2 Kings 17

Today’s Passage: 2 Kings 17

This is the chapter the whole northern story has been moving toward. Hoshea, the last king of Israel, reigns nine uneasy years in Samaria, plays Assyria against Egypt, and loses. The Assyrian army marches up, besieges the capital for three years, and finally carries the people of the northern kingdom away into exile, scattering them among distant cities from which they never return as a nation. Then the narrator does something remarkable: he stops the march of events and sits the reader down for the book’s long, sober explanation of why this happened. It was not chiefly Assyrian strength. It was generations of covenant unfaithfulness, and above all a refusal to hear. Through prophet after prophet God had said, “Turn,” and the people would not listen. The chapter closes with the land resettled by foreign peoples who honor the LORD with one hand while serving their carved gods with the other, a divided worship that is really no worship at all.

As you read, hold this: God warned patiently through prophet after prophet, and the tragedy of the exile was a people who simply would not listen.

2 Kings 17:1–6 (BSB)

¹ In the twelfth year of the reign of Ahaz over Judah, Hoshea son of Elah became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria nine years.

² And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, but not like the kings of Israel who preceded him.

³ Shalmaneser king of Assyria attacked him, and Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute.

⁴ But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had conspired to send envoys to King So of Egypt, and that he had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison.

⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land, marched up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years.

⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away the Israelites to Assyria, where he settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.

The end, when it comes, arrives almost quietly. Hoshea is not the worst of Israel’s kings, only the last, and his fatal move is a small one by the world’s reckoning: he tries to slip out from under Assyria by making a secret bargain with Egypt, and he is caught. The great empire needs no more excuse. It arrests him, invades the land, and settles in for a three-year siege of the capital. Then in a single verse the northern kingdom ends. The people are carried off and scattered among faraway towns whose names the reader can barely place, and that is the point of listing them: they are gone, dissolved into the map of an empire, no longer a nation at home in the land God had given. It is a terrible thing to read so plainly, and the narrator lets it stand plainly, because he is about to tell us it did not have to be this way.

2 Kings 17:7–12 (BSB)

⁷ All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods

⁸ and walked in the customs of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites, as well as in the practices introduced by the kings of Israel.

⁹ The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right. From watchtower to fortified city, they built high places in all their cities.

¹⁰ They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.

¹¹ They burned incense on all the high places like the nations that the LORD had driven out before them. They did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger.

¹² They served idols, although the LORD had told them, “You shall not do this thing.”

Here the narrator lays down his pen as a chronicler and takes it up as a preacher, and the first word is the word that governs everything: “because.” All this happened because the people had sinned. He does not begin the indictment with a crime but with a kindness, reminding us that this is the God who brought them out of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh. That memory is the measure of the tragedy. They turned from the very One who had rescued them, and gave to carved and hollow things the devotion that belonged to their Redeemer. Notice how ordinary and how thorough the drift was. High places from watchtower to fortified city, pillars and poles on every hill and under every green tree, incense burning where it should never have burned. It was not one dramatic apostasy but a slow, comfortable settling into the customs of the nations around them, until the worship of the living God was crowded out by everything else they had let in.

2 Kings 17:13–15 (BSB)

¹³ Yet through all His prophets and seers, the LORD warned Israel and Judah, saying, “Turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments and statutes, according to the entire Law that I commanded your fathers and delivered to you through My servants the prophets.”

¹⁴ But they would not listen, and they stiffened their necks like their fathers, who did not believe the LORD their God.

¹⁵ They rejected His statutes and the covenant He had made with their fathers, as well as the decrees He had given them. They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves, going after the surrounding nations that the LORD had commanded them not to imitate.

