CHAPTER 17

(721 B.C.)

HOSHEA REIGNS OVER ISRAEL

¹In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.

²And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. (While Hosheas general attitude towards Jehovah was much the same as that of the former kings of Israel, still, he was not guilty of any special wickedness; in other words, he set up no new idolatry.

Regrettably, he turned a deaf ear to the teaching of the Prophets Hoshea [who had the same name] and Micah, who addressed their warnings to him.)

³Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents (rendered him tribute; Hoshea had been placed on the throne by Tiglath-pileser; upon this mans death, it seems that Hoshea revolted, and resumed his independence; Shalmaneser, having become king, came up against Hoshea and forced him to resume his position of Assyrian tributary).

⁴And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he (Hoshea) had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year (paid no tribute): therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison (evidently, Hoshea, at some point, ceased to pay tribute to the king of Assyria, and appealed to the king of Egypt to come to his rescue; his plan would not succeed).

THE FALL OF SAMARIA AND THE CAPTIVITY OF ISRAEL

⁵Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. (Now the judgment begins. The ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom will be ultimately carried away into Assyria. Egypt would be of no help. Egypt, as a type of the world, is never any help.)

⁶In 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.

⁷For 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,

⁸And 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.

⁹And 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.

¹⁰And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree:

¹¹And 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:

¹²For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, You shall not do this thing (this Verse gives the reason, For they served idols).

¹³Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the Prophets, and by all the Seers, saying, Turn you from your evil ways (repent), 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 (they were sufficiently warned!).

¹⁴Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the LORD their God (the problem then was unbelief, and the problem now is unbelief; they did not believe in the Cross of Christ then, and they do not believe in the Cross of Christ now!).

¹⁵And 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 who were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them (when Israel rejected Gods Statutes, they adopted the statutes of the heathen, and walked in them; if the Ways of the Lord are rejected, religious man must then adopt the ways of the world).

¹⁶And 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 (exactly as the heathen).

¹⁷And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire (human sacrifice), and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger (willingly became slaves of Satan).

¹⁸Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight: there was none left but the Tribe of Judah only (the Tribe of Judah stands for the kingdom of the two Tribes of Judah and Benjamin, into which the greater part of the Tribes of Dan and Simeon had also been absorbed; this became now, exclusively, Gods peculiar people, the object of His Love and of His Care).

¹⁹Also Judah kept not the Commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the Statutes of Israel which they made (even though Judah lasted for some 133 years longer, still, they ultimately lost their way, as well).

²⁰And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel (which refers to both kingdoms of Israel and Judah), and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight (after the captivity of the ten Tribes, as recorded here, Judah, as well, went deeper into sin, and finally had to be destroyed and taken into captivity; all of this shows the total control of the Lord in all matters; He could deliver them into the hands of their enemies, or into the position of victory; whichever depended upon their disobedience or obedience).

²¹For He rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin. (Without proper leadership, all is lost! One can be a religious leader, or one can be a Prophet. One cannot be both! The former seeks to appease the people, while the latter seeks to obey God. Regrettably, we presently have far too many religious leaders.)

²²For the Children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them;

²³Until 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 (the time of the writing of this account, which was probably about 570 B.C., by which time the southern kingdom of Judah had also been carried away into captivity).

THE BEGINNING OF THE SAMARITANS

²⁴And 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. (This is the beginning of the New Testament Samaritans. These individuals subsequently intermixed with the Jews who returned from captivity; hence, this culminated in a mixed breed. The Jews in Jesus day would basically have nothing to do with them.)

²⁵And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them. (The expulsion of the Israelites from Gods pleasant land and the introduction of lions into it by God show that both the people and the land belonged to Him. Because the people were His People, He carried them away. Because the land was His Land, He brought the lions in. The Holy Spirit states that the lions were instruments of Gods Discipline and Teaching.)

²⁶Wherefore they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which you have removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore He has sent lions among them, and, behold, they kill them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land (it was the general belief of the heathen nations of antiquity that each country and nation had its own god or gods, who presided over its destinies, etc.; so they complained that they are not familiar with the manner of this God of Israel).

²⁷Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the Priests whom you brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

²⁸Then one of the Priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear the LORD (it seems that this Priest, even though from the northern kingdom, did have an understanding of the true worship of God, which he related, evidently, to the Samaritans).

²⁹Howbeit 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 (along with fearing the Lord, they also set up idol worship to their particular gods).

³⁰And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima,

³¹And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim (these individuals, who had been brought from other countries and placed in the territory of the former northern kingdom of Israel, brought, as well, their heathen gods with them, which they continued to worship).

³²So 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 (with their idolatrous worship, they combined also the worship of Jehovah, which, of course, the Lord would not recognize).

³³They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence (this means that they were afraid of Jehovah, but not enough to serve Him or keep His Laws).

³⁴Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD (meaning, as stated, that, while they did fear Him, they did not fear Him enough to serve Him), 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 (their so-called worship of Jehovah did not include obedience to His Laws; unfortunately, that is basically the tenor of the modern Church, as well!);

³⁵With whom the LORD had made a Covenant, and charged them, saying, You shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them (for the Covenant, see Exodus 19:5-8; 24:3-8):

³⁶But the LORD, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, Him shall you fear, and Him shall you worship, and to Him shall you do sacrifice (true worship of God cannot be mixed with other things; we are to look to Him Alone as the Supplier of every need).

³⁷And the Statutes, and the Ordinances, and the Law, and the Commandment, which He wrote for you, you shall observe to do for evermore; and you shall not fear other gods (there is no need for fear, providing we obey the Lord; presently, all of these Statutes and Laws have been kept in Christ, Who obeyed them perfectly; simple Faith in Him and what He did at the Cross automatically fulfills these Commands).

³⁸And the Covenant that I have made with you you shall not forget; neither shall you fear other gods. (The Covenant intended is not the Covenant of circumcision, which God made with Abraham [Gen. 17:9-14], but the Covenant of protection and obedience made at Sinai between God and the entirety of the people of Israel [Ex. 19:5-8], and most solemnly ratified by sprinkling with blood, and by a Covenant Feast, as is related in Exodus 24:3-11. This was the Covenant which Israel had been warned so frequently not to forget Pulpit.)

³⁹But the LORD your God you shall fear; and He shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies (there was victory in every case declaring itself in favor of Gods people, when they were faithful and obedient, while reverses always befell them in the contrary case [I Chron. 5:20-22; 10:13; 14:10-16; II Chron. 12:1-12; 13:4-18; 14:9-12; 20:5-30]).

⁴⁰Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner (this mixed race, which now occupied the Northern Kingdom of Israel, with their mixed religion, though professing to be worshippers of Jehovah, paid no attention to the warnings and threatenings of the Law).

⁴¹So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both their children, and their childrens children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day. (Continuing to speak of the Samaritans, this was certainly true up until the time this account was written. However, little by little, they began to forsake their idol gods and draw closer to Jehovah. In 409 B.C., they erected a Temple to Jehovah on Mount Gerizim, which, of course, the Lord couldnt recognize. However, they then laid aside their idols, accepting the Pentateuch as their religious Textbook, and began to attempt to observe the whole Law.

The Samaritans were ostracized by Israel as a whole, and thought of in a very negative manner; nevertheless, Jesus ministered to them extensively during His 3 years of public ministry.)