40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 17:1-23 (Episode 341)

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Israel becomes a vassal state under the reign of Hoshea. He tries to make an alliance with Egypt resulting in his capture by the Assyrians. The kingdom falls and we are given all the reasons why. In the end, how long can you poke the bear and not get bit? Chad and Daniel discuss it. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. Make sure you go to 1517.org and check out all the other things that 1517 is doing. If you enjoy this podcast, there's a whole network of podcasts that you will probably enjoy at least some of. I mean, if you like this, there's certainly other things over there that you're going to enjoy. There's also daily articles. We do events.

There's free online academies. There's videos on all kinds of things. Speaking of videos, you can go over to our YouTube channel, check out what we've got going on over there. We're posting stuff over there all the time. So just check out all the things that 1517 is doing. What we're doing today on this podcast is going to be in 2 Kings 17. Last episode, we got a good example of why you shouldn't hide your affiliation with God to try to win over the world

and maybe think that that will make them like you more and maybe they'll think that you're buddies and then they won't do any harm to you. We're going to see how that turns out, see if that works well or not. I have a sneaking suspicion, Chad, that it does not. Yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion you're right. Never turns out well.

you know it's been tried multiple times yeah like throughout human history and it always ends the same way well we'll see what happens now with uh this chapter that we've been talking about for the last two or three episodes this is a famous chapter probably one of the most famous chapters in first and second kings it's chapter 17 because here is where not only is the the fall of the northern kingdom documented but more importantly it's diagnosed so here we're going to have uh the the author go full deuteronomy on us he's going to say all right i'm going to take the theology of deuteronomy and i'm going to apply it to what was happening in the northern kingdom and i'm going to show you exactly why things happened the way the way they did so this sort

of reads like imagine you were you're reading about the fall of rome or something like that which I've done actually a decent amount of for some reason Rome is really interesting to me and you're seeing it you know that Rome falls and you could just have maybe it starts with like in this year Rome fell

and then you go back and you're like and it started way back here in this little thing right here that maybe didn't seem like that big a deal and then this happened and you see this domino effect and you're able to see all the pieces, and you have this diagnostic, right?

And so then you hopefully, what someone could do with this 17th chapter of 2 Kings, is say, okay, how would one avoid such a thing? And they're going to tell you, the author's going to tell you exactly how this could have been avoided. What is it that you needed to do and not do to avoid this outcome? And it also turns out that it's not that complicated. no it's pretty it's pretty it's pretty straightforward uh but you know there's there's something about humanity where uh i don't know if you know if you could actually communicate with animals they might actually be better than us in this respect but there's

something about humanity i can i can sit a person down uh who may be you know messed up in a lot of different ways and i can i can spell out very clearly very forthrightly uh these two three four or five steps whatever it might be that if they take those they are assured that they will get out of that mess instead of that mess so in other words i can present them with the facts do this and you will get better don't do that and you will get better i can lay all this out i can say you should do this and you should not do that and the chances of them following that are extremely slim yeah well chad it's funny i can i can do that to myself and i still don't do it yeah yeah i can speak speaking to the man in the mirror chad here's what you need to do and don't

do and things will be much better for you recently uh reread uh dave zahl's new book uh low anthropology anyway he makes a he makes a fantastic uh case for this explanation of this that that is the the uh the thing about humanity is we can be told precisely what to do and not to do and the facts that are given to us are indeed correct and will benefit our lives and yet the likelihood of us following that is very low because we the law has no power to affect the kind of change that the law requires yep it does not produce what it demands no it does not produce what it demands Yeah. So, uh, we'll, uh, we'll see how that plays out here in chapter 17. But first we have to be introduced to who, uh, the King is. He's a guy by the name of, of, uh, Hosea, which is quite an

ironic name. So Hosea is from the Hebrew verb Yashah, which means to save. So Hosea means salvation. In the 12th year of Ahaz, remember he's the guy we talked about in the last podcast, the guy who was all enamored with the Damascus altar and sacrificed his son and just was in general a very terrible king. So in his 12th year, Hosea begins to reign in the northern kingdom, and he reigns a total of nine years. So his name means salvation, but there was no salvation in him for the north. Quite the opposite, actually. It's kind of an unusual description of his reign here and i wish we knew more about it but here's all we're told it's kind of a tease he did what was evil in the sight of the lord okay no surprise there all the northern kings did yet not as the

kings of israel who were before him so how so we're not really told so he was he was he was a lot like the kings were before him but he wasn't quite as bad i suppose that's the best that we can that we can say so he did that evil but you know uh slightly less worse than the kings were before him and while he's in office the uh the son of tiglath palazer the one that we heard we've heard about before a guy by the name of shamanazer he's king now he comes up against him and uh hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute the word for vassal there is just basically the word for servant or slave, Ebed. So he becomes his servant and pays him tributes. But after a while, the king of Assyria found treachery in Hosea. So for a while, Hosea is like, okay, you know,