This is the beating heart of the chapter, and it turns on one small, aching word: “Yet.” Yet through all His prophets and seers the LORD warned them. Read that slowly and feel the patience in it. God did not let them wander off in silence and then spring the judgment on them. Across two centuries He sent prophet after prophet, seer after seer, each one carrying the same short mercy of a message: “Turn from your wicked ways.” The exile was not the act of a God who could not wait to punish. It was the last resort of a God who had pleaded for generations. And against all that patient warning the writer sets the flat, final refusal: “But they would not listen (שָׁמַע) shama, pronounced shah-MAH. Strong's H8085, to hear, listen, heed, obey. In Hebrew, shama is far richer than the mere catching of sound with the ear. It means to hear in the way that leads to heeding, to listen so that you obey; it is the great verb at the center of Israel’s daily confession, “Hear, O Israel.” So when the narrator says they would not shama, he is not saying the words never reached them. The prophets were loud enough, and the message was plain. He is saying the people would not let what they heard move them, would not turn hearing into obeying. That is the specific tragedy of the northern kingdom: not deafness, but a hearing that refused to become heeding. Real listening, in Scripture, always has hands and feet. To truly hear God is to turn and follow, and the surest measure of whether we have heard Him at all is whether we have moved. .” Then he reaches for the oldest image of stubbornness in Israel’s memory, the picture of an animal that locks its neck against the yoke and will not be turned. They stiffened their necks like their fathers. That is the tragedy in a single line. It was not that God stopped speaking. It was that His people stopped their ears, and a heart that will not hear can pursue only worthless things and grow worthless in the pursuit.

2 Kings 17:16–18 (BSB)

¹⁶ They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.

¹⁷ They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire and practiced divination and soothsaying. They devoted themselves to doing evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger.

¹⁸ So the LORD was very angry with Israel, and He removed them from His presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained,

Now the full account pours out, and it darkens as it goes. The golden calves that Jeroboam set up at the founding of the northern kingdom, the Asherah pole, the worship of sun and stars, the service of Baal, and then the worst of it, the burning of their own sons and daughters in the fire and the turn to divination and sorcery. This is the terrible end of the road that began with a few high places under green trees. Sin does not stay where you first let it in; given generations, it will ask for everything, even children. The narrator says they “devoted themselves to doing evil,” and the phrase should stop us, because devotion is a worship word. They gave to evil the wholeheartedness that belongs to God. And so the sentence falls with a heavy simplicity: the LORD removed them from His presence. Only Judah remained, and even that, we are about to learn, is not a story of the innocent looking on.

2 Kings 17:19–23 (BSB)

¹⁹ and even Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but lived according to the customs Israel had introduced.

²⁰ So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence.

²¹ When the LORD had torn Israel away from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king, and Jeroboam led Israel away from following the LORD and caused them to commit a great sin.

²² The Israelites persisted in all the sins that Jeroboam had committed and did not turn away from them.

²³ Finally, the LORD removed Israel from His presence, as He had declared through all His servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their homeland into Assyria, where they are to this day.

Just when the reader might settle comfortably into blaming the north, the narrator turns and includes Judah in the same warning. Even Judah walked in the customs the north had introduced, and the reader who lives in the southern kingdom is not permitted to feel safe. Then the long lens pulls all the way back to the very first crack, when the kingdom was torn from the house of David and Jeroboam led the people into that founding sin of the calves, and it traces the unbroken line from that day to this exile: they persisted, and did not turn away. And when the end finally comes in verse 23, the writer will not let it look like an accident of empire. It happened “as He had declared through all His servants the prophets.” Even the judgment is a kept word. God had said what would come if they would not turn, and He is faithful even in the doing of the thing He grieved to do. The single word “Finally” carries the whole weight of His patience running out at last, not in haste, but after every warning had been spoken and refused.

2 Kings 17:24–28 (BSB)

²⁴ Then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its towns.

²⁵ Now when the settlers first lived there, they did not worship the LORD, so He sent lions among them, which killed some of them.

²⁶ So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, “The peoples that you have removed and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land. Because of this, He has sent lions among them, which are indeed killing them off.”

²⁷ Then the king of Assyria commanded: “Send back one of the priests you carried off from Samaria, and have him go back to live there and teach the requirements of the God of the land.”

²⁸ Thus one of the priests they had carried away came and lived in Bethel, and he began to teach them how they should worship the LORD.

