Holy Bible

In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea. 2 Kings 17:1-8 Aspects of a corrupt nation David Thomas, D. D. Hoshea, the king here mentioned, was the nineteenth and last king of Israel. He lived about 720 years or more B.C. After a reign of nine years his subjects were carded away captive to Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end. I. AS AN UNFORTUNATE INHERITOR OF WRONG. — Upon Hoshea and his age there came down the corrupting influence of no less than nineteen princes, all of whom were steeped in wickedness and fanatical idolatry. The whole nation had become completely immoral and idolatrous. It is one of not only the commonest but the most perplexing facts in history that one generation comes to inherit, to a great extent, the character of its predecessor. Though the bodies of our predecessors are mouldering in the dust they are still here in their thought and influences. This is an undoubted fact. It serves to explain three things — 1. The vital connection between all the members of the race. Though men are countless in number, and ever multiplying, humanity is one. 2. The immense difficulty in improving the moral condition of the race. There have been men in every age and land who have "striven even unto blood" to improve the race. Those of us who have lived longest in the world, looked deepest into its moral heart, and laboured most zealously and persistently for its improvement, feel like Sisyphus, in ancient fable, struggling to roll a large stone to the top of a mountain, which, as soon as we think some progress has been made, rolls back to its old position, and that with greater impetuosity. 3. The absolute need of superhuman agency spiritually to redeem the race. Philosophy shows that a bad world cannot improve itself, cannot make itself good. Bad men can neither hell? themselves, merely, or help others. If the world is to be improved, thoughts and influences from superhuman regions must be injected into its heart. II. AS A GUILTY WORKER OF WRONG. — Hoshea and his people were not only the inheritors of the corruptions of past generations, but they themselves became agents in propagating and perpetuating the wickedness. So that while they were the inheritors of a corrupt past, they were at the same time guilty agents in a wicked present. Strong as is the influence of the past upon us, it is not strong enough to coerce us into wrong. III. AS A TERRIBLE VICTIM OF WRONG. What was the judicial outcome of all this wickedness? Retribution came, stern, rigorous, and crushing. ( David Thomas, D. D. ) In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria. 2 Kings 17:6-8 Captivity of Israel Ira M. Price. The seeds of Israel's captivity were sown by Solomon. The introduction of foreign wives into the royal family was the first step toward Israel's fall. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, cuts the die that stamps the face of all the subsequent religious history of Israel With the fourth dynasty, that of Omri, a new religious period begins. Omri's greatness and foreign popularity secured for his son Ahab alliance with the royal house of Zidon. With all the energy and fire of her strong character, Jezebel persecuted and destroyed the prophets of Jehovah, and transplanted into Israel the sensual worship of Baal and the Asherah. But the rise of the dynasty of Jehu was the fall not only of Omri's house, but of Phoenician Baal-worship also. From a political point of view, Israel had seen some prosperous times. Omri had secured a large domain, and probably a rich revenue. Ahab was less fortunate in his political relations. An invasion of the great Assyrian army forced a coalition of all the petty western nations for self-defence. In an inscription of Shalmanezer II. is an account of a battle between him and these peoples, which took place near the ancient city of Karkar. Among the enemies vanquished we find "twelve hundred chariots, twelve hundred horsemen, twenty thousand men of Hadadezer of Damascus; two thousand chariots, iron thousand men, of Ahab of Israel." In another inscription of the same monarch there is mention of "Jehu, the son of Omri!" as one of his tributaries. Here Omri appears as the ancestor of Jehu. The anarchy that cursed Israel during its later history seems to have been instigated largely by the monarchs of the East. In one of Tiglath-pileser's inscriptions, where he gives an account of his subjection of the land of Omri, he says: "Pekah their king I put to death, and I appointed Hoshea to the sovereignty over them." The Bible record, 2 Kings 15:30 , simply mentions the conspirator, murderer, and successor. The inscriptions tell us who stood behind, shifted the scenes, and directed the actors. Tiglath-pileser was absolute ruler of Palestine. Israel's power was broken, its army reduced, its land partially depopulated. I. THE CAPTURE OF SAMARIA. Hoshea seems to have been faithful to his Assyrian lord as long as the latter lived. But at the death of Tiglath-pileser and the accession of his successor, Shalmanezer IV., there was probably, as whenever rulers changed at Nineveh, a widespread revolt among their tributaries in the distant provinces. Hoshea, though religiously superior to his predecessors, despairs of the situation under the tyrants of the East, and appeals to So (Sabako), of Egypt, for relief. He withholds his accustomed tribute, thus openly defying the armies of the great king. His appeal to Egypt seems to have won for him only the enmity of the new king of Assyria. Shalmanezer then "came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years." He threshed the land right and left, taking captive and devastating, until he had driven the unsubmissive within the walls of Samaria. II. CAUSES OF THE CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL. After narrating the catastrophe of Samaria and the disposition of its population, the writer enumerates the causes of the same. The Israelites practised secretly the idolatry of their neighbours, building high places throughout the land, upon which they burnt incense to Canaanitish deities. Obelisks of Baal and the Asherim were set on every high hill and under every green tree. These Phoenician deities were symbols of the generative powers of Nature. They were the objects of the most degrading and licentious forms of worship. They appealed directly to the sensual impulses, and thus easily corrupted and led astray Israel. III. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CAPTIVITY. The ten tribes revolted against Solomon's successor in order to avoid political oppression. But their anarchistic method of choosing rulers made them for a hundred and fifty years the victims of the most arbitrary kings. By their disregard of political obligations and treachery toward their conquerors, these self-willed monarchs ultimately brought upon their people the just rewards of national rebellion — captivity and servitude. Jehovah had permitted them to exist as a part of his chosen people, but they were under the same conditions as Judah; their continuance depended on their faithfulness to his commands. When all law and testimony were ignored, and Jehovah was insulted and defied, then mercy gave place to justice, prosperity to disaster, blessings to cursings, and peace to captivity. This catastrophe is the strongest kind of corroboration to the truth of the warnings of the prophets. They besought and entreated Israel to turn from all evil ways. They warned and threatened, they accused and condemned them by the word of Jehovah. The threatened fate at length came to pass. With steadfast purpose, Jehovah brought upon his enemies the just fruits of their evil deeds. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Disregard of His words, commands, warnings, and threats is just as blameworthy in His sight to-day as two thousand five hundred years ago. Godless living is still the bane of national life. Let each one of us, by the grace of God, so live that the golden text of the lesson may never be true of us, — "Because you have forsaken Jehovah, He hath also forsaken you." ( Ira M. Price. ) For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned. 2 Kings 17:7-25 A great privilege, wickedness, and ruin David Thomas, D. D. I. A GREAT NATIONAL PRIVILEGE. We learn herefrom that the Infinite Governor of the world had given them at least three great advantages, political freedom, right to the ]and, and the highest spiritual teaching. He had given them, 1. Political freedom. For ages they had been in political bondage, the mere slaves of despots; but here we are told that God had "brought them out of the land of Egypt." Political freedom is the inalienable right of all men, is one of the greatest blessings of a people, but one which in every age has been outraged by despots. The millions are groaning in every land still under political disabilities. He had given them — 2. A right to the land. Canaan was the common right of all; true, it was divided amongst the ten tribes, but this not for the private interests of shy, but for the good of all. 3. The highest spiritual teaching. II. A GREAT NATIONAL WICKEDNESS. Possessing all these privileges, how acted these people — not merely the people of Israel, but the people of Judah as well? Was the sentiment of worship and justice regnant within them? Were they loyal to all that is beautiful, true, and good? Nay. 1. They rejected God. 2. They adopted idols, Mark(1) the earnestness of their idolatry. With what unremitting zeal they promoted the cause of idolatry. Mark(2) the cruelty of their idolatry. "And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire." III. GREAT NATIONAL RUIN. 1. Their ruin involved the entire loss of their country (ver. 23). 2. Their ruin involved the loss of their national existence (ver. 18). The ten tribes are gone, and no one knows whether they are now worth looking after, for they were a miserable type of humanity. 3. Their ruin involved the retributive agency of Heaven. ( David Thomas, D. D. ) The need of obedience to God's laws Charles M. Sheldon says he was once called upon unexpectedly to preach at an insane asylum. Be asked the superintendent what subject he would advise him to take. "Preach on the great need of obedience," was the prompt reply. After the service, in response to Mr. Sheldon's inquiry as to how much of the sermon was probably understood, the superintendent said: "They understood nearly all of it. Besides, you must remember that there were more than fifty of us, counting doctors and attendants, who are sane, and I don't know but what we need the doctrine of obedience preached into us just as much as the other people. I know that disobedience to God's laws has brought most of these people into this asylum, and the rest of us are in danger of the same end if we do not learn to obey the commands of God." Following others in sin W. L. Watkinson. Mr. Romanes, who has specially studied the minds of animals, says that we may infer intelligence in an animal whenever we see it able to profit by its own experience. But is it not the sign of a higher intelligence, that we are able to profit by the experience of others. This is the reason why history is written with so much elaboration, and studied with so much solicitude. But men, on a wide scale, disregard this history and refuse the solemn lessons. Men follow one another in sin as they do in nothing else. Baxter tells how he once saw a man driving a flock of lambs, and something meeting and hindering them, one of the lambs leaped on the wall of a bridge and fell over into the river; whereupon the rest of the flock, one by one leaped after it, and were nearly all drowned. Thus we men often act, blindly, madly, smitten by a profound infatuation we wildly follow one another, leaping into the gulf. ( W. L. Watkinson. ) Confirmed sinners learn not from the past W. L. Watkinson. "The burnt child dreads the fire;" it boldly trifles with sticks and papers until it is burnt or scalded, and henceforth keeps a respectful distance from the bars. This is equally true of men in their business life. Let a man speculate in some concern or other that turns out badly, people say, "Ah! he has burnt his fingers." Now, when a man has done that, beware how you approach him with your rosy prospectuses. He has lost his money with a farm, or a bank, or a mine, or a mill; do not go to him with a farm, even were it in the land of Goshen, or a mill, even were it the mint, or a bank even were it the Bank of England. He will show you his blisters, and send you away with scant courtesy. As the Oriental says, "He who has suffered from a fire-brand is afraid of a firefly;" "He who has been bitten by a serpent is afraid of a rope," a victim is afraid of anything that bears the most distant likeness to that from which he has suffered. This is rational — if a man acts otherwise it is because he is a fool But men are not thus cautious in regard to the moral life. ( W. L. Watkinson. ) And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right. 