I realized that there's no way I can stand against you. And so I'll be your vassal. I'll be your servant. I'll pay you tribute. I'll do all these things that you tell me to do. But after a while, for some reason, he decides, you know what, maybe instead of becoming a vassal to the Assyrians, I can connect myself to the Egyptians, and they'll help me out here. So we're told that the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, found treachery in Hosea because he had sent messengers to a pharaoh, a king of Egypt by the name of Esso. And we're not sure who that was. You can read the Scotland literature connects him with a number of different pharaohs, but his name so far has not been found. This is probably, maybe it was what the Hebrews called

him. Whatever the reason might be, his name is Esau. So he's the Pharaoh. He's the king of Egypt. So he sent messengers to sow king of Egypt and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year. So after a while, he says, you know what? I'm going to play with the Egyptians instead of playing with the Assyrians. I'm going to try and connect myself with the Egyptians and Maybe they will be able to come to my aid. So I no longer will be bound to be a vassal to the Assyrians. Well, that didn't go so well. The king of Assyria shot him up and bound him in prison.

The Egyptians, in other words, were of no use to him once and forever. And then on top of that, the king of Assyria invaded, launched a full invasion, came to Samaria, and they withheld. this must have been a terrible time for three years now a siege is a terrible time for any city uh even if it lasts for a few months but three years yeah dude it's a the conditions inside the city would have been horrific by the time that was over yeah you have to assume that there's a lot of death and suffering associated with this yeah we've seen sieges of samaria before and how you know people were resorting to cannibalism and i mean it's just some of the the most gruesome things that the people have been uh forced to do or decided to do happened during sieges because

of course your food supplies your rations are are dwindling precipitously until finally you're eating you know anything you can find what was that uh doves dong and a donkey head that we talked about uh whenever that that happened before yeah so what's for dinner mom we have donkey brains that's what we're gonna it's gonna have uh tonight so anyway it lasted three years and And then finally, it ended. So in the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. And he did what you might expect. He carried the Israelites away to Assyria.

And he placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes. He basically moves them to the area of the Tigris and Euphrates, to modern Iran, Iraq. So they are exiled. as had of course as had been promised been threatened by god for generations up to up to this point israel had come into the land under the leadership of joshua and they had at least partially driven out all the canaanites with the instruction the clear instruction that they were to separate themselves from them and not to imitate them and then israel what do they do well they begin to imitate them they become more and more canaanite in their theology and their

practice and as a result they themselves after all these centuries are removed by god they're sent into this exile an exile which for the northern kingdom does not end so there was there was no time when like with the southern kingdom there they're exiled to babylon in 586 but they're allowed to come back in 539 538 so they have about a seven decade exile but then they're allowed to come back not so for the northern kingdom uh these are what people talk about the 10 lost tribes they were not lost they were exiled it was no there was no losing they were they were exiled and you know practically speaking here's what exile looks like it's not as if the assyrians you know, had a census record and they were ticking off every name, you know,

here's a family of five. All right. Yeah, we got them. Send them here. There's a family of six. We got all those names. Send them here. No, they would gather at most of the people. It wasn't as if though there was a vacuuming of every single person from the Northern kingdom who were then sent into exile. As we know from, from other parts of the scriptures, a lot of times that the poor people were just left in the land. They were especially going for the upper crust. I mean, they were going for people of wealth, they were going for people of power, for people who were leaders, politicians, priests, all these people that if they remained in the land might end up being a problem for the Assyrians.

are going to take all of them out. So that's the purpose of the exile, to make sure that there's no chance for the Israelites to regroup, as it were, and to once more launch some sort of revolt against the Assyrians. That's one of the reasons why you have this kind of exile taking place.

