April 16, 2020: Day 75 – II Kings 17

And now the final shoe has fallen.  We see a new ruler in the north who was unlike any other ruler that the north had.  He became a vassal to Assyria but even went behind their back with Egypt, so he was imprisoned by the king of Assyria as a result.  Israel is then carried away by Assyria, all of its people.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  Assyria then resettled other people in the land that was once occupied by Israel.  You have a whole listing of the people from foreign lands who resettled with their gods.  You have a whole run-down from vs.7-18 where you see the stubbornness of the people of Israel and so as a result God turns His back on them. 

We read in vs.19 that Judah also did not obey God and turned their back on the Lord and began to follow what Israel was doing.  But we don’t get the degree of punishment, probably because you don’t get the degree of abject debauchery, against Judah which you find against north.  Starting in vs.24 and following you see the absolute gutting of Israel.  

Notice the story of the lions eating the people who had settled and the rulers deciding that it was because the God of Israel was unhappy.  So they bring back one of the prophets of Israel from captivity, we don’t know as of yet who it is, to teach the foreign folks how the God of Israel expected people to worship Him.  Surprisingly, some of the them begin to  worship Him as they are told.  

Now all of a sudden you have this transition to a worship of God with a whole bunch of other deities.  Remember Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well?  Remember  the Samaritans were always considered a bit of a mixed religious breed?  This is where it all began when Assyria took out all the Isrealites and brought in foreign nations.  So when the Israelites come back in later on you will see that these foreign nations are still residing in the land in which they had found themselves.  We find this statement in a couple of places: “to this day…”  So even today, at least in the Scripture, these kinds of realities remain.