah, by every prophet and every seer, saying, 'Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments'" 2 Kings 17:13.
This is the hinge of the chapter and of the book. Before the sentence is executed, God's testimony is described as continuous, universal and specific: every prophet and every seer, to both kingdoms, with one message. Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, the unnamed men of God, Jonah, Amos, Hosea — two centuries of warning, and the book has been narrating it the whole time. Nobody can say they were not told.
Notwithstanding, they would not listen, but hardened their neck like the neck of their fathers who didn't believe in Yahweh their God 2 Kings 17:14.
The refusal is the charge. Not ignorance and not weakness — a stiffened neck, the ox that will not take the yoke, and an unbelief traced back through the generations. And the summary of what they chose instead contains one of Scripture's sharpest sentences about idolatry: they followed vanity, and became vain 2 Kings 17:15. What a person worships, a person turns into. Emptiness is contagious from the object to the worshiper.
The catalogue that follows escalates to its end: two calves, an Asherah, the host of heaven, Baal, and finally they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do that which was evil 2 Kings 17:17. The trajectory from a convenient shrine at Bethel to children in the fire took two hundred years and never reversed.
Therefore Yahweh was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only 2 Kings 17:18.
And then the sentence the first readers were waiting for: also Judah didn't keep the commandments of Yahweh their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made 2 Kings 17:19. The chapter explaining the north's destruction names the south in the middle of it. For people reading this in Babylon , the verdict on their own exile has just been delivered inside the verdict on somebody else's.
Until Yahweh removed Israel out of his sight, as he said by all his servants the prophets 2 Kings 17:23.
The closing clause is the book's thesis in nine words. Everything that happened had been said in advance, and the saying is what makes the disaster meaningful rather than merely terrible. A God who is defeated by Assyria is no use to anyone in exile. A God who announced this for two hundred years, and did it, can be trusted with what he says next.
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