2 Kings 17:9 Infatuation of sin J. Parker, D. D. Again we come upon this report which we have had as it were a thousand times in identical terms. What is the wonderful charm of evil? Surely the philosophers have not answered that inquiry completely. There must be some peculiar inexpressible charm in evil, or men would no do it, and do it with both hands earnestly, and live in the doing of it, and reap in its execution some kind of harvest of contentment and gladness. What is this charm? Men repeat the evil even whilst denominating it iniquity and marking it as vile. In this matter we are curiously and wondrously made. We go back to the evil. The devil seems to be more attractive than God. One would have thought that one vision of truth, beauty, heaven's own light, would have for ever fascinated us, and made us incapable of meanness, wrong-doing, untruthfulness, or any form or colour of iniquity. But it is not so. The devil is most charmful! We know he tells lies, but he tolls them eloquently. We are aware that he cannot keep any promise that he ever made, yet when he puts out his black hand to us we grope for it in the dark, and think the fellowship not without advantage! Who can explain this? Is the explanation in the heart? "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked," ( J. Parker, D. D. ) They followed vanity and became vain. 2 Kings 17:15 Vanity a deadly sin C. S. Horne, M. A. May I begin by explaining that these words are used as a summary of the reason why the people of Israel were broken to pieces by the attacks of Shalmaneser, the King of Assyria, and how it came to pass that their glory was destroyed, their prestige was shattered, and they were humbled to a life of captivity and slavery. As a nation they became vain, they followed vanity. That is all the explanation that he offers. Vanity led on to a number of idolatries, and the empty inflated life which, when it was pricked by the sword of Shalmaneser, proved to be a mere bubble; and because there was no enduring foundation the whole edifice crumbled and decayed. Because a nation is prosperous, because its life is inflated, because it is pursuing a vainglorious course, it does not follow that the blessing of God is upon it, and it does follow that if that is its life, when first the keen, sharp edge of trial Comes it will be shown to be what it is. And what applies to nations applies with equal power to individuals. There are some people who quarrel with my title. "Vanity," they say, by all means, but not "a deadly sin." Vanity is one of the most harmless of our amusements. Vanity is the kind of thing that the schoolboy talks genially about as "side," and that the man in the street refers to equally genially as "swelled head." Nobody thinks very much about it, and in point of fact a sort of superficial vanity often covers, as we know, substantial and admirable qualities of character. I do not want in denouncing one vice to fall into another, and be guilty of intolerance. I do not want to speak of it in any other way than I think God Himself speaks of it in the pages of Revelation. Everybody knows that this is a vice that has perhaps been more successful than any other in making its way into sacred places. "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition; by that sin fell the angels," was what Shakespeare said, anticipating that argument of Milton that pride wrought division, havoc, and ruin even in a celestial world. You know as well as I do that this has been the vice of the ecclesiastic in all ages, the vice of arrogance, the vice of vanity, the vice of pride. All the resolutions of Convocation, all the seals of your bishops and archbishops can do nothing against this sin. Therefore, if any one here rises up to say this is not a deadly sin I quarrel with him on that ground, that it has attacked what has been most sacred, and ought to be most influential for righteousness in the world. Vanity is the vice of the minister in all ages and in all forms. He need not clothe himself in a mitre with all the pomp and circumstance of ritual, he need not sit upon a throne. Vanity has invaded the Free Church pulpit just as much as it has invaded the home of the higher ecclesiasticism. And when I have said that about the ministry and the temptations inevitable to the ministry, I want to say that so far as I am aware it is also a sin to which young Christians are more particularly susceptible. I say that that affectation of religious superiority is something that makes the sinner outside to scoff, and the saint inside to shudder. And now let me turn from the Church to the outside world. Let me put my question straightly to those who perhaps pride themselves on having nothing to do with the churches. Do you mean that any of you would rise up and tell me that in speaking of the sin of vanity I am not indicating one of the sins of the present day? I do not like to rail against my rage, but is there any one who will not say that I am strictly within the truth when I speak of our present age as pushing, an advertising age, a forward age. Is it or is it not a fact that life all through is being made vicious by this particular sin, that we are victims to-day of the man who is self-opinionated and self-assured, that the man with the loudest tongue and the most brazen front is the man who seems to have the most and the best chances of making his way successfully in the world? Is it or is it not a fact that it is an external age, an age when the outside show counts for more than the internal worth? And is it not a fact that this all springs from certain venomous roots of vanity, that in attacking the immodesty of the age we are putting our finger upon one of its chiefest faults, that this desire for external and outside show is more than something that can be treated as artificial and casual and transient and that will pass away? Now, if I were to say, as I should not hesitate to do, that the greatest of all the apostles felt the insidious character of this vice the most, I believe I should be saying, nothing that Paul himself would not have consented to. Read his letters; see how there he implores himself and others never to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think; how he applies the cross of Jesus Christ to his own life; how he presents himself to people, lest they should begin to flatter him, as the chief of sinners. And if I found there were any of you here, as I should not imagine you would be, adamantine against the reproaches and warnings of the Apostle Paul, then I should say to you there are two other literatures into which I ask you to look. I ask you to take down from your shelves your Pilgrim's Progress , to read over line by line that magnificent description, unparalleled in literature, the description of Vanity Fair, and there let Bunyan tell you the truth. The truth about his age is the truth about yours — Vanity Fair, the place where all merchandise was sold: places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, husbands, wives, lives, blood, bodies, souls — all marketable in Vanity Fair. If you could resist that and say, "these religious books do not appeal to me," then I should have to ask you to take your Thackeray and read his description of Vanity Fair, and when you had read that, if you had read it in the right spirit, you would know that every word that Bunyan said was true, and you would know that every word that Paul said was true. And the spirit of that, modern Vanity Fair which Thackeray drew is the spirit of the Vanity Fair that prevails to-day. You can keep your decalogue and be a proud man, but you cannot begin to be a Christian and be a proud man. And do you know why? Do you know why Jesus Christ put humility as the foundation of all the virtues? Because, unless it is there, you will not keep any of the virtues. Let me put it to you as strongly as that, virtue cannot embrace vanity and remain virtue. There is nothing of which people so easily become vain as their virtues. I want to put it to you that in the thought of Christ a proud man is further from God, may be further from God, shall I say, than the thief, than the man who has broken the Ten Commandments. Now let me be a little more practical and personal by way of the application of what I am trying to say. I suppose we shall all agree that modern life is the opportunity of the vain man, the democratic life lends itself so easily to positions of prominence. Your modest, retiring man is a man very difficult to persuade to occupy a public position, and indeed only a stern sense of duty, as a rule, will drive him there. But there is the place — places that are multiplied to-day — beckoning and calling to the vain man, the man who believes in himself and always lets you know it. It succeeds, it gets to the top, it occupies the conspicuous position, and therefore I find that young men and young women are quite willing to overlook the voice as being superficial, and to credit virtue which very often does not exist. And even when these ambitions are humbled in our midst, I do not find that with the vain man the humbling goes very deep, because he has always got his vanity to fall back upon. He always says virtue must always suffer. Is there anything more, perhaps, offensive to most people than the intellectually superior person, the person who prides himself upon his intellectual powers? It is so easy to-day to get a reputation of this kind, because this is the day of the little knowledge, and the day of little knowledge is always the day of vanity. Let me take just one further illustration of the pernicious character of this vice in the age in which we live. Some people say that a vain woman is a sad spectacle, but that a vain man is a sadder. I think they are right, but I think also that, perhaps, a vain child is the saddest spectacle of all. And yet how often we find parents misguided enough to encourage and cultivate in their children this particular vice. They repeat the clever and charming sayings of their children before their children's faces, until in a very little while their