In our last lesson, we learned about nasty King Ahaz who encouraged idol worship in Judah and personally worshiped every god he could get his hands on. To spank his rebellious little behind, Yahweh stirred up Israel and Aram to join forces and attack Judah. This caused Ahaz to go running to the mighty Assyrian Empire for help, but his plan backfired on him when the king of Assyria decided that Judah would make a nice addition to his growing empire.
Now, thanks to Ahaz, both Judah and Israel are having to pay tribute to Assyria. Tribute is a form of bullying. It’s when a stronger nation says to a weaker nation: “Start making regular payments to me or I’ll destroy you.” The bully nation is the one who decides how much the tribute will be, and naturally they get greedy and set the price for peace very high. When weaker nations can’t afford the required tribute, they have to start heavily taxing their people. At some point the weaker nations get so fed up with this humiliation that they rebel. They stop making the required payments and then they hope that by some miracle they will be able to defend themselves by the time the bully comes around to collect.
It’s right about now that King Hoshea of Israel decides he’s fed up with paying tribute just to keep the King of Assyria at bay. So Hoshea gathers his courage and doesn’t send in his next payment when it’s due. A man named Shalmaneser [shall-mah-NEE-zer] is the king of Assyria at this time. He’s taken over for Tiglath-Pileser [TIGG-lath-pill-EE-zer], who we learned about in our last lesson. When Shalmaneser finds out that Hoshea has stopped making his required payments, he heads over to Israel with his army to get this rebel king back in line.
Israel’s Secret Alliance
When you’re trying to expand an empire, you are constantly fighting wars along your borders and trying to stomp out rebellion that starts to rise up from within your kingdom. Since you have limited resources, you need to resolve problems as quickly as possible. Shalmaneser plans to go over to Israel, destroy a few things, murder some people, and hopefully scare Hoshea back into line so that he can then go on to more important things. Often in these cases, being brutal in your discipline methods keeps rebels intimidated for longer, so emperors often choose to use excessive violence when responding to any form of rebellion. (This was the strategy behind the Romans using crosses. Such a grisly public execution style was meant to terrify any would-be rebels within Rome’s borders.) The larger an empire becomes, the more unstable it becomes as it amasses more and more unhappy conquered people within its borders. Rapid growth is much harder to manage than slow growth because you don’t allow time for your new acquisitions to acclimatize, decide that you’re not so bad after all, and change their loyalty over to you. Right now Assyria is growing rapidly, which means Shalmaneser can’t afford to ignore any whiff of rebellion.
But then Shalmaneser finds out that Hoshea’s rebellion is far more serious than he thought. It turns out that Hoshea has made a secret alliance with So, the current Pharaoh of Egypt. Egypt is a difficult problem for Assyria because it’s so far south and has a strong military. Naturally Shalmaneser dreams of one day conquering Egypt, but first this Israel problem must be dealt with. Shalmaneser can’t allow any nation to successfully break away from his rule, otherwise all of the other unhappy people within his borders might try to follow that nation’s lead. A public example needs to be made of Israel. She must be utterly destroyed and her people widely dispersed so that they can’t try something like this again. Bringing in his massive army, Shalmaneser marches through Israel, attacking everything in sight. Then he sets up camp around Israel’s capital city of Samaria, and cuts off all incoming food supplies. Let the sieging begin.
The Fall of Samaria
After three long years of living in horrific conditions, the people trapped inside Samaria—their fortress capital turned prison—are defeated. Shalmaneser levels the city, massacres most of the people, and hauls the survivors off as slaves. In case we’ve forgotten where our loyalties are supposed to lie, the author of the book of Kings now pauses to remind us of why all this has happened.
All this came about because the people of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt and rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Yet the Israelites worshiped other gods and lived like the nations whom Yahweh had driven out before them. They followed the examples of their evil kings, secretly sinning against Yahweh their God. Moreover, they built for themselves high places to worship other gods in all of their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up sacred pillars to gods and Asherah idols on every high hill and under every green tree. The Israelites burned incense on all the high places just like the nations whom Yahweh had carried away to exile before them. The Israelites did many wicked things which provoked Yahweh to anger. They served idols even though Yahweh had said to them, “You must not do this.” (2 Ki. 17:7-12)
Lest we think that Yahweh has been unreasonably harsh to treat His own people like this, our author now reminds us of the how much effort God put into trying to turn these people back from their spiritual rebellion.
