Israel “secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right” (2 Ki 17:9). Really? Can we act like this?
The sad decline of Israel was coming to its baneful conclusion. We’ll miss much of the irony if we forget our Bible geography. Far to the north of Israel is the eastern arm of the Fertile Crescent, the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys. This was the territory of ancient Ur in the land of Chaldea, the place from which God separated Abram from its pagan idolatry, bringing him to Canaan to establish a nation of monotheistic Jehovah-worshipers. To the southwest was Egypt, the place of Israel’s captivity for hundreds of years. How had they been set free? By the Showdown of the Gods, proving the vanity of idol worship. For this they had a front-row seat! If any people should know the madness of worshiping the works of our own hands, it should be the Jews. In 2 Kings 17, Scene 1 introduces us to Israel’s king, Hoshea (meaning “salvation”). He seems to be mediocre even in the evil he committed (v 2). When “Shalmaneser king of Assyria” (v 3) put him under tribute, he sought help, of all things, from king So, the ruler of their former slave masters. Discovering his secret, Shalmaneser “bound him in prison” (v 4). In Scene 2, from verses 7-23, we have described the sordid downward trail of the nation, in spite of the warnings of God and His prophets, until “they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil” (v 17). Shalmaneser began a sweep through the land, and “carried Israel away to Assyria” (v 6), as if the Lord was saying, I brought your father Abram here to deliver you from idols. If you want your idols rather than Me, I might as well take you back where I found you. And yet the God of grace would not abandon them. Even then! Even there!