children come to hold by the creed that probably they are the cleverest children that the world contains. I should like to put in tonight a very simple, humble plea for the encouragement of the simplicity and humility of childhood. It was not for nothing, surely, that our Lord took a little child, and set him in the midst of his quarrelsome, ambitious, avaricious disciples. I have got to pray you, that you will accompany me and let me take you to where Paul went that he might get back to the foundation of Christian virtue, and I have got to ask you whether you dwell enough in the presence of that cross of Jesus Christ. For mark — if that doesn't break your pride nothing will. If you can turn your back upon that cross, and go away a vain man, the disease is incurable. God set that cross in the centre of the universe to humble men. Oh, men and women, to whom the world appeals in its worldly way to-day, in its loud, aggressive, self-assertive spirit, to join its side, and to take up the spirit of vanity, and to resolve that you will make your way as other people do by self-assertion, I want to plead with you. I know the temptation may be a strong one, but I want to ask you to believe with me that the Lord Christ knows better, and that that which is worth while is the humble and the contrite heart. ( C. S. Horne, M. A. ) And Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord. 2 Kings 17:21 Jeroboam N. Emmons, D. D. I. THE CHARACTER OF JEROBOAM BEFORE HE WAS KING. He early discovered some of those distinguishing natural and moral qualities, which formed him for the extraordinary part which he finally acted on the stage of life. His natural genius was sprightly, bold, and enterprising, which he evidently cultivated, notwithstanding the peculiar disadvantages and embarrassments which attended his education. Though he lost his father in his youth, and was left to the care of his mother, who was a widow, yet by the mere dint of his brilliant talents and close application, he recommended himself to the notice and patronage of his wise and sagacious sovereign, We read, "Jeroboam was the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zeruiah, a widow woman. And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph." His appointment to such an office, by such a penetrating prince, is an infallible evidence of his popular talents and pleasing address. These excellent and amiable accomplishments, had they been properly directed to the public good, would have rendered him a great blessing to the nation. But it appears from his history that a base, turbulent, ambitious spirit led him to prostitute his fine abilities to the vilest purposes. II. TO REPRESENT THE STATE OF THE NATION, WHEN A BASE AND UNPRINCIPLED MAJORITY RAISED HIM TO A SUPREME POWER. His two immediate predecessors were great and illustrious princes, who reigned long and prosperously. III. HOW IT CAME TO PASS THAT TEN TRIBES OUT OF TWELVE SHOULD RAISE SUCH AN IMPIOUS AND DANGEROUS MAN TO ROYAL DIGNITY. Jeroboam had not the least claim to the crown, either by birth or by merit. How then should it ever enter the minds of the nation to make choice of the son of Solomon's servant to reign over them? The answer to this is easy. Jeroboam the son of Nebat had long been a man of intrigue. He had secretly employed every artifice to prejudice the people against the former administration of government, and had openly presumed to lift up his hand against the king. All this he had done before he fled into Egypt; and it is extremely probable that during his residence there he kept up a secret and traitorous correspondence with the disaffected in Israel, and only waited for the death of Solomon to return and seize his throne. It is certain, however, that as soon as Solomon expired, his disaffected subjects immediately sent to Egypt for Jeroboam the son of Nabat, and set him up as the rival of Rehoboam, the proper heir to the crown. IV. WHAT METHODS JEROBOAM THE SON OF NEBAT EMPLOYED TO CORRUPT AND DESTROY THE PEOPLE WHO HAD GIVEN HIM HIS POWER. It is a melancholy truth that he did "drive Israel from following the Lord," and involve them in a series of calamities, until they were dispersed and lost among the nations of the earth. There is something so extraordinary and so instructive in this part of Jeroboam's conduct, that it deserves the deep attention of both rulers and subjects. The question now is, what methods did he employ to "drive Israel from following the Lord"? His character and conduct before he came to the throne will not admit of the supposition of his acting ignorantly or inadvertently. And it appears from his history that he exerted all his talents to devise the most effectual means of extinguishing every spark of true religion and virtue in the minds of his subjects. Here, then, it may be observed — 1. That he prohibited the worship of the true God, by substituting in the place of it the worship of graven images. The inspired historian gives us a particular account of this bold and impious method to banish all true religion and morality from his kingdom. 2. He appointed new times as well as new places of public worship. These two measures were intimately connected, and calculated to render each other the more effectual. To change the day as well as the places of religious worship, had a direct tendency to distinguish Israel from Judah, and to draw a lasting line of separation between the two kingdoms. His policy clearly appears in what the sacred historian says concerning his appointment of new holy days. 3. To make new appointments to office. As his darling object was to corrupt and destroy the true religion, so he discarded the regular and faithful priests of the Lord, and appointed others to supply their place who were attached to his person and cause, though of the vilest character and of the meanest condition. 4. That he enforced these measures by all the weight and influence of his own example. It appears from his character and conduct in early life that he possessed, in a high degree, the art of captivating and corrupting all sorts of people with whom he conversed. And when he was clothed with the ensigns of royalty his power and opportunity of corrupting his subjects greatly increased. He became the standard of taste, and the model of imitation. His sentiments and manners became a living law to his subjects. In his familiar intercourse with all around him he undoubtedly seized those soft moments, which were the most favourable to his malignant design of seduction. This he could do without departing from the dignity of his station; but it appears that he did more than this, and even stooped to mingle with the priests, and "to burn incense upon the altars of the golden gods of his own making." Improvement:(1) The character and conduct of Jeroboam may lead us to form a just estimate of good rulers. Everything appears in the truest light by the way of contrast. Folly is a foil to wisdom; vice is a foil to virtue; false religion is a foil to that which is true; and wicked rulers are a foil to those who are wise and faithful. These, however, are often despised and reproached, when they deserve to be esteemed and admired.(2) The character and conduct of Jeroboam plainly teach us what a dreadful scourge wicked rulers may be to their subjects. We can nowhere find the character of a hypocritical and unprincipled sovereign so fully delineated as in the history of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.(3) It appears from the intriguing character described in this discourse, how easily any people may be led into civil and religious delusion by artful and designing politicians. The people of God, one would have supposed, were proof against every species of delusion, especially in the days of Solomon, who instructed as well as governed them with superior wisdom and integrity.(4) It appears from the character and conduct of Jeroboam, that corrupt rulers will always aim to corrupt the faithful ministers of religion,(5) We learn from the character, conduct, and history of Jeroboam, that it is the duty of the public teachers of religion to bear public testimony against all attempts of those in authority to destroy the religion and morals of the people.(6) The nature and effects of Jeroboam's conduct show us what we have to fear, should our civil rulers embrace and propagate the principles of infidelity. We have not so far lost our virtuous and religious habits but that wise and virtuous rulers might, under Providence, restrain us from total declension and apostacy.(7) It appears from what has been said in this discourse that civil and religious delusions are the great evils which more especially call for our humiliation and mourning this day. Though we have been uncommonly happy and prosperous under the late administration of government, yet the people have loudly complained of public men and public measures, and by a majority of suffrages, placed the supreme power .in different hands.(8) This subject teaches us the propriety and importance of praying for a general effusion of the divine Spirit. Without this, we have no ground to expect to be reclaimed from our deep declension. ( N. Emmons, D. D. ) People who discourage others It was a current saying concerning Lord Eldon that "he prevented more good than any other man ever did." God save us from being mere obstructives, wet blankets, dampers, and discouragers! If we cannot help,

Benson Commentary 2 Kings 17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. 2 Kings 17:1 . In the twelfth year of Ahaz, began Hoshea to reign — He usurped the kingdom in Ahaz’s fourth year; but either was not owned as king by the generality of the people, or was not accepted and established in his kingdom till Ahaz’s twelfth year. Nine years — After his confirmation and peaceable possession of his kingdom; for in all he reigned seventeen or eighteen years; twelve with Ahaz, who reigned sixteen years, and six with Hezekiah. 2 Kings 17:2 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. 2 Kings 17:2 . But not as the kings of Israel that were before him — For he neither worshipped Baal, as many of his predecessors had done, nor compelled the people to worship the calves, one of which, that of Dan, being destroyed or carried away before this time, as the Hebrew writers affirm. And whereas the kings of Israel had hitherto maintained guards upon the frontiers, to hinder their subjects from going to Jerusalem to worship, Hoshea took away those guards, and gave free liberty to all, to go and pay their adoration where the law had directed; and, therefore, when Hezekiah had invited all Israel to come to his passover, this prince permitted all that would to go: and when, upon their return from that festival, they destroyed all the monuments of idolatry that were found in the kingdom of Samaria, instead of forbidding them, in all probability he gave his consent to it; because, without some tacit encouragement, at least, they durst not have ventured to do it. — Prideaux. And yet God, whose judgments are a great deep, brought destruction on the kingdom of Israel in the reign of this king. The fact was, that the Israelites had now completely filled up the measure of their iniquities, and God, by bringing ruin upon them at this time, when their king was less guilty than his predecessors, designed to show that he was punishing, not only the sins of that generation, but of the foregoing ages, and reckoning with them for the iniquities of their fathers. Add to this, that if Hoshea was not so bad as the generality of their former kings, yet the people were quite as wicked as those that went before them; and it was an aggravation of their wickedness, and brought ruin on them the sooner, that their king did not set them so bad an example as the former kings had done, nor hinder their reforming. He gave them leave to abandon their idols and their sins, and to return to the worship of the true God, and obedience to his laws: but they persisted in their idolatries and other vices, which laid the blame of their sin and ruin wholly upon themselves. 