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Context No. 819 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 17:7-18: in context

7It was so because the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, 8and walked in the statutes of the nations whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they made. 9The children of Israel secretly did things that were not right against the LORD their God; and they built high places for themselves in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city; 10and they set up for themselves pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree; 11and there they burned incense in all the high places, as the nations whom the LORD carried away before them did; and they did wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger; 12and they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this thing.” 13Yet the LORD testified to Israel and to Judah, by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn 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.” 14Notwithstanding, they would not listen, but hardened their neck like the neck of their fathers who didn’t believe in the LORD their God. 15They rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them. 16They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made molten images for themselves, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served Baal. 17They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do that which was evil in the LORD’s sight, to provoke him to anger. 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.

When the northern kingdom finally falls to Assyria and its people are carried into exile, the narrator stops the story to explain why, and it is one of the few places in the histories where we get the theology spelled out. It happened, he says, because Israel had sinned against the LORD who brought them out of Egypt: they feared other gods, built high places in every town, set up idols on every hill and under every green tree, and served the gods of the nations they had displaced. The catalog of it runs long, down to passing their own children through fire and practicing divination.

But the sentence at the center of the explanation is not about their sin. It is about God's patience with it. Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments. For generations, century after century, God had sent messenger after messenger, warning after warning, pleading with them to turn back. The exile did not fall out of a clear sky. It came at the end of a very long conversation in which God kept speaking and the people, the text says, would not listen, but stiffened their necks like their fathers before them. The judgment is real and heavy, but what the narrator wants us to see underneath it is how much warning came first, and how long the hardened neck held out against it.

Israel's ruin came only after generations of ignored warnings and a neck that would not bend. What warning have I heard more than once, and kept stiffening against instead of finally listening?

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