Yahweh used every prophet and seer to warn Israel and Judah. He said, “Turn from your evil ways and obey My commands. Follow all the laws that I gave to your ancestors, and the teachings which I gave you through My servants the prophets.” But the people refused to listen. They stiffened their necks and behaved just like their fathers who did not believe in Yahweh their God. They rejected His laws and the Covenant which He had made with their fathers. They refused to listen to His warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying Yahweh’s command not to imitate them. They rejected all the commandments of Yahweh their God and made idols for themselves—even two calves. They worshiped Asherah, Baal, and all the hosts of heaven. Then they sacrificed their children to idols by passing them through fire, they practiced divination and sorcery, and they committed themselves to doing evil in the sight of Yahweh, provoking Him to anger. So Yahweh was furious with Israel and removed them from His sight. (2 Ki. 17:13-18)
Yahweh is the One we should be siding with in this situation, not the rebels. This seems easy enough, since the sufferers in this story lived thousands of years ago and we have no reason to feel any personal connection to them. But the principle we’re learning here doesn’t just apply to ancient historical accounts. The next time some shocking event happens in the world in which many people suffer and/or die, our natural response as humans will be to cry out to God in protest and say in so many words, “What are You doing?! This is terrible! Stop it! Fix it! Clean up the mess You have made!” Yet God teaches us in His Word that everything that happens down here happens according to His good plan. God loves us dearly and He brings tragedy into our lives in order to try to save us, not destroy us. We must learn to stop rushing to the conclusion that His actions are in some way flawed or that they are stemming from evil motivations. Yes, He does do horrific things. If we were standing in Samaria at the time the Assyrians broke through the city walls, we would have been deeply traumatized by the brutality all around us. Sometimes in life we are forced to witness shocking things that deeply upset us. When we are, we’ll have a much better chance of treating God well in those stressful moments if we’ve done our spiritual homework.
Spend some time prayerfully reflecting on all the things we’ve learned so far in this dramatic story called the Bible. Think about how gracious God has been, and how He has reached out to these rebels time and time again. Consider just how intentional and fierce their rebellion was. Remember the way Jeroboam created those two idiotic golden cow gods and then brazenly gave them the glory for rescuing Israel from Egypt (Lesson 12). Think about how people continued to worship those phony gods generation after generation while having no qualms about insulting the God who was really helping them each day.
When we consider all of the facts that Yahweh has preserved for us, we cannot help but conclude that He is unfathomably gracious, kind, patient, merciful and loving. Is it right for us to demand that He have no boundaries whatsoever? If there’s one thing we learn in the Bible, it’s that whenever God lashes out in anger, He is always justified. As maturing Christians, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to increase our understanding of God’s goodness and ask Him to help us continually improve our treatment of Him. As God’s servants, we should want to treat Him with the highest respect.
The Samaritans
Now that the Israelites have proven themselves to be a serious threat, the king of Assyria doesn’t want to risk leaving the survivors of his attack in their homeland where they might recover and organize another revolt. So he drags them off and intentionally scatters them throughout his kingdom.
With the rebels crushed and scattered, there’s now a new problem of empty land. Shalmaneser doesn’t want to let good territory go to waste. It will be profitable to the empire to move some people into Israel so they can work the land and maintain the cities. Grabbing natives from many different people groups that he’s conquered, Shalmaneser forces them to relocate to Israel and then leaves them there to make the best of it.
When the arrivals look around at their new home and see all of the worship shrines that the Israelites left behind, they decide it’s all quite convenient. Setting up the gods of their various cultures, the newcomers engage in many of the same disturbing rituals that the Israelites were up to, including child sacrifice. But then something starts to go terribly wrong. Wild, savage lions keep rushing into the inhabited areas and ripping people apart.
Yikes! Why aren’t their gods doing a better job of protecting them?
The solution suddenly comes to them: the native God of the land must be in some kind of huff because no one is paying attention to Him. But how can they appease this Deity when they don’t know who He is? Some investigation reveals that His Name is Yahweh. But what does Yahweh want? What kinds of sacrifices and rituals does He like? How can these newcomers pacify this native God so that He’ll stop sending lions to attack them?
A report of this dilemma is sent to the king of Assyria, who in turn commands that an Israelite priest be located and sent back to Israel to explain to the foreigners how they can appease the God of the land.
So one of the priests whom they had carried away into exile from Samaria came and lived at Bethel, and taught the foreigners how to revere Yahweh. (2 Ki. 17:28)
As soon as the people start going through some religious motions for Yahweh, the lions stop attacking. There might have been a few souls in the group who began to seriously pursue Yahweh at this time; we don’t know, we can only speculate. What we do know is that most, if not all, of the people were just giving Yahweh lip service, because while they worshiped Him, they also continued to worship their own gods.
And this is still going on today. They continue to follow their former practices instead of truly worshiping Yahweh and obeying the decrees, regulations, instructions, and commands which He gave the descendants of Jacob, whose name He changed to Israel. (2 Ki. 17:34)
“And this is still going on today”—this statement reminds us that our author is reflecting back on these events from some point in the distant future. Clearly history has to have already happened before you can write a book about it, and the fact that our author lives so long after the events he is describing means we can benefit from his hindsight. As he wraps up his account about the fall of Samaria, he once again reminds us of Israel’s willful rebellion against God.
