26 April

Bible In 365 Days                                                        

2 Kings 15-17

2 Kings 15

The throne of Judah was occupied by Azariah, the Uzziah of Isaiah. In the main, his reign was characterized by obedience to the divine will, yet the people continued in sin, and the king was smitten with leprosy.

Going back to Israel, we find Zechariah succeeded Jeroboam. His life and reign were characterized by sin. Now begins a period the most terrible, in some respects, of all Israel's history. To the throne of Israel man succeeded man by way of murder. Zechariah was slain by Shallurn, who thus became king. Shallum, after one month's occupancy of the throne, was slain by Menahem, who, in turn, reigned evilly for ten years.

During this period the Assyrians invaded the land under Pul. Menahem bought them off, and thus became a vassal of Assyria. He was at last succeeded by Pekahiah, his son, who, after reigning for two years in persistent evil, was slain by Pekah. Pekah occupied the throne for twenty years, during which the Assyrians under Tiglathpileser invaded the land, and carried away a section of the people into captivity. At last he was slain by Hoshea.

Can anything be more terrible than this story? What a commentary it is on that first clamor for a king, in which, as Samuel had warned the people, they had rejected God from the place of immediate government. Israel was now practically under a military despotism, downtrodden and oppressed, and yet sinning with high hand against God. The whole situation was terrible in the extreme.

The state of affairs was very little better in Judah than in Israel. Jotham followed Azariah on the throne. Generally, his reign was right, but still evil was permitted in the kingdom. During this time Syria and Israel, under Rezin and Pekah, respectively, made war on Judah. Jotham was followed by Ahaz.

2 Kings 16

Perhaps the sin of Judah had its most awful expression during the reign of Ahaz. The king first sought help from the Assyrians under Tiglathpileser in his time of difficulty, and this was by deliberately placing his neck under the yoke when he said, "I am thy servant and thy son."

This was followed by the awful blasphemy of setting up a heathen altar in the actual courts of the Temple of God. It would seem as though the light of truth were absolutely extinguished. It was not so, however, for it is likely that throughout the whole reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, Isaiah was uttering his message, and that during the reign of Ahaz Micah also was delivering the word of God. So far as the nation or its kings were concerned, the testimony of truth was indeed lost, and the very name of God was being blasphemed among the heathen.

2 Kings 17

While Ahaz occupied the throne of Judah, Hoshea, by the murder of Pekah, succeeded to the throne of Israel. His reign, too, was evil, although he did not descend to the depths of some of those who had preceded him. He was the last of the kings of Israel.

The stroke of the divine judgment, long hanging over the guilty people, fell at last, and Shalmaneser came up against Israel, first making the people tributary, and after three years carrying them away captive.

In this chapter the historian is at great pains to declare why they were thus carried away. The charge is explicitly stated in verses seven to twelve. Disobedience to Jehovah, conformity to the nations from which they had been separated, secret practice of abominations, and eventually public idolatry - these were the sins which finally brought down the stroke of national destruction. These evils they did, moreover, in spite of God's patience and warning. "The Lord testified unto Israel, and unto Judah, by the hand of every prophet, and of every seer."

These messages they would not hear. They rejected His statutes, they forsook His commandments, they practiced all the abominations of the heathen. Therefore. "the Lord was very angry," and cast them out. Their sin was first against law, but finally it was against patient love.

In this chapter also we have a remarkable passage having no direct connection with the history which is being traced. It is the story of an attempt made by the king of Assyria to colonize Samaria, from which he had taken captive the children of Israel. It is not easy for any people to take possession of what a divinely appointed nation failed to possess. As the colonists set up their own evil worship, divine judgment fell on them. They endeavored to accommodate their practices to what they conceived to be the manner of the God of the land. It is of these people that the remarkable words were written, "They feared the Lord, and served their own gods." The result necessarily was the degradation of the land and the people.

A most solemn and heart-searching lesson is taught by this paragraph. If God's witnesses fail, the issue is worse than previous conditions. The dreadful mixture of heathen practice and abomination with an attempt to make use of divinely revealed religion produces a corruption more fearful than anything else. Instances of the working of this principle in the history of the Christian Church have not been wanting.