2 Kings 17:3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. 2 Kings 17:3 . Against him came up Shalmaneser — The son or successor of Tiglath-pileser. The ancient Hebrew writers made him the same with Sennacherib, who, eight years after this time, invaded the kingdom of Judah; it being very frequent, in the eastern parts, for one man to be called by several names. Josephus affirms, that he met with his name in the annals of the Tyrians, which were extant in his days. He came against him, either because he denied the tribute which he had promised to pay, or that he might make him tributary. And Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents — Swore fealty to him, and engaged to pay him tribute. Thus the destruction came gradually, and they were, for some time, made tributaries, before they were made captives to the king of Assyria. And if the lesser judgment had prevailed to humble and reform them, the greater would have been prevented. 2 Kings 17:4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. 2 Kings 17:4 . The king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea — If the king and people of Israel had applied themselves to God, made their peace with him, and addressed their prayers to him, they might, and no doubt would have recovered their liberty, ease, and honour; but they withheld their tribute, and trusted to the king of Egypt to assist them in their revolt, which, if it had been attended with success, would only have been to change their oppressors: but Egypt became to them the staff of a broken reed. This provoked the king of Assyria to proceed against them with the more severity. For he, Hoshea, sent messengers to So, king of Egypt — By some heathen writers called Sua, or Sabacus, that, by his assistance, he might shake off the yoke of the king of Assyria, who now was, and for many years had been, the rival of the king of Egypt, 2 Kings 18:21 ; Jeremiah 37:5 . “This So,” says Mr. Locke, “seems to be Sabacon, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, of whom Herodotus relates, that, being warned in a dream, he departed of his own accord from Egypt, after he had reigned there fifteen years. It was in the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign that he invaded Egypt, and having taken Boccharis the king thereof prisoner, with great cruelty he burned him alive, and then seized on his kingdom.” — Dodd. 2 Kings 17:5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. 2 Kings 17:5-6 . Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land — And made himself master of it, treating the Israelites as traitors rather than as fair enemies, and punishing them with the sword of justice. And went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years — During which time it held out, but doubtless endured a great deal of misery, though this be not particularly recorded. At length the royal city was taken, and the king made a prisoner, shut up, and bound. This was in the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea, at which time Israel was carried away captive into Assyria — There, we have reason to think, after some time, they were so mingled with the nations, that they were lost, and the name of Israel was no more in remembrance. They that forgot God were themselves forgotten, and they that studied to be like the nations were buried among them; and they that would not serve God in their own land, were made to serve their enemies in a strange land. Thus ended Israel as a nation, and the prophecy of Hoshea was fulfilled: they became Lo-ammi, not a people, and Lo- ruhamah, unpitied. Now Canaan spewed them out. When we read of their entry into Canaan under Hoshea the son of Nun, who would have thought that such would be their exit under Hoshea the son of Elah? Thus Rome’s glory in Augustus sunk many ages after in Augustulus; yet we find St. James writing to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, ( James 1:1 ,) and Paul speaks of the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, Acts 26:7 : so that, though we never read of the return of those that were carried captive, nor have any ground to believe that they still remain a distinct body in some remote corner of the world, yet a remnant of them did escape, and will remain, till all Israel be saved. 2 Kings 17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 2 Kings 17:7 For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, 2 Kings 17:7 . For so it was, &c. — Though the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes is but briefly related in the preceding verses, it is largely commented upon by the historian in those that follow; and the reasons of it assigned, which are not taken from the second causes, the weakness of Israel and their impolitic management; the strength and growing greatness of the Assyrian monarchy: these things are overlooked, and only the first cause is mentioned. It was the Lord that removed Israel out of his sight: whoever were the instruments, he was the author of this calamity. The destruction was from the Almighty, and the Assyrian was but the rod of his anger, Isaiah 10:5 . It was the Lord that rejected the seed of Israel, otherwise their enemies could not have seized upon them. Who gave Jacob to the spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord? Isaiah 42:24 . We lose the benefit of national judgments if we do not mark the hand of God in them, and the fulfilling of the Scriptures. It must be well observed, however, that their way and their doing procured all this to themselves, and it was their own wickedness that did correct them. This the sacred historian shows here at large, that it might appear God did them no wrong, and that others might hear and fear. The children of Israel had sinned against the Lord, and had feared other gods — This they had done a long time: for, from the beginning of Jeroboam’s setting up the golden calves, to the carrying of Israel away captive, were two hundred and sixty-three years, to say nothing of their former various and multiplied idolatries. 2 Kings 17:8 And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. 2 Kings 17:8-9 . And walked in the statutes of the heathen — According to their laws and customs in the worship of their Baals, and other of their sins. And of the kings of Israel, which statutes they had made — Had ordained concerning the worship of the calves, and against their going up to Jerusalem to worship. And the children of Israel did secretly, &c. — This belongs, either, 1st, To their gross idolatries, and other abominable practices, which they were ashamed to own before others; or, 2d, To the worship of the calves, and so the words are otherwise rendered, They covered things that were not right toward the Lord: they covered their idolatrous worship of the calves with fair pretences of necessity, the two kingdoms being now divided, and at enmity; and of their honest intention of serving the true God, and retaining the substance of the Jewish religion. From the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city — In all parts and places, both in cities and in the country; yea, in the most uninhabited parts, where few or none dwelt besides the watch-men, who were left there in towers, to preserve the cattle and fruits of the earth, or to give notice of the approach of enemies. 2 Kings 17:9 And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. 2 Kings 17:10 And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: 2 Kings 17:11 And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger: 2 Kings 17:11 . They burned incense, as did the heathen — Namely, in high places; and that not only to the Lord, which, though an irregularity, was practised and tolerated sometimes, even in the kingdom of Judah, but also to the idols of the heathen. Whom the Lord carried away before them — For the same sins; by whose example they ought to have taken warning. To provoke the Lord to anger — That is, in despite and contempt of God, and his authority and command, as the next verse shows. 2 Kings 17:12 For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. 2 Kings 17:13 Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 2 Kings 17:13 . Yet the Lord testified against Israel — Against their false worship, and all their impieties. By all the prophets, and by all the seers — To whom he declared his mind by extraordinary revelations and visions, and by whom he published it, bearing witness from heaven to their doctrine, by eminent and glorious miracles. Abarbinel, in his commentary on these books, hath noticed one or more prophets in every king’s reign, both in Israel and Judah, from the time of Saul to Zedekiah, in whose time Jerusalem was laid desolate. The ten tribes had lately had among them two most singularly eminent for their zeal, courage, fidelity, and the wonders which they wrought, in the name of God, in confirmation of their divine mission and doctrine, namely, Elijah and Elisha: the latter of whom had been instrumental in rescuing them from their enemies sundry times, when all human means had failed, and their case appeared perfectly hopeless, and who had been mercifully continued to them, a faithful witness for God, and a burning and shining light, for about sixty years. And in the days of this very king, when Israel was carried away captive, they had Hoshea, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah. And in the days of the last king of Judah, when that tribe was carried captive, they had Jeremiah and Ezekiel. All these had made it their care to show both the kings and people their sins, and warn them of the fatal consequences of them; and to exhort, beseech, and urge them to turn from them, to the worship and service of the living and true God. 2 Kings 17:14 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. 2 Kings 17:14 . Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks — Refused to submit their necks to the yoke of God’s precepts: a metaphor taken from stubborn oxen that will not bow to the yoke. Like to the neck of their fathers — In the wilderness; that did not believe in the Lord their God — This was the original and primary cause of all their sins and sufferings, their unbelief; this formerly prevented their fathers from entering Canaan, and now turned them out of it: they did not truly believe in God’s power, and love, and faithfulness; did not receive his truths, though attested by signs and wonders innumerable; did not credit his threatenings, nor rely on his promises. The testimony of the prophets, therefore, was without effect, with respect to the nation in general, and their endeavours to reclaim them were exerted in vain. And God was compelled, humanly speaking, in vindication of his own infinite perfections, the injured rights of his moral government, and the cause of truth and righteousness, to execute the frequently-denounced vengeance, and send wrath upon them to the uttermost. 