Commentary - 2 Kings 17:1-6

Bird's-eye view

This passage is the political and spiritual obituary for the northern kingdom of Israel. After more than two centuries of relentless idolatry, syncretism, and covenant rebellion, God finally brings the hammer down. The narrative is stark and unsentimental. It records the reign of Israel's last king, Hoshea, a man who was evil, but perhaps not as flamboyantly evil as his predecessors. His half-hearted wickedness and disastrous political scheming serve as the final trigger for the long-prophesied judgment. Trusting in a flimsy alliance with Egypt, he rebels against the overwhelming might of Assyria, and in doing so, he seals his nation's fate. The result is the siege and fall of the capital city, Samaria, and the deportation and scattering of the people of Israel. This is not a random geopolitical event; it is the methodical execution of covenant curses that God had warned about since the time of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy.

The Lord, through the pagan king of Assyria, is foreclosing on the mortgage. For generations, Israel had failed to make their covenant payments of faithfulness and obedience. Now, God evicts them from the land. This event is the final, sad chapter of a story that began with such promise after the death of Solomon, but quickly devolved into a state-sponsored apostasy from which the northern kingdom never recovered. It stands as a permanent, terrifying monument to the reality that God is not to be trifled with and that sin, particularly the sin of idolatry, has national consequences.

Outline

Context In 2 Kings

This passage is the climax toward which the entire history of the northern kingdom of Israel has been building since the division of the kingdom in 1 Kings 12. From the moment Jeroboam son of Nebat set up the golden calves in Dan and Bethel, the trajectory of the north was set. While the southern kingdom of Judah had a checkered history with a mix of good and evil kings, the north had an unbroken line of apostate rulers. The book of 2 Kings has meticulously chronicled this downward spiral, with the repeated refrain "he did evil in the sight of Yahweh and walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin which he made Israel to sin." The prophets, like Elijah, Elisha, Amos, and Hosea, were sent to call the people back, but their warnings were ignored. Now, in chapter 17, the bill comes due. This event serves as a stark and potent warning to Judah, which the subsequent chapters will show they largely failed to heed, leading to their own exile to Babylon.

Key Issues

The Bill Comes Due

We should not read this chapter as a tragedy in the classic sense, where a noble hero is brought down by a fatal flaw. This is not a tragedy; it is a sentencing. For over two hundred years, the northern kingdom of Israel had been in open, flagrant, and often enthusiastic rebellion against the God who had redeemed them from Egypt and given them the land. God's covenant with Israel, established through Moses, was very clear. It came with blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deut. 28). The curses were not fine print; they were spelled out in terrifying detail, and they included military defeat, siege, and ultimately, exile from the land.

What we are witnessing here is God's faithfulness. He is faithful to His warnings, just as He is faithful to His promises. Assyria, under Shalmaneser, is not an independent actor in this drama. Assyria is the razor God has hired to shave His people (Isa. 7:20). They are the rod of His anger (Isa. 10:5). This is the culmination of a long and patient legal proceeding, and the verdict is now being executed. The northern kingdom is being repossessed.

Verse by Verse Commentary

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

The historian is careful, as always, to anchor the events in time, synchronizing the reign of Israel's last king with that of Ahaz in Judah. Hoshea comes to the throne through a conspiracy in which he assassinated the previous king, Pekah. He is the end of the line. His nine-year reign will be the final, sputtering moments of a kingdom that was rotten to the core. Everything about this verse has a sense of finality. The clock is ticking down to zero.

2 And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, only not as the kings of Israel who were before him.

This is a fascinating and telling qualification. Hoshea was an evil king, which was standard operating procedure for the north. But the writer notes that his evil was of a lesser vintage than his predecessors. Perhaps he was less enthusiastic in his Baal worship, or maybe he removed some of the more grotesque idols. But we must not mistake this for a commendation. Being "not as bad as Ahab" is a very low bar. It's like being the most trustworthy man in a den of thieves. His evil was still sufficient to bring the final judgment. God's standard is His perfect law, not a comparative ranking of sinners. The cup of iniquity was already full to the brim; Hoshea's sins were simply the last few drops that caused it to overflow.