So the exile begins, and some people were left. No doubt also what happened before this time and maybe even during this time is some people fled to the south. so they actually joined up with the people of the of the southern kingdom and that explains one of the reasons i i i'm going on this uh kind of rabbit trail is is to indicate that that's the reason why in later documentation including the new testament we have individuals who are from

these tribes right right yeah so there's people mentioned in the new testament uh who are well Saul, for instance, who are, uh, Paul, Saul, what do you call him? Who are from, who are part of these, these tribes. And, uh, yet they are, uh, actually, you know, they're still part of Israel or, uh, goodness gracious, I'm losing my mind. Luke chapter two, who is the, the, the prophetess in the temple right after Simeon picks up Jesus, then Anna. Yeah. She's one of these tribes as well so you had people from these tribes who continue to live in in judah and uh thus you have a continuation of the tribes of israel even after the supposedly lost tribes uh were sent into exile here in uh second king 17 it's worth bringing up too because uh all kinds of

weird theological and other weird things come from trying to when you start leaning too heavily into some kind of lost tribe of Israel thing. I don't, I have not, I've yet to see a single example of any of that turning into anything good. Same here. I mean, all of the theories,

the conspiracies, the supposed historical reconstructions of where they ended up and where they are today, yeah, I just ignore all of that. I've never come across a single convincing historical documented fact that those sorts of things come up with okay so uh where we at here uh verse seven now verse seven begins with the the theological rationale behind why this happened

so everything that we've been discussing leading up to this point this whole downfall this whole exile, this whole destruction by the Assyrians. Why did it happen? Well, we're going to hear in the beginning of verse 7, this occurred. Well, that's pretty straightforward. Why did all this happen? Well, let me tell you. This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. I don't know about you, but that seems to be pretty much black and white reasoning.

I mentioned in the last episode that one of the things that might be surprising for some people is that when you're reading through this description of the sins that led to this destruction, it's really just a sin. So there's no mention of theft. There's no mention of adultery. There's no mention of envy, no mention of injustice, all those things that would have been taking place, no doubt. But that's not the focus. And you do hear that in some of the minor prophets, Hosea, for instance, and Amos. I mean, the minor prophets were preaching against these abuses, preaching against these sins, against the other nine commandments. But when it came right down to focusing upon the sin which led to this destruction, then what it is, is basically

they feared other gods. And by feared other gods, this is not an emotional word. Yara is the word here in hebrew and to to fear to fear god or to fear other gods is an all-inclusive term that includes believing and and worshiping and serving and conforming your life to being a servant of that one true god so to fear the lord is is in the old testament the most inclusive word for describing the the totality of one's life in relationship to god so it is is it believing yes is it uh is it trusting yes is it hoping in him yes it's worshiping him yes all those things are included in in fear i mean i would be better translated something like reverence i supposed or something like that revered other gods that's what's that's what's going on well and that's the

thing is that um it doesn't say they sinned against the lord their god and became agnostic right i think just that they had feared other gods is is a is huge because what it means is that you didn't become and by the way no one ever becomes this they didn't become non-worshippers uh we kind of talked about this last week how you have these politicians who become non-worshippers well they just are worshiping their own power and their and their own there are no non-worshippers Now, you might not worship Yahweh or Baal, which it seems that maybe certain kings don't actually worship either of them, in the sense that maybe they don't even believe in either of them. But they worship their own position, and they worship power, and you worship any number of things. But to worship nothing is not an option.

And so this, like, fearing other gods is, at some point along the way, they determine that there is another god out there that is higher than Yahweh. And so you have, like, this sort of included in this fearing god, it's just like submitting to him above all things, right? So what he says is true. What he says is the word for you to listen to, which you saw all through the Old Testament, is that God wants to be heard, listened to. And they started listening to somebody else, some other god, and that voice, they determined, had more authority than the voice of Yahweh. And that's what this whole thing comes down to, because a lot of times they would try to have it both ways. But in the hierarchy of who they ought to be listening to, who they ought to be fearing, who they ought to be submitting to, God's not going to let there be anything in that hierarchy other than Him.

