The Autopsy of a Nation: When the Chickens Come Home to Roost Text: 2 Kings 17:1-6
Introduction: The Wages of Sin
We come now to the end of a long and sordid story. We are attending a funeral. The northern kingdom of Israel, which for over two centuries has been whoring after other gods, is now laid out on the coroner's table. The book of Kings is not primarily a political history, but rather a theological one. It is a record of a covenant relationship, and what we are reading here is the final divorce decree. This is not a tragedy in the Greek sense, where a noble hero is brought down by a fatal flaw or by the caprice of the gods. This is the methodical, predictable, and just execution of a sentence long delayed.
God had warned them. From the very beginning, in the book of Deuteronomy, the terms of the covenant were laid out with crystalline clarity. If you obey me, you will be blessed in the city and in the field. Your enemies will flee before you. You will be the head and not the tail. But if you disobey, if you run after the tin-pot gods of the Canaanites, you will be cursed. You will be besieged. You will be defeated. And you will be vomited out of the land and scattered among the nations. What we are witnessing in 2 Kings 17 is not a surprise. It is the chickens of idolatry, having fattened themselves for generations, finally coming home to roost.
Our modern sensibilities recoil at this. We want a God who is all therapeutic affirmation, a divine grandfather who pats us on the head regardless of our behavior. But the God of the Bible is the holy one of Israel. He is a consuming fire. His love is a jealous love, and His justice is not a suggestion. The fall of Samaria is a stark and terrifying reminder that sin has consequences, that rebellion has a price, and that God will not be mocked. What a nation, a church, or an individual sows, that they will also reap. Israel sowed the wind of apostasy, and they are about to reap the whirlwind of Assyria.
The Text
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah became king over Israel in Samaria and reigned nine years. And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, only not as the kings of Israel who were before him. Shalmaneser king of Assyria went up against him, and Hoshea became his servant and paid him tribute. 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. Then the king of Assyria went up against the whole land and he went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. 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.
(2 Kings 17:1-6 LSB)
The Last Bad King (vv. 1-2)
The account begins with the final monarch of the northern kingdom.
"In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah became king over Israel in Samaria and reigned nine years. And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, only not as the kings of Israel who were before him." (2 Kings 17:1-2)
Hoshea is the last man on a long list of scoundrels. He is the final CEO of a bankrupt company. And the Spirit gives us this fascinating qualifier: he was evil, but not as evil as the kings who came before him. This is like being the most temperate man at a drunken fraternity party. It is damning with faint praise. What does this mean? Perhaps he didn't actively promote the Baal worship of Ahab and Jezebel. Perhaps he was just your standard-issue, syncretistic idolater who maintained the golden calf cult established by Jeroboam.
But the point is this: God does not grade on a curve. The standard is not "better than Ahab." The standard is the perfect law of God. Hoshea's "lesser evil" was still evil. His sin was still treason against the covenant King. This is a profound warning against the sin of comparison. We love to measure ourselves by the people around us. We see the flagrant sins of the world and think, "Well, at least I'm not like that." But the patient with walking pneumonia is still sick, even if he is not as sick as the man in the iron lung. The nation was terminally ill with the cancer of idolatry, and Hoshea's slightly less aggressive form of the disease was not going to save it. The judgment was already baked in the cake.
A Fool's Errand (vv. 3-4)
Hoshea's reign is immediately defined by foreign entanglements and disastrous political calculations.
"Shalmaneser king of Assyria went up against him, and Hoshea became his servant and paid him tribute. 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." (2 Kings 17:3-4 LSB)
First, Hoshea submits to Assyria. He becomes a vassal, a servant. This is the predictable political outworking of their spiritual state. Because Israel refused to be the servant of Yahweh, they were now forced to be the servant of Shalmaneser. If you will not serve God, you will serve tyrants. It is not a question of whether you will serve, but who you will serve. Service to God is perfect freedom. Service to pagan despots involves tribute, humiliation, and chains.