3 Shalmaneser king of Assyria went up against him, and Hoshea became his servant and paid him tribute.

Here the instrument of God's judgment appears on the scene. Shalmaneser V of Assyria was the reigning superpower, and he did what superpowers do. He expanded his empire and demanded submission from lesser nations. Hoshea, facing this overwhelming force, does the pragmatic thing and submits. He becomes a vassal, a servant, to the Assyrian king, and agrees to pay a heavy annual tribute. This was a political reality, but it was also a spiritual one. Israel, having abandoned their true Lord, Yahweh, now finds themselves in servitude to a pagan tyrant.

4 But the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, who had sent messengers to So king of Egypt and had offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison.

This is the fatal miscalculation. Hoshea decides to play the geopolitical game. He withholds the tribute from Assyria and secretly sends messengers to Egypt, seeking an alliance. This was not just a political blunder; it was a spiritual one of the highest order. For centuries, God's prophets had warned Israel not to trust in Egypt. Egypt was the house of bondage, the symbol of worldly power that was no match for the living God. To turn to Egypt was to turn your back on Yahweh. It was a foolish move strategically, like a mouse trying to get a housecat to protect him from a lion. And it was an act of profound faithlessness. The conspiracy is discovered, and Shalmaneser acts swiftly. He neutralizes the head of the rebellion, arresting Hoshea and throwing him in prison. The king is removed from the board before the final checkmate is delivered to his people.

5 Then the king of Assyria went up against the whole land and he went up to Samaria and besieged it three years.

With the king out of the way, the Assyrian army invades the whole land, culminating in the siege of the capital city, Samaria. The fact that the siege lasted three years tells us two things. First, Samaria was a well-fortified city, difficult to conquer. Second, the Assyrians were relentless and methodical. A three-year siege was a slow and horrific death sentence for the inhabitants. It meant starvation, disease, cannibalism, and utter despair. This was the curse of Deuteronomy 28 coming to life in vivid, ghastly detail. God was dismantling their nation, stone by painful stone.

6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and took Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

And here is the end. The city falls. The kingdom of Israel ceases to exist as a political entity. The Assyrians implement their standard policy for conquered peoples: mass deportation. They uproot the Israelites from their land, the land God had given them, and scatter them throughout the Assyrian empire. The specific place names are listed to underscore the historical reality of the event. This is the great divorce. God had married Israel at Sinai, but she had been a faithless, adulterous bride. Now He was sending her away, revoking her claim to His house and His name. The ten northern tribes are scattered among the nations, becoming the "lost tribes" of Israel. Their story, as a distinct people, ends here.

Application

The story of Israel's fall is a sobering one, and it is recorded for our instruction. The first and most obvious lesson is that God takes sin, especially the sin of idolatry, with deadly seriousness. We may not bow down to golden calves, but we have our own pantheon of idols: money, power, comfort, approval, political ideologies. Anything we trust in more than God is an idol, and all idolatry eventually leads to a form of exile, a separation from the blessing and presence of God.

Second, we see the utter folly of trusting in worldly solutions for spiritual problems. Hoshea's turn to Egypt was an act of desperation born of faithlessness. When the church is in trouble, our temptation is often the same: to make alliances with the world, to adopt its methods, to seek the approval of "Egypt." But our only true help is in the name of the Lord. Political maneuvering is a poor substitute for repentance and prayer.

Finally, the exile of Israel should drive us to the gospel. Israel was exiled because they could not keep the covenant. They had a bad king, and they were a rebellious people. This highlights our need for a perfect King who keeps the covenant on our behalf. Jesus Christ is that King. He endured the ultimate exile on the cross, being cut off from His Father, so that we, the scattered and rebellious, could be gathered in. The story of Israel's scattering is the necessary backdrop for the story of the church's gathering. In Christ, the tribes are reconstituted, not as a political nation, but as a spiritual people drawn from every nation on earth, brought out of the exile of sin and into the promised land of fellowship with God.