It's just Him and you. That's it. There's no other things in there. They're putting all kinds of other things in there, and in some cases putting other things above God. Yeah. Well, it's kind of the Augustinian disordered loves, right? I mean, it all gets back to—

I mean, so God has created us, of course, in order that we might fear love and trust in him above all things. And if you focus on the love part, I mean, God created us to love him, right? Created us, of course, to love other people and to love the good things that he's given us in this life.

But what happens in idolatry is that there's a disordering of that love. And so the love for God begins to take second, third, fourth, fifth, last place. And pretty soon, the other things, the other loves of life, they become the gods, whatever that might be. Yeah, well, it's hard to explain it because we're all sinners, but God creates man out of his own goodness, and God then loves his creation, and so this love then is supposed

to then create love in return, right? So you're created to love God because he created you out of his own love and goodness. It's like if you have a child. Now, imagine—I know this is hard to do, but imagine I am an actually perfect father who has only ever done the best things, ever. And then you have this child, and all you've done is loved them perfectly, even when they're not perfect and they they mess up all the time but you just you just love them unconditionally and perfectly and then they come along and they say uh actually i'm going to have

a couple other fathers as well well this is uh this is a grievous insult now you know if one of our kids said hey you're not the best dad in the entire world uh they might have they might have an argument because that that human father doesn't exist but in this scenario it's like god has never ever done anything but faithful to you right and you've determined that you're going to be adopted by this other father over here yeah and to and and to compound the the gravity of that of that choice these other fathers are terrible yeah i mean the things they want are terrible uh the things they're satisfied are terrible like child sacrifice i mean that the things that that please them are some of the very worst things imaginable so but that's again that's a great

description of what was happening in the north and of course the the the fundamental human problem that we that we struggle against today so they fear to the gods they walked in the customs of the nations these very nations that of course god had driven out before now verse nine is a one word in this in the esv is a i think probably not the best translation so it says the people of israel did secretly against the lord their god things that were not right and most translations do adopt that word, that word secretly. I don't think it's the best translation because it doesn't fit the context.

So it only occurs, it only occurs here. The Hebrew is Chapa, but this is one of these where this is pretty typical. If you have a word that only occurs once in the Old Testament, how do you know what it means? Well, you can compare it maybe with

other similar languages and see if there's a parallel there or maybe there's a word in Hebrew that's that's also similar to it, and you can kind of, you know, guess at its meaning, or you can, of course, use context to determine it, but not exactly sure. It does seem to maybe be connected with the verb it means to overlay. So one of the commentators that I looked at translated it this way, the Israelites overlaid things that were not right so far as the Lord their God was concerned.

So maybe this is a reference actually to a quite physical action of like, you know, putting gold and silver on an idol, whatever it was. I don't like secretly because there was nothing secret about it, right? We've been reading about this. This was all open. This was like public religious policy was idolatry. So the people of Israel did, however you want to translate that, these things against the Lord their God that were not right. Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could say that, like, if I read it as secretly, what comes to mind is that these people participated in open idolatry, not to mention all of the stuff that they did that wasn't out in the open. And so everybody, every idolater is going to do this, right?

So this is a compounding, maybe even overlaying one thing on top of another. But you have all of the open, blatant idolatry. Open idolatry is going to the temple or going to the altar or going to the high place. And you're doing this in front of everybody. Perhaps less openly is that you're actually believing these things, like, within your own homes and within your own hearts, right? So this isn't just the outward ritual action of idolatry, but the actual heart idolatry, which nobody knows whether or not you truly believe these things or are serving these gods or not. And perhaps they are. Yeah, yeah.

So I think either way we take that, I mean, of course, the point is still the same, that what they were doing was not right. And what this consisted of, as it's spelled out in the rest of this verse, is they, for one thing, they built themselves high places in all their towns, from Watchtower to Fortified City. I think that's kind of a catchphrase, meaning everywhere. The big places, the little places. The public places, the private places. They had these bamot, these high places, these ritual sites all over the place. They set up for themselves also pillars. so this is a matzevah or matzevot plural these they're kind of just ritual ritual uh pillars

that were set up at worship sites to set those up asherim on every hill uh an evergreen tree this is just these are various forms of idolatry and there they made offerings at all the high places as the nations did whom the lord carried away before them so we had this we had this repeated reference to them following in the customs of the nations or like the nations or following the nations so this is the as we talked about in the last episode this is the the canonization of israel so they made offerings as the nations did and they did wicked things provoking the lord to anger and they served idols uh we've talked about these before this is this kind of a derogatory term, gilalim, which I've translated as