With Israel gone, the empire fills the emptied land with foreigners from across its conquests, and the story takes a strange turn that quietly exposes what the newcomers understand and what they do not. Trouble comes among them, and reading it as the anger of the local deity, they send word to the Assyrian king, who orders one of the exiled Israelite priests brought back to teach them how to worship the LORD. On the surface it looks like a step toward truth. But listen to the way they speak of Him: “the God of the land,” as though He were one regional power among many, to be appeased so the lions will stop. They want the technique of His worship without the surrender of their hearts, and a priest returns to Bethel, of all places, the old home of Jeroboam’s calves, to teach a worship that will never quite become the real thing.

2 Kings 17:29–33 (BSB)

²⁹ Nevertheless, the people of each nation continued to make their own gods in the cities where they had settled, and they set them up in the shrines that the people of Samaria had made on the high places.

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

³¹ the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech the gods of Sepharvaim.

³² So the new residents worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed for themselves priests of all sorts to serve in the shrines of the high places.

³³ They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods according to the customs of the nations from which they had been carried away.

Now the divided heart is laid bare. Each nation keeps making its own gods, a whole crowded pantheon of imported idols set up in the very shrines the Israelites had already built for their unfaithfulness, and the writer even records, soberly and without any lingering, that some of the newcomers burned their children in the fire to their gods, the same horror that had helped bring down the land before them. And then the phrase the narrator will repeat twice, because it names the exact disease: “They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods.” They added Him to their collection. They gave Him a place on the shelf among the rest. This is worship that costs nothing and changes nothing, a name added to a list, and Scripture will not call it faith. The God who brought a people out of Egypt with an outstretched arm has never asked to be one god among many. To worship Him alongside idols is not to worship Him at all.

2 Kings 17:34–40 (BSB)

³⁴ To this day they are still practicing their former customs. None of them worship the LORD or observe the statutes, ordinances, laws, and commandments that the LORD gave the descendants of Jacob, whom He named Israel.

³⁵ For the LORD had made a covenant with the Israelites and commanded them, “Do not worship other gods or bow down to them; do not serve them or sacrifice to them.

³⁶ Instead, worship the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and an outstretched arm. You are to bow down to Him and offer sacrifices to Him.

³⁷ And you must always be careful to observe the statutes, ordinances, laws, and commandments He wrote for you. Do not worship other gods.

³⁸ Do not forget the covenant I have made with you. Do not worship other gods,

³⁹ but worship the LORD your God, and He will deliver you from the hands of all your enemies.”

⁴⁰ But they would not listen, and they persisted in their former customs.

The narrator will not let their divided worship pass for the real thing, and so he says it flatly: for all their added rituals, none of them actually worship the LORD. Then he draws the whole chapter back to its source, the covenant God had made and the plain command at its center, and hear how tenderly that old charge is worded. Do not worship other gods, He had said, but worship the LORD who brought you out of Egypt with great power and an outstretched arm, and He will deliver you. It was never a cold rule. It was the loving claim of a Rescuer upon the people He had carried out of slavery on His own arm, with a promise of deliverance folded right into the command. And against that patient, saving word the writer sets, one final time, the same verdict he pronounced over Israel: “But they would not listen.” The refrain has become the epitaph of the whole story. God spoke deliverance, and they would not turn to receive it.

2 Kings 17:41 (BSB)

⁴¹ So these nations worshiped the LORD but also served their idols, and to this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

The chapter ends where it has been heading all along, and the last note is the saddest, because it looks forward. The divided worship does not stop with one generation; it is handed down, children and grandchildren going on to do exactly as their fathers did. What began as one people’s refusal to listen becomes an inheritance of half-hearted worship passed from parent to child down the years. That is how a stiffened neck outlives the man who first braced it. But the reverse is just as true, and it is the door of hope the reader is meant to walk out of this chapter through: a heart that truly listens, that turns and worships the LORD alone, likewise leaves a legacy, and hands down to those who come after not a shelf of idols but the knowledge of the one God who brought His people out with an outstretched arm.