But Hoshea is a schemer. He decides to play the great powers against each other. He stops paying his taxes to Assyria and secretly sends messengers to Egypt for help. This is the besetting sin of Israel throughout its history. When trouble comes, they look to Egypt. They trust in chariots and horses. Egypt, in Scripture, is the consistent symbol of worldly power, of reliance upon the arm of flesh. It is a rejection of the First Commandment acted out in the arena of foreign policy. Instead of turning back to Yahweh in repentance and crying out for deliverance, Hoshea turns to the "broken reed" of Egypt (Isaiah 36:6).
This is what apostasy does to your thinking. It makes you stupid. Hoshea's plan was foolish from the start. Egypt was a declining power, and Assyria was the ascending, brutal superpower of the day. The conspiracy was discovered, as all such faithless schemes eventually are, and the consequences were swift. Hoshea is arrested and imprisoned. The king who put his trust in a foreign power is now a powerless prisoner of that foreign power's rival. When you trust in the world to save you, the world will eventually turn and devour you.
The Siege and the Exile (vv. 5-6)
The personal failure of the king now leads to the corporate judgment of the nation.
"Then the king of Assyria went up against the whole land and he went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. 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." (2 Kings 17:5-6 LSB)
The siege of Samaria lasted three years. A three-year siege is a slow, agonizing, horrifying death. It means starvation. It means disease. It means despair. It means watching your children waste away. God is patient even in His wrath. This long agony was a final, terrible opportunity for the people of Samaria to come to their senses, to cry out to the God of their fathers. But there is no record of any such repentance. Their hearts were as hard as the stones in their city walls.
Finally, the end comes. The city falls. The nation is extinguished. And the covenant curse of exile, promised by Moses eight hundred years earlier, comes to pass with terrifying precision. "The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known... And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away" (Deuteronomy 28:36-37).
This is not a random geopolitical event. This is the covenant-keeping God of Israel keeping His promises. He promised blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience, and He is a God who means what He says. The Assyrians were simply the razor that God picked up to shave the land clean (Isaiah 7:20). They thought they were acting out of their own imperial ambition, but they were merely the unwitting instruments of a divine verdict.
And notice the result: they are scattered. They are taken away and settled in various parts of the Assyrian empire. This is the great unraveling. They were called to be a distinct and holy people, a light to the nations. But because they wanted to be like the nations in their worship, they were now scattered and assimilated by the nations in judgment. The ten northern tribes effectively vanish from history. When you abandon your God-given identity, you forfeit your identity altogether.
Conclusion: No Other God
The story of the fall of Samaria is a grim one, but it is a necessary one. It is a permanent warning sign erected on the highway of history. It tells us that there is a point of no return. It tells us that God's patience, though vast, is not infinite. It tells us that seemingly small compromises, like Jeroboam's calves, can set a nation on a trajectory toward utter ruin.
We are tempted to the same sins today. When our nation, our churches, or our families are in trouble, where do we look? Do we, like Hoshea, look to Egypt? Do we put our ultimate trust in political solutions, in charismatic leaders, in economic policies, or in therapeutic techniques? Do we try to form strategic alliances with the world, hoping it will save us from our troubles? This is the way of folly. This is the way of Samaria.
The only hope for a people under judgment is to reject the allure of Egypt and turn back to Yahweh. It is to confess that He alone is King, and that His law is our only standard. It is to repent of our idolatries, both the gross and the subtle.
The good news is that the story does not end in Assyria. God preserved a remnant in the southern kingdom of Judah. He preserved the line of David. And from that line, He brought forth another King, a better King, Jesus Christ. This King did not fail. He did not conspire. He did not trust in Egypt. He trusted His Father perfectly, even unto death. On the cross, Jesus endured the ultimate exile. He was cast out into the outer darkness of God's judgment, bearing the full curse of the covenant that we deserved. He did this so that we, a scattered and rebellious people, could be gathered back in. He was exiled so that we could be brought home.
Therefore, let us learn the lesson of Samaria. Let us abandon our faithless schemes and our worldly alliances. Let us turn from every idol and trust in the one true King, who was bound in a tomb so that we might be set free from prison forever.