For Yahweh had made a Covenant with the descendants of Jacob and commanded them: “Do not worship or bow down to any other gods. Do not serve them or offer sacrifices to them. But worship only Yahweh, who brought you out of Egypt with great strength and a powerful arm. Bow down to Him alone, and offer sacrifices only to Him. Take care to always obey the decrees, regulations, instructions, and commands that He wrote for you. You must not worship other gods. Do not forget the Covenant I made with you, and do not worship other gods. You must worship only Yahweh your God. He is the One who will rescue you from all your enemies.”
But the people would not listen and continued to follow their former practices. So while these new residents worshiped Yahweh, they also worshiped their idols. And to this day their descendants do the same. (2 Ki. 17:35-41)
The ancient Jews are a very racist people, and they feel quite strongly that being biological descendants of Jacob made them quite superior to any non-Jew. But now there are a bunch of icky non-Jews living in the northern part of their precious Promised Land. Ethnic Jews view these newcomers as shady invaders: idol worshiping foreigners who are soiling the sacred ground of Israel’s inheritance. Yuck, these are certainly not the kinds of people real Jews want to associate themselves with. The Jews don’t want these invaders to forget that they have no right to be here in Israel’s land, mucking up the place. They tell themselves that surely one day Yahweh will drive the foreigners out again so the Jews can reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
By the time we get to Period 7 (the Gospel books), this is the snooty attitude we will find existing among Jews towards the non-Jews who live in the northern region of the Promised Land. By the time we get to Period 7, the Roman Empire will be the new world power, and the twelve tribal states that were set up in Joshua’s time will have been replaced by larger Roman states. In the world that Jesus walks around in, what was once called Israel has been renamed Samaria.
The people who live in the region of Samaria are called Samaritans. The ethnic Jews living in the Roman state of Judea (which was where Judah once was) despise the Samaritans of Samaria. They hate them so much that they refuse to acknowledge them in public or touch anything that they’ve touched. In Jesus’ time, Jews label the Samaritans as icky, unclean people. So when a Samaritan woman walks over to a well one day to get some water and she sees a Jewish Man sitting beside it, she naturally expects to get iced. But instead, that Man asks her to fetch Him some water. How very unusual. This becomes the famous account of Jesus speaking to the woman at the well, which we’ll learn more about when we get to Period 7.
Jesus & Foreigners
Today many Christians like to paint Jesus out to be all sweetness and light, which is why they love to tell the story of the woman at the well. “Look how Jesus was so sweet to ignore social stereotypes and reach out to a foreign woman,” we say. This is how we like to view the story today, but it’s not how Jesus’ Jewish disciples viewed it at the time. When you are taught from the cradle that certain people are icky and beneath you and then you find your Mentor hanging out with one of those people, your first thought is not, “What a nice guy.” Instead, it’s “What the heck? Is He trying to embarrass us?” And as we’ll find out in Period 7, when it comes to Jesus, simple questions rarely get a clear answer.
While we’re on the subject of foreigners, it’s useful to note that Samaritans weren’t the only people that the Jews looked down on. Back in Period 2, Yahweh emphasized that foreigners who sincerely seek Him were equal to the Jews in His sight and that they were not to be treated as inferior in any way by the Israelites (see Yahweh Talks Ethnicity: Jews & Non-Jews Are Equal Before God). But the Jews never took this command seriously. They’re acting like little haters all throughout the Old Testament, but by the time we get to Period 7, they are expressing their hatred of non-Jews in some very obnoxious ways. Ah, but just because Jesus shows up in the form of an ethnic Jew doesn’t mean that He would take part in any Jewish bigotry, right? Well, for those of you who remember the story of the Canaanite woman who tries to ask Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter, you might recall how disturbing His response was:
“Lord, help me!” she cried.
Jesus replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” (Matt 15:25-26)
So what’s going on here? One minute Jesus is reaching out to an “unclean” Samaritan and the next minute He’s treating a sincere Canaanite woman like she’s an unwelcome pest and claiming that “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). So what’s His game? We’ll find out when we get to Period 7.
HEZEKIAH, King of Judah
By the time Assyria is done trouncing Israel, there’s only one very small kingdom left in the south: Judah. It’s rather disturbing to be king at a time when a massive empire comes and devours all of your Jewish brothers in the north. When you hear Yahweh declaring through His prophets that He is really the One who has sacked Israel and scattered her people to distant lands, you’d be pretty stupid not to revere Him. Our last king of Judah (Ahaz) was a real numbskull. But his son Hezekiah turns out to be shockingly different. Hezekiah sincerely cares about pleasing Yahweh. During his reign he aggressively stamps out idolatry in the land: trashing public shrines, taking down those blasted Asherah poles, and even destroying one troublesome trinket that the people have been hanging onto ever since the days of Moses (see The Fate of the Bronze Snake).