crap gods or dung deities. That's Ezekiel's favorite term for false gods. So these gilalim of which the Lord had said, don't do that. You shall not do this. So, I mean, all of this is bad enough, right? We're told that they forsook the Lord their God. They had disordered loves. They were turning from their good, true, perfect father to other terrible fathers. All of this was going on. And now to kind of add to this, what we're going to see in the next verse is that God wasn't as, it wasn't

as if God remains silent this whole time. Right. It wasn't as if, you know, that at the first sign of infidelity or disobedience, God said, I'm done with you. You know, I'm finished. You're on your own. I'm going to turn my back and walk away, and you can just, you know, reap the fruit of your works. It wasn't like that at all. God persistently, faithfully sent them warnings, prophets, calling them to return to him, which is what we hear in verse 13. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah. That's another important element of what's going on here. This isn't just about the northern kingdom. This is also about the southern kingdom. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, Turn from evil ways, and keep my commandments and

my statutes in accordance with all the Torah that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants, the prophets. What this tells you is this, that God, who as we know, is long in nose, right, Chad? This is a long-nosed God. Long-nosed, yes. Long-nosed God. This is a long-provoking. And I think that provoked is an important

part of this, that why this ultimately happened? Well, the people provoked God. So there's provocation happening here. So whose fault is this? Well, who's doing the provoking? And it's not that

they did something and then god flipped out for a very long time they consistently like this is a this isn't like i poked the bear once this is over a very long period of time i was poking and prodding and provoking this bear like i mean you know if somebody came up to you and said you know it says i just got bit by this rattlesnake uh and you're like oh no that's terrible uh did it just jump out at you oh no i had a stick and for like for 10 years i was jabbing at it and poking at it and and i was messing with it and just try just harassing it and doing all the things i know it hates and then and then out of nowhere it just bit me you'd be like dude i it's on you yeah that's right that's a that's a this is on you kind of deal yeah that's why you precisely what's been

happening you might you might say i feel i feel like you provoked that snake yeah i mean for 200 years uh the snake here the thing the provoking has been the golden calves right it's a different animal imagery yeah i set these up from the beginning jeroboam the first founder of the northern kingdom one of the the first official acts he did is he's like you know what it's too much for you people to go down to jerusalem to worship yahweh at the temple i'm going to set up a golden calf in dan in the north and bethel in the south and you can go to these and of course That is the sin of Jeroboam that is mentioned more than any other sin in the scriptures. Now imagine this snake.

I know that we're using the snake example as God. Just roll with it. Imagine now this snake sends you person after person after person that comes as you're doing this. It comes up to you and taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, you better stop doing that. That thing will bite you at some point. And this happens all day, every day while you're doing this. i mean i just i just don't know i i feel like you're to blame here big time yeah yeah there's no shifting of shifting of responsibility here uh verse 14 tells us they would not listen

but were stubborn as their fathers had been who did here you go dan you mentioned this in the last episode who didn't do what who did not believe in the lord their god yeah there you go that's it i mean like if he had to like isolate one verse out of this entire chapter that sums up the the the problem of why this happened israel this is it right here just like their fathers they did not trust they didn't believe they didn't aman that's the the hebrew here from which we get amen they didn't say amen they didn't believe they didn't trust in the lord their god so well we if you don't have that then of course you're not going to keep the laws you're not going to follow the rituals you're not going to do all those things if you don't believe then you're

going to if you don't believe in the lord your god then you're simply going to shift your trust to something else you're going to say amen to the syrians or amen to the egyptians or amen to whoever else it might be and their gods yeah and and you see here in this next in this next verse that God doesn't take this as an indifference to him, but instead he takes this as a despising of not just his statutes, so the things he would say, but also his covenant? Yeah, I don't know why some translations do this, but there's a good parallel here between what's translated as despised.