2 Kings 17:15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them. 2 Kings 17:15-17 . They followed vanity — Idols; so called, because of their unprofitableness, impotency, and nothingness, and to show the folly and madness of idolaters. And became vain — By the long worship of idols they were made like them, vain, sottish, and senseless creatures. And they left all the commandments of the Lord — They grew worse and worse; from a partial disobedience to some of God’s laws, they fell by degrees to a total apostacy from all of them. And worshipped all the host of heaven — The sun, moon, and stars, as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, &c. against which Moses had particularly cautioned them, Deuteronomy 14:19 . They caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire — Thus offering or consecrating them to their idols: see on 2 Kings 16:3 . And used divination and enchantments — Which were the abominable sins of the heathen. And sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord — Wholly addicted themselves to sin, as slaves are addicted to the service of those to whom they are sold; and, by their obstinately persisting in sin, so hardened their own hearts, that at length it was become morally impossible for them to recover themselves, as one that has sold himself has put his liberty beyond recall. 2 Kings 17:16 And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 2 Kings 17:17 And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger. 2 Kings 17:18 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. 2 Kings 17:18 . Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel — For he is a jealous God, and highly resents the giving that honour to any created or imaginary being, which is due to himself only. And removed them out of his sight — A very strong expression, to signify, not only his casting them out of Canaan, then the only place of his solemn worship, and gracious presence, or out of his church, but his utter rejection and total removal of this apostate people from his care and providence. There was none left but Judah only — And the greatest part of the tribe of Benjamin, with those of the tribes of Simeon and Levi, who adhered to them, and were incorporated with them, and therefore are fitly denominated from them. 2 Kings 17:19 Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. 2 Kings 17:19 . Also Judah kept not, &c., but walked in the statutes of Israel — Followed the idolatrous devices of the ten tribes, which they did most notoriously in the reign of Ahaz. And though his son Hezekiah made a noble reformation, it lasted no longer than his time, so extremely corrupted was the nation. Judah’s idolatry and wickedness are here remembered as an aggravation of the sin of the Israelites, which was not only evil in itself, but mischievous to their neighbours, who by their examples were instructed in their wicked arts, and provoked to an imitation of them: see Hosea 4:15 ; Matthew 18:7 . Those that bring sin into a country or family bring a plague into it, and will have to answer for all the mischief that follows. 2 Kings 17:20 And 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. 2 Kings 17:20 . The Lord rejected all the seed of Israel — All the kingdom, or tribes of Israel, first one part of them, and now the rest: but this extends not to every individual person of these tribes, for many of them removed into the kingdom of Judah, and were associated with them: see 2 Chronicles 11:16 . 2 Kings 17:21 For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin. 2 Kings 17:21 . They made Jeroboam king — Which action is here ascribed to the people, because they would not tarry till God, by his providence, had invested Jeroboam with the kingdom which he had promised him, but rashly and rebelliously rose up against the house of David, to which they were under such great obligations, and set him upon the throne without God’s leave or advice. Jeroboam drave, &c. — He not only dissuaded, but kept them by force from God’s worship at Jerusalem, the only place appointed for it. And made them sin a great sin — So the worship of the calves is called, in opposition to that idle conceit of the Israelites, who esteemed it a small sin, especially when they were forced to it by severe penalties; which yet he shows did not excuse it from being a sin, and a great sin too. 2 Kings 17:22 For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; 2 Kings 17:22-23 . They departed not from them — But willingly and resolutely followed the wicked examples and commands of their kings, though contrary to God’s express commands. Until the Lord removed Israel — They continued to the last, obstinate and incorrigible under all the instructions and corrections which God sent to them; and therefore were justly given up by God to this dreadful captivity, which all this foregoing discourse was designed to prove. 2 Kings 17:23 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. 2 Kings 17:24 And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. 2 Kings 17:24 . The king of Assyria brought men from Babylon — Which then was subject to the Assyrian monarch, but a few years after revolted from him, and set up another king, as appears from both sacred and profane histories. And from Cuthah, &c. — Several places then in his dominion. It is probable that it was not Shalmaneser, but Esar-haddon, his son and successor, that did this, ( Ezra 4:2 ,) because it was a work of some time; and as his father had projected, and perhaps even begun it, so he executed and finished it, whence it is ascribed to him rather than to his father. And they possessed Samaria, &c. — That is, the whole country in which the ten tribes had dwelt. 2 Kings 17:25 And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them. 2 Kings 17:25 . And so it was that they feared not the Lord — They did not acknowledge nor worship the true God in any sort. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them — For their gross neglect and contempt of God, which was contrary to the principles and practices of the heathen, who used to worship the gods of the nations where they lived, and gave that honour to their false gods which here they denied to the true. Hereby also God asserted his own sovereignty over that land, and made them to understand that neither the Israelites were cast out, nor they brought in, by their valour or strength, but by God’s providence, who, as he had cast the Israelites out for their neglect of God’s service, so both could and would, in his due time, turn them out also, if they were guilty of the same sins. 2 Kings 17:26 Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land. 2 Kings 17:26 . Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, &c. — They wrote, or sent messengers to him, to acquaint him with this grievance, setting forth, it is likely, the loss which their infant colony had sustained by the lions, and the continual fear they were in of them; and that they looked upon it as a judgment sent upon them for not worshipping the God of the land, which they could not, because they knew not how. The God of Israel was the God of the whole earth, but they ignorantly call him the God of the land, imagining him to be like one of their local deities, who were supposed to preside only over particular countries or provinces; and apprehending themselves to be within his reach, as being now in the country in which he governed, and therefore concerned to be upon good terms with him. Herein they shamed the Israelites, who were not so ready to hear the voice of God’s judgments as they were, and who had not served the God of that land, though he was the God of their fathers, and their great benefactor, and though they were well instructed in the manner of his worship. In short, these heathen beg to be taught that which Israelites hated to be taught! 2 Kings 17:27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land. 2 Kings 17:27 . Then the king of Assyria commanded, Carry thither one of the priests — That is, one of the chief priests, with others under his inspection and direction, as may be gathered from the following words, where it is said of the same person or persons, Let them go, &c, and then, Let him teach, &c. — Nor is it probable that one priest could suffice for the instruction of the inhabitants of so many and distant districts. 2 Kings 17:28 Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD. 2 Kings 17:28 . Then one of the priests whom they had carried away came, &c. — A prophet would have done them more good, especially as it appears this was but one of the priests of the calves, who therefore chose to dwell at Beth-el. And taught them how they should fear the Lord — That is, the manner of God’s worship as it had been practised in Israel: for as to any thing further, whether respecting their duty to God or man, though he might possibly teach them to know more than they knew before, and to do better than they did, it is not likely he should teach them to know the truth, or to do well, unless he had taught his own people better. 2 Kings 17:29 Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. 2 Kings 17:29 . Howbeit, every nation made gods of their own — Or, worshipped, as the Hebrew word here used sometimes means; of which see Exodus 32:35 . That is, they worshipped the gods which they had served in the places from whence they came. And put them in the high places which the Samaritans — That is, which the former inhabitants of the city and kingdom had made. 2 Kings 17:30 And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, 2 Kings 17:30 . The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, &c. — In this and the following verse are the names of the gods or goddesses which each nation of these new-comers to Samaria and its vicinity set up. The learned are not agreed as to the signification of several of these names, nor is it worth while to spend time in endeavouring to determine it. The reader whose curiosity leads him to wish for information on the subject, may consult Selden, Vossius, and Jurieu. Concerning two or three of them we may observe as follows: The first name signifies, The tabernacles of the daughters, or young women, and, if it be the name of an idol, it was doubtless the same with the imaginary goddess termed Venus by the Greeks and Romans. The Jewish rabbins tell us, she was worshipped under the emblem of a hen and chickens. There is reason to believe, that in these succoth, or tents, young women exposed themselves to prostitution in honour of the Babylonish goddess Melitta. Nergal, worshipped by the Cuthites, or Persians, was probably the fire, or the sun, being derived from ?? , ner, light, and ??? , galal, to revolve. The Jewish doctors say his idol was represented in the shape of a cock. Adrammelech and Anammelech were only different names for Moloch, as is evident from their burning their children to these idols in the fire. See the Universal History and Calmet. Alas! how vain were these idolaters in their imaginations! It is justly observed by Henry, that our very ignorance concerning these idols teaches us the accomplishment of God’s word by Jeremiah, ( Jeremiah 10:11 ,) that these false gods should all perish. They are all buried in oblivion, while the name of the true God shall continue for ever! 2 Kings 17:31 And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 2 Kings 17:32 So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. 2 Kings 17:32 . So they feared the Lord — Worshipped him externally in that way which the Israelites had used: having and serving gods of their own besides. And made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests, &c. — See note on 1 Kings 12:31 . Which sacrificed in the high places — Unto the true God; for as to the worship of their own gods, they needed no instruction, and would not permit a person of another religion to minister therein. 