Hezekiah trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. He remained faithful to Yahweh in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands Yahweh had given Moses. So Yahweh was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. (2 Ki. 18:5-7)
In our last lesson, we learned that evil King Ahaz had shut down Yahweh’s Temple: physically locking the doors and preventing any of the Levites from doing their work. But after Ahaz dies, Hezekiah quickly sets things right again.
Hezekiah summoned the priests and Levites to meet him at the courtyard east of the Temple. And he said to them, “Listen to me, Levites. Consecrate yourselves, and purify the House of Yahweh, the God of your fathers. Take anything that is defiled out of the sanctuary. Our fathers have been unfaithful and have done evil in the sight of Yahweh our God. They abandoned Yahweh and His dwelling place; they turned their backs on Him. They shut the doors of the porch, put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the Holy Place to the God of Israel. This is why the wrath of Yahweh has come against Judah and Jerusalem. Look around and see how He has made them objects of terror, horror, and ridicule. Because of this, our fathers have been killed in battle, and our sons and daughters and wives have been taken away as captives. I have resolved to make a covenant with Yahweh the God of Israel, so that His burning anger will turn away from us. My sons, do not neglect your duties any longer! Yahweh has chosen you to stand in His Presence, to minister to Him, and to lead the people in worship and present offerings to Him.” (2 Chron. 29:4-11)
The Levites immediately set to work purifying themselves and the Temple according to the instructions Yahweh gave Moses back in Period 2. The sacrificial system is started up again, the Passover is celebrated for the first time in many years, and the people once again start bringing their tithes to the Levites. As we learned back in Lesson 6, tithes were an essential part of keeping the sacrificial system operating, for the Levites had no way of making an income when they were working full time for Yahweh. The tithes from the people (which consisted of money, crops, and animals) took care of the needs of the Levites and their families so that they could spend the bulk of their time and energy on God. Tithes also provided a community relief fund that was supposed to be used to help the poor and homeless.
Hezekiah is aggressive in his attempts to start a spiritual revival in Judah. He sends messengers all throughout the land and even up into Israel, urging the people to return to Yahweh in their hearts. Many scoff and scorn, but some do repent and travel down to Jerusalem to participate in the Passover. They also start stockpiling their tithes, and suddenly there is abundant wealth being given to the Levites, making them feel grateful and inspired in their work. At the same time, the people giving the tithes felt very joyful to worship Yahweh through their offerings and know that they were providing for families in need.
Today, with so much bad preaching about tithing and Yahweh’s Old Covenant, it’s easy to think that both of these things were negative burdens. Yet as we learned in Lesson 6, Yahweh’s original system of Laws was designed to increase people’s joy in life, not make them feel oppressed and miserable. The fact that He required sacrifices wasn’t strange because everyone presented ritual sacrifices to gods in these times. Over and over again, we’re told about all the worship shrines and altars that the people voluntarily built all over Judah and Israel during times of spiritual rebellion so they could sacrifice to every god they could lay their hands on (except Yahweh, of course). So it’s not like the people refused to worship Yahweh because He was too much work. He was actually less work and far kinder than the hideous demon gods who demanded child sacrifice and self-mutilation from their followers.
If they had obeyed God’s Covenant, the Jews would have actually had much pleasanter lives. They would have had far less crime, disease, and poverty. Yahweh’s Laws were written to protect their physical bodies, uplift their hearts, and nourish their souls. But instead they chose to cut themselves, have sex with animals, wallow in filth, and toss their children into fire. So let’s not fall for any more guff about how the Old Covenant was some kind of burdensome chore. The Old Covenant was wonderful news in these times. It was shocking to think that a God would bless so much in return for so little. Soul devotion is certainly a much pleasanter idea than abusing your body. Yahweh has always been such a kind and generous God. And yet there are moments when He does something very unexpected…
After Hezekiah had faithfully carried out this work, King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified towns, giving orders for his army to break through their walls. (2 Chron. 32:1)
What is happening here? What about all of those blessings for obedience? Didn’t Yahweh promise to protect His people from harm when they sincerely sought after Him in their hearts? Yes, He did. So why is He suddenly bringing this terrifying army in to attack Judah? Have you ever put a lot of effort into obeying God only to have your life suddenly take a turn for the worse? Have you ever felt like you were being punished for obeying? How will Hezekiah react to this sudden crisis? We’ll find out in our next lesson.
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