If you look down at verse 20, at the word that ESV translates as rejected, so it's the same word in Hebrew, it's ma'as. so they despised his statutes and his covenant verse 15 so the lord rejected all the descendants of israel and afflicted them so you could translate i i would have translated rejected they rejected his statutes and so the lord rejected all the israelites but it however you want to translate it in english it is the same word in hebrew uh they said no thanks god we don't want to have anything to do with you and so in essence god said after a long long time said okay well you get what you want yeah you won't have anything to do with me yeah this despising or

rejection i said for god there's not a there is no oh i'm just just neutral about your statutes and covenants i'm just kind of i'm just gonna not participate uh you're either in them or you're rejecting them or you're either uh clinging to them or despising them those are the options which is why to use the New Testament terminology Jesus says if you want to be my disciple then take up your cross and follow me

I just say it's going to cost you everything death right that's what the cross always implies there will be a death and thus when there's a death there's also a resurrection into new life so Jesus never says hey follow me halfway take up part of the cross

no you take up the entirety he wants all of you and not part of you so they despised the statutes this covenant uh all the warnings they uh oh this is a this is a significant verse here they went after false idols and became false i i so gk beal is one of my favorite authors to read he's a new testament scholar but he also writes a lot about the old testament as well he has a book uh called we become what we worship a biblical theology of idolatry and kind of the the the summary of that entire book is this we resemble what we revere either for our ruin or our restoration he uses that phrase over and over and he does it because

of this verse and other verses like it in the old testament where say listen to it again they went after false gods and became false or it can be translated went after vain idols and became vain In other words, they resembled what they revered. They worshiped that which was false, and so they became false. They worshiped that which was vain, empty, nothingness, and so that's what they themselves became. And of course, the opposite of that is true. When you worship He who is life itself, you live.

When you worship He who is truth itself, then you're filled with truth. When you worship the One who is the forgiver, then you are forgiven. You become children of your Heavenly Father. You resemble that which you revere. so either way you're going to mirror the one in whom you fear love and trust whether that is for your ruin or your restoration that's right so they went after false gods they they followed nations uh around them they abandoned the commandments of the lords of god they made for themselves these metal images of the two calves and asherah they worshiped all the host

of heaven that has not been mentioned yet but kind of had this this astral worship going on and they served Baal. So all these verses are just kind of an expansion of what's going on. And then we hear in verse 17 that they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings, so they made them pass through the fire. So more child sacrifice taking place. And used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger therefore verse 18 the lord was very angry with israel and removed them out of his sight none was left but the tribe of judah only that's a lot of provocation it's a lot a lot of provocation i mean it's like they uh it's like they convened a gathering and said you know what what all can

we do to revoke the lord our god of jealousy and they came up with a list and then they implemented that. It became public policy. Worship the stars? Yeah, let's do that. Make Asherah poles? Yeah, let's do that too. Make an altar to Baal? Yeah, under every green tree. That was the result. Verse 19 says that Judah also, so here we have the southern kingdom, Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but they walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. So the southern sister imitates the northern sister, as Ezekiel will tell us. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers until he had cast them out of his out of his sight i want to kind of wrap up this uh

this section when he had torn israel from the house of david they made jeroboam the son of the bot king this is going all the way back to the time of uh of the death of solomon jeroboam drove israel from following the lord and made them commit a great sin the people of israel walked and all the sins that jeroboam did that they did not depart from them they did not turn away from them until the lord turned away israel out of his sight it's the same verb in hebrew both the translate here is depart and remove but it's the same it's the same verb it's so they didn't turn away from the sins until the lord turned away israel from his sight as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets so to kind of wrap this up so israel was exiled

from their own land to assyria until until this day and you know it's it's a sad history if you've been listening along you you know i mean you we saw this coming along a long time ago uh that eventually exile was going to happen unless israel changed her ways israel exile was was going to happen. But as is always the case, the word of judgment is never the final word. It's not as if God said, you know what, I'm done forever with the people of Israel. He had sworn his fidelity to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He'd given them the promise. And no matter what Israel did, they weren't going to undo the promise that God made. So we're still kind of at that waiting for the promise of the seed to come, but the promise remains. The steadfastness of the Lord remains.

His fidelity to the people of Israel remains. So the gospel, the good news remains there. It just remains to be seen when Israel is going to wake from their slumber of impenitence and see that and turn to him. God is in the process of having to reduce Israel down to one person, down to one promise. The holy seed is in the stump, as Isaiah would say. That's right, that's right. All right, we are out of time,

so we're going to leave it right there. We will be back next week, probably get into some Hezekiah, which that'll be an improvement. So stay tuned for that. Chad, I will see you next week. See you then. We'll see you next time.