2 Kings 17:33 They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. 2 Kings 17:34 Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel; 2 Kings 17:34 . Unto this day, &c. — That is, till the time when this book was written, and long after, about three hundred years in all, till the time of Alexander the Great, when Manasseh, brother to Jaddus the high-priest of the Jews, having married the daughter of Sanballat, governor of the Samaritans, went over to them, and, obtaining leave of Alexander to build a temple on mount Gerizim, drew over many of the Jews to him, and prevailed with the Samaritans to cast away their idols, and to worship the God of Israel only. Yet their worship was mixed with so much superstition, that our Lord tells them they knew not what they worshipped. They do after the former manners — As the Israelites, before their captivity, ( 2 Kings 17:33 ,) gave these nations an ill example, in serving the Lord and Baal together; so these nations both worshipped the God of Israel, and those other gods. But, adds the historian, they feared not the Lord — Their pretended fear of him, and serving him together with their idols, was not worthy of the name of piety, or the fear of the Lord: nor would God accept such a mongrel religion and false worship as they offered to him. Neither do they after their statutes — God’s law delivered to the Israelites, and to them as their inheritance, Psalm 119:111 . This is alleged as an evidence that they did not fear the Lord, whatsoever they pretended, because they lived in the constant breach of his statutes. Which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel — A name signifying Jacob’s special interest in God, and power with him, which was given to him, not only for himself, but for his posterity also, whom God frequently honoured with that name. And by this great favour he aggravates the sin, both of the Israelites, and of those nations planted in their land, who professed to learn their way of worshipping God, and to imitate it. 2 Kings 17:35 With whom the LORD had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them: 2 Kings 17:36 But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. 2 Kings 17:37 And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods. 2 Kings 17:38 And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods. 2 Kings 17:39 But the LORD your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. 2 Kings 17:40 Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. 2 Kings 17:41 So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day. 2 Kings 17:41 . So these nations feared the Lord, &c. — Namely, the nations that came in the place of the Israelites. They followed their example, and acted as they had done, endeavouring to unite things perfectly irreconcilable, the worship of the true God and the worship of idols. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary 2 Kings 17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. HOSHEA, AND THE FALL OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM B.C. 734-725 2 Kings 17:1-41 "As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon: the water." Hosea 10:7 As a matter of convenience, we follow our English Bible in calling the prophet by the name Hosea, and the nineteenth, last, and best king of Israel Hoshea. The names, however, are identical, and mean "Salvation"- the name borne by Joshua also in his earlier days. In the irony of history the name of the last king of Ephraim was thus identical with that of her earliest and greatest hero, just as the last of Roman emperors bore the double name of the Founder of Rome and the Founder of the Empire-Romulus Augustulus. By a yet deeper irony of events the king in whose reign came the final precipitation of ruin wore the name which signified deliverance from it. And more and more, as time went on, the prophet Hosea felt that he had no word of present hope or comfort for the king his namesake. It was the more brilliant lot of Isaiah, in the Southern Kingdom, to kindle the ardor of a generous courage. Like Tyrtaeus, who roused the Spartans to feel their own greatness-like Demosthenes, who hurled the might of Athens against Philip of Macedon-like Chatham, "bidding England be of good cheer, and hurl defiance at her foes"-like Pitt, pouring forth, in the days of the Napoleonic terror, "the indomitable language of courage and of hope,"-Isaiah was missioned to encourage Judah to despise first the mighty Syrian, and then the mightier Assyrian. Far different was the lot of Hosea, who could only be the denouncer of an inevitable doom. His sad function was like that of Phocion after Chaeroneia, of Hannibal after Zama, of Thiers after Sedan: he had to utter the Cassandra-voices of prophecy, which his besotted and demented contemporaries-among whom the priests were the worst of all-despised and flouted until the time for repentance had gone by forever. True it is that Hosea could not be content-what true heart could?-to breathe nothing but the language of reprobation and despair. Israel had been "yoked to his two transgressions," but Jehovah could not give up His love for His chosen people: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I treat thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me; I am wholly filled with compassion! I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim: For I am God, and not man. The Holy One in the midst of thee! I will not come to exterminate!" "They shall come after Jehovah as after a lion that roars! For he shall roar, and his sons shall come hurrying from the west, They shall come hurrying as a bird out of Egypt, And as a dove out of the land of Assyria; And I will cause them to dwell in their houses, Saith Jehovah." {Hos 11:8-11} Alas! the gleam of alleviation was imaginary rather than actual. The prophet’s wish was father to his thought. He had prophesied that Israel should be scattered in all lands. {Hos 9:3; Hos 9:12; Hos 9:17; Hos 13:3-16} This was true; and it did not prove true, except in some higher ideal sense, that "Israel shall again dwell in his own land" {Hos 14:4-7} in prosperity and joy. The date of Hoshea’s accession is uncertain, and we cannot tell in what sense we are to understand his reign as having lasted "nine years." We have no grounds for accepting the statement of Josephus ("Antt.," IX 13:1), that Hoshea had been a friend of Pekah and plotted against him. Tiglath-Pileser expressly says that he himself slew Pekah and appointed Hoshea. His must have been, at the best, a pitiful and humiliating reign. He owed his purely vassal sovereignty to Assyrian patronage. He probably did as well for Israel as was in his power. Singular to relate, he is the only one of all the kings of Israel of whom the historian has a word of commendation: for while we are told that "he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," it is added that it was "not as the kings of Israel that were before him." But we do not know wherein either his evil-doing or his superiority consisted. The Rabbis guess that he did not replace the golden calf at Dan which Tiglath-Pileser had taken away; {Hos 10:6} or that he did not prevent his subjects from going to Hezekiah’s passover. "It seems like a harsh jest," says Ewald, "that this Hoshea, who was better than all his predecessors, was to be the last king" But so it has often been in history. The vengeance of the French Revolution smote the innocent and harmless Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette-not Louis XIV, or Louis XV and Madame du Pompadour. His patron Tiglath-Pileser ended his magnificent reign of conquest in 727, soon after he had seated Hoshea on the throne. The removal of his strong grasp on the helm caused immediate revolt. Phoenicia especially asserted her independence against Shalmaneser IV He seems to have spent five years in an unavailing attempt to capture Island-Tyre. Meanwhile, the internal troubles which had harassed and weakened Egypt ceased, and a strong Ethiopian king named Sabaco established his rule over the whole country. It was perhaps the hope that Phoenicia might hold out against the Assyrian, and that the Egyptian might protect Samaria, which kindled in the mind of Hoshea the delusive plan of freeing himself and his impoverished land from the grinding tribute imposed by Nineveh. While Shalmaneser was trying to quell Tyre, Hoshea, having received promises of assistance from Sabaco, withheld the "presents"-the minchah , as the tribute is euphemistically called-which he had hitherto paid. Seeing the danger of a powerful coalition, Shalmaneser swept down on Samaria in 724. Possibly he defeated the army of Israel in the plain of Jezreel, {Hos 1:5} and got hold of the person of Hoshea. Josephus says that he "besieged him"; but the sacred historian only tells us that "he shut him up, and bound him in prison." Whether Hoshea was taken in battle, or betrayed by the Assyrian party in Samaria, or whether he went in person to see if he could pacify the ruthless conqueror, he henceforth disappears from history "like foam"-or like a chip or a bubble-"upon the water." We do not know whether he was put to death, but we infer from an allusion in Micah that he was subjected to the cruel indignities in which the Assyrians delighted; for the prophet says, "They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek." {Mic 5:1} Perhaps in the title "Judge" ( Shophet , suffes ) we may see a sign that Hoshea’s royalty was little more than the shadow of a name. Having thus got rid of the king, Shalmaneser proceeded to invest the capital. But Samaria was strongly fortified upon its hill, and the Jewish race has again and again shown-as it showed so conspicuously in the final crisis of its destiny, when Jerusalem defied the terrible armies of Rome-that with walls to protect them they could pluck up a terrible courage and endurance from despair. Strong as Assyria was, the capital of Ephraim for three years resisted her beleaguering host and her crashing battering-rams. About all the anguish which prevailed within the city, and the wild vicissitudes of orgy and starvation, history is silent. But prophecy tells us that the sorrows of a travailling woman came upon the now kingless city. They drank to the dregs the cup of fury. {Hos 13:13} The saddest Northern prophet, "the Jeremiah of Israel," sings the dirge of Israel’s saddest king. "I am become to them as a lion; As a leopard will I watch by the way; I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps, And rend the caul of their heart, And there will I devour them like a lioness: The beast of the field shall tear them Where now is thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities? And thy judges, of whom thou saidst, ‘Give me a king and prince’? I give thee a king in Mine anger And take him away in My wrath." For three years Samaria held out. During the siege Shalmaneser died, and was succeeded by Sargon, who-though he vaguely talks of the kings his ancestors, and says that he had been preceded by three hundred and thirty Assyrian dynasts-never names his father, and seems to have been a usurping general. Sabaco remained inactive, and basely deserted the miserable people which had relied on his protection. In this conduct Egypt was true to its historic character of untrustworthiness and inertness. Both in Israel and in Judah there were two political parties. One relied on the strength of Egypt; the other counseled submission to Assyria, or-in the hour when it became necessary to defy Assyria-confidence in God. Egypt was as frail a support as one of her own paper-reeds, which bent under the weight, and broke and ran into the hand of every one who leaned on it. Sargon did not raze the city, and we see from the "Eponym Canon" that its inhabitants were still strong enough some years later to take part in a futile revolt. But we have one dreadful glimpse of the horrors which he inflicted upon it. They were the inevitable punishment of every conquered city which had dared to resist the Assyrian arm. "Samaria shall bear her guilt, For she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword: Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, And their women in child shall be ripped up." {Hos 13:16} Sargon’s own record of the matter on the tablets at Khorsabad is: "I besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried into captivity twenty-seven thousand two hundred and eighty of its inhabitants. I changed the former government of this country, and placed over it lieutenants of my own. And Sebeh, Sultan of Egypt, came to Raphia to fight against me. They met me, and I routed them. Sebeh fled." The Assyrians were occupied in the unsuccessful siege of Tyre between 720-715, during which years Sargon put down Yahubid of Hamath, whose revolt had been aided by Damascus and Samaria. In 710 he marched against Ashdod. {Isa 20:1} In 709 he defeated Merodach-Baladan at Dur-Yakin, and reconquered Chaldaea, deporting some of the population into Samaria. In 704, in the fifteenth year of his reign, he was assassinated, after a career of victory. He inscribes on his palace at Khorsabad a prayer to his god Assur, that, after his toils and conquests, "I may be preserved for the long years of a long life, for the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart. May I accumulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all countries, the products of mountains and valleys." Assur and the gods of Chaldaea were invoked in vain; the prayer was scattered to the winds, and the murderer’s dagger was the comment on Sargon’s happy anticipations of peace and splendor. Israel fell unpitied by her southern neighbor, for Judah was still smarting under memories of the old contempt and injury of Joash ben-Jehoahaz, and the more recent wrongs inflicted by Pekah and Rezin. Isaiah exults over the fate of Samaria, while he points the moral of her fall to the drunken priests and prophets of Jerusalem. "Woe," he says, "to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are smitten down with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one [ i.e. , the Assyrian]; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty water overflowing, shall he cast down to the earth with violence. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden underfoot: and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up." ( Isaiah 28:1-4 ) Israel had begun in hostility to Judah, and perished by it at last. Such, then, was the end of the once brilliant kingdom of Israel-the kingdom which, even so late as the reign of Jeroboam II, seemed to have a great future before it. No one could have foreseen beforehand that, when, with the prophetic encouragement of Ahijah, Jeroboam I established his sovereignty over the greater, richer, and more flourishing part of the land assigned to the sons of Jacob, the new kingdom should fall into utter ruin and destruction after only two and a half centuries of existence, and its tribes melt away amid the surrounding nations, and sink into a mixed and semi-heathen race without any further nationality or distinctive history. It seemed far less probable that the mere fragment of the Southern Kingdom, after retaining its separate existence for more than one hundred and sixty years longer than its more powerful brother, should continue to endure as a nation till the end of time. Such was the design of God's providence, and we know no more. The Northern Kingdom had, up to this time, produced the greatest and most numerous prophets-Ahijah, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Nahum, and many more. It had also produced the loveliest and most enduring poetry in the Song of Songs, the Song of Deborah, and other contributions to the Books of Jashar, and of the Wars of Jehovah. It had also brought into vigor the earliest and best historic literature, the narratives of the Elohist and the Jehovist. These immortal legacies of the religious spirit of the Northern Kingdom were incomparably superior in moral and enduring value to the Levitic jejuneness of the Priestly Code, with its hierarchic interests and ineffectual rules, which, in the exaggerated supremacy attached to rites, proved to be the final blight of an unspiritual Judaism. Israel had also been superior in prowess and in deeds of war, and in the days of Joash ben-Jehoahaz ben-Jehu had barely conceded to Judah a right to separate existence. More than all this, the apostasies of Judah, from the days of Solomon downwards, were quite as heinous as Jezebel’s Baal worship, and far more deadly than the irregular but not at first idolatrous cultus of Bethel. The prophets are careful to teach Judah that if she was spared it was not because of any good deservings. Yet now the cedar was scathed and smitten down, and its boughs were rent and scattered; and the thistle had escaped the wild beast’s tread! In the former volume we glanced at some of the causes of this, and the blessings which resulted from it. The central and chiefest blessing was, first, the preservation of a purer form of monotheism, and a loftier ideal of religion-though only realized by a few in Judah-than had ever prevailed in the Northern Tribes; secondly, and above all, the development of that inspiring Messianic prophecy which was to be fulfilled seven centuries later, when He who was David’s Son and David’s Lord came to our lost race from the bosom of the Father, and brought life and immortality to light. And it was the work purely of "God’s unseen providence, by men nicknamed ‘Chance,"’ which, dealing with nations as the potter with his clay, chooses some to honor and some to dishonor. For, as all the prophets are anxious to remind the Judaean Kingdom, their success, the procrastination of their downfall, their restoration from captivity, were not due to any merits of their own. The Jews were and ever had been a stiff-necked nation; and though some of their kings had been faithful servants of Jehovah, yet many of them-like Rehoboam, and Ahaz, and Manasseh-exceeded in wickedness and inexcusable apostasy the least faithful of the Worshippers at Gilgal and Bethel. They were plainly reminded of their nothingness: "And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation." {Deu 26:5} "Fear not, thou worm Jacob: I will help thee." {Isa 41:14} But this was the end of the Ten Tribes. Nor must we say that Hosea’s prediction of mercy was laughed to scorn by the irony of events, when he had given it as God’s promise that- "I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not again destroy Israel For I am God, and not man." {Hos 11:9} The words mean that mercy is God’s chiefest and most essential attribute; and, after all, a nation is composed of families and individuals, and in political extinction there may have been many families and individuals in Israel, like that of Tobias, and like that of Anna, the prophetess of the tribe of Asher, who found, either in their far exile, or among the scattered Jews who still peopled the old territories, a peace which was impossible during the distracted anarchy and deepening corruption of the whole period which had elapsed since the founding of the house of Omri. In any case God knows and loves His own. The words, "I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger; For I am God, and not man," might stand for an epitome of much that is most precious in Holy Writ. God’s orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though man’s orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it. What hope has any man, even a St. Paul-what hope had even the Lord Himself-before the harsh, self-interested tribunals of human judgment, or of that purely external religionism which has always shown itself more brutal and more blundering than secular cruelty? What chance has there been, humanly speaking, for God’s best saints, prophets, and reformers, when priests, popes, or inquisitors have been their judges? If God resembled those generations of unresisted ecclesiastics, whose chief resort has been the syllogism of violence, and whose main arguments have been the torture-chamber and the stake, what hope could there possibly be for the vast majority of mankind, but those endless torments by the terrors of which corrupt Churches have forced their tyranny upon the crushed liberties and the paralyzed conscience of mankind? The Indian sage was right who said that "God can only be truly described by the words No! No!"-that is, by repudiating multitudes of the ignoble and cruel basenesses which religious teachers have imagined or invented respecting Him. Because God is God, and not man-God, not a tyrant or an inquisitor-God, with the great compassionate heart of unfathomable tenderness, -therefore, in all who truly love Him, perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. Sin means ruin; yet God is love. The historian of the Kings here digresses, in a manner unusual to the Old Testament, to give us a most interesting glimpse of the fate of the conquered people, and the origin of the race which was known to after-ages by the name "Samaritan." Sargon, when he had sacked the capital, carried out the policy of deportation which had now been established by the Assyrian kings. He achieved the double purpose of populating the capital and province of Nineveh, while he reduced subject nations to inanition, by sweeping away all the chief of the inhabitants from conquered states, and settling them in his own more immediate dominions. There they would be reduced to impotence, and mingle with the races among whom their lot would henceforth be cast. He therefore "carried Israel away" into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, north of Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, and in Habor, the river of Gozan- i.e. , on the river in Northern Assyria which still bears the name of Khabour, and flows into the Euphrates-and in the cities of the Medes. He replaced the old population by Dinaites, Tarpelites, Apharsathchites, Susanehites, Elamites, Dehavites, and Babylonians, after carrying away the great bulk of the better-class population. After this the historian pauses to sum up and emphasize once more the main lesson of his narrative. It is that "righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is the reproach of any people." God had called His son Israel out of Egypt, delivered His chosen from Pharaoh, given them a pleasant land; but "Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen." They had failed therefore in fulfilling the very purpose for which they had been set apart. They had been intended "to uplift among the nations the banner of righteousness" and the banner of the One True God. Instead of this, they were seduced by the heathen ritual of "Gay religions full of pomp and gold." They decked out alien institutions, and alike in unfrequented and populous places-"from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city"-set up matstseboth (A.V, "pillars") and Asherim on every high hill. The green trees became obum bratrices scelerum , the secret bowers of-their iniquities. They burnt incense on the bamoth , and served idols, and wrought wickedness. Useless had been the voices of all the prophets and the seers. They went after vain things, and became vain. Beginning with the two "calves," they proceeded to lewd and orgiastic idolatries. Ahab and Jezebel seduced them into Tyrian Baal-worship. From the Assyrians they learnt and practiced the adoration of the host of heaven. From Moab and Ammon they borrowed the abominable rites of Moloch, and used divination and enchantments by means of belomancy {Eze 21:21-22} and necromancy, and sold themselves to do wickedness. Nor was this all. These idolatries, with their guilty ritualism, were not confined to Israel, but also "Infected Zion’s daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah." And thus, when Jehovah afflicted the seed of Israel and cast them out of His sight, Judah also had to feel the stroke of retribution. And it is idle to object that even if Israel had been faithful she must have inevitably perished before the superior might of Damascus, or Nineveh, or Babylon. How can we tell? It is not possible for us thus to write unwritten history, and there is absolutely nothing to show that the surmise is correct. In the days of David, of Uzziah, of Jeroboam II, Judah and Israel had shown what they could achieve. Had they been strong in faithfulness to Jehovah, and in the righteousness which that faith required, they would have shown an invincible strength amid the moral enervation of the surrounding people. They might have held their own by welding into one strong kingdom the whole of Palestine, including Philistia, Phoenicia, the Negeb, and the Trans-Jordanic region. They might have consolidated the sway which they at various times attained southwards, as far as the Red Sea port of Elath; northwards over Aram and Damascus, as far as the Hamath on the Orontes; eastwards to Thapsacus on the Euphrates; westward to the Isles of the Gentiles. There is nothing improbable, still less impossible, in the view that, if the Israelites had truly served Jehovah and obeyed His laws, they might then have permanently established the monarchy which was ideally regarded as their inheritance, and which for brief and fitful periods they partially maintained. And such a monarchy, held together by warrior statesmen, strong and righteous, and above all secure in the blessing of God, would have been a thoroughly adequate counterpoise, not only to dilatory and distracted Egypt, which had long ceased to be aggressive, but even to brutal Assyria, which prevailed in no small measure because of the isolation and mutual dissension of these southern principalities. But, as it was, "Assyria and Egypt-the two world-powers in the dawn of history, the two chief sources of ancient civilization, the twin giant-empires which bounded the Israelite people on the right hand and on the left-were cruel neighbors, between whom the ill-fated nation was tossed to and fro in wanton sport like a shuttlecock. They were cruel friends before whom it must cringe in turns, praying sometimes for help, suing sometimes for very life-alternate scourges in the hand of the Divine wrath. Now it is the fly of Egypt, and now it is the bee of Assyria, whose ruthless swarms issue forth at the word of Jehovah, settling in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes, with deadly sting, fatal to man and beast, devastating the land far and wide. Holding the poor Israelite in their relentless embrace, they threatened ever and again to crush him by their grip. Like the fabled rocks which frowned over the narrow straits of the Bosporus, they would crash together and annihilate the helpless craft which the storms of destiny had placed at their mercy. Israel reeled under their successive blows. As was the beginning, so was the end. As the captivity of Egypt had been the cradle of the nation, so was the captivity of Assyria to be its tomb." In any case the principle of the historian remains unshaken. Sin is weakness; idolatry is folly and rebellion; uncleanness is decrepitude. St. Paul was not thinking of this ancient Philosophy of History when he wrote his Epistle to the Romans; yet the intense and masterly sketch which he gives of that moral corruption which brought about the long, slow, agonizing dissolution of the beauty that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome, is one of its strongest justifications. His view only differs from the summary before us in the power of its eloquence and the profoundness of its psychologic insight. He says the same thing as the historian of the Kings, only in words of greater power and wider reach, when he writes: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings," the very word used in the LXX in 2 Kings 17:15 , "and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (words which might describe the expediency policy of Jeroboam I, and its fatal consequences), "and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. For this cause God gave them up to passions of dishonor, and unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity,"-and so on through a long catalogue of iniquities which are identical with those which we find so burningly denounced on the pages of the prophets of Israel and Judah. "Even a Machiavelli, cool and cynical and audacious as was his skepticism, could see and admit that faithfulness to religion is the secret of the happiness and prosperity of states. An irreligious society tends inevitably and always to be a dissolute society; and a dissolute society is the most tragic spectacle which history has ever to present-a nest of disease, of jealousy, of dissensions, of ruin, and despair, whose last hope is to be washed off the world and disappear. Such societies must die sooner or later of their own gangrene, of their own corruption, because the infection of evil, spreading into unbounded selfishness, ever intensifying and reproducing passions which defeat their own aim, can never end in anything but moral dissolution." We need not look further than the collapse of France after the battle of Sedan, and the cause to which that collapse was attributed, not only by Christians, but by her own most worldly and skeptical writers, to see that the same causes ever issue and will issue in the same ruinous effects. In order to complete the history of the Northern Kingdom, the historian here anticipates the order of time by telling us what happened to the mongrel population whom Sargon transplanted into central Ephraim in place of the old inhabitants. The king, we are told, brought them from Babylon-which was at this time under the rule of Assyria; from Cuthah-by which seems to be meant some part of Mesopotamia near Babylon; from Avva, or Ivah-probably the same as Aha-vah or Hit, on the Euphrates, northwest of Babylon; from Sepharvaim, or Sippara, also on the Euphrates; and from Hamath, on the Orontes, which had not long remained under Jeroboam. It must not be supposed that the whole population of Ephraim was deported; that was a physical impossibility. Although we are told in Assyrian annals that Sargon carried away with him so vast a number of captives, it is, of course, clear that the lowest and poorest part of the population was left. We can imagine the wild confusion which arose when they found themselves compelled to share the dismantled palaces and abandoned estates of the wealthy with the horde of new colonists, whose language, in all probability, they but imperfectly understood. There must have been many a tumult, many a scene of horror, such as took place in the long antagonism of Normans and Saxons in England, before the immigrants and the relics of the former populace settled down to amalgamation and mutual tolerance. Sargon is said to have carried away with him the golden calf or calves of Bethel, as Tiglath-Pileser is said by the Rabbis to have carried away that of Dan. He also took away with him all the educated classes, and all the teachers of religion. No one was left to instruct the ignorant inhabitants; and, as Hosea had prophesied, there was neither a sacrifice, nor a pillar, nor an ephod, and not even teraphim to which they could resort {Hos 3:4} Naturally enough, the disunited dregs of an old and of a new population had no clear knowledge of religion. They "feared not Jehovah." The sparseness of inhabitants, with its consequent neglect of agriculture, caused the increase of wild beasts among them. There had always been lions and bears in "the swellings of Jordan," {See Jer 49:19; Jer 49:1 Pro 22:13, etc.} and in all the lonelier parts of the land; and to this day there are leopards in the woods of Carmel, and hyenas and jackals in many regions. Conscious of their miserable and godless condition, and afflicted by the lions, which they regarded as a sign of Jehovah’s anger, the Ephraimites sent a message to the King of Assyria. They only claimed Jehovah as their local god, and complained that the new colonists had provoked the wrath of "the God of the land" by not: knowing His "manner" that is, the way in which He should be worshipped. The consequence was that they were in danger of being exterminated by lions. The kings of Assyria were devoted worshippers of Assur and Merodach, but they held the common belief of ancient polytheists that each country had its own potent divinities. Sargon, therefore, gave orders that one of the priests of his captivity should be sent back to Samaria, "to teach them the manner of the god of the land." The priest selected for the purpose returned, took up his residence at the old shrine of Bethel, and "taught them how they should fear Jehovah." His success was, however, extremely limited, except among the former followers of Jeroboam’s dishonored cult. The old religious shrines still continued, and the immigrants used them for the glorification of their former deities. Samaria, therefore, witnessed the establishment of a singularly hybrid form of religionism. The Babylonians worshipped Succoth-Benoth, perhaps Zirbanit, wife of Merodach or Bel; the Cuthites worshipped Nergal, the Assyrian war-god, the lion-god; the Hittites, from Hamath, worshipped Ashima or Esmun, the god of air and thunder, under the form of a goat; the Avites preferred Nibhaz and Tartak, perhaps Saturn-unless these names be Jewish jeers, implying that one of these deities had the head of a dog, and the other of an ass. More dreadful, if less ridiculous, was the worship of the Sepharvires, who adored Adrammelech and Anammelech, the sun-god under male and female forms, to whom, as to Moloch, they burnt their children in the fire. As for ministers, "they made unto them priests from among themselves, who offered sacrifices for them in the shrines of the bamoth ." Thus the whole mongrel population "feared the Lord, and served their own gods," as they continued to do in the days of the annalist whose record the historian quotes. He ends his interesting sketch with the words, that, in spite of the Divine teaching, "these nations" - so he calls them, and so completely does he refuse to them the dignity of being Israel’s children-feared the Lord, and served their graven images, their children likewise, and their children’s children, -"as did their fathers, so do they unto this day." The "unto this day" refers, no doubt, to the document from which the historian of the Kings was quoting-perhaps about B.C. 560, in the third generation after the fall of Samaria. A ver