And Jehovah testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the prophets, all the seers, saying, Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments, my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through my servants the prophets.
Chapter 17 lists why God let the northern kingdom fall, and one line in that list defends God Himself. He had warned both Israel and Judah, sending prophet after prophet with the same call: turn from evil and keep His commands.
A stream of prophets was itself a symptom. Their arrival showed how far both kingdoms had already drifted.
Israel was now nearing its bitter end, with Judah's ruin in full view. The fact that God raised up prophets proved that the end was near, because prophecy only comes in when people depart from God. When things run smooth and fair, there is no revelation of this kind, and morally it is not needed. In days of comparative faithfulness, what we get is a setting out of privilege and duty. But God's people may despise the privilege and leave the duty undone. When their guilt is obvious and judgment must follow, prophecy comes. It tells of God judging the evil, yet also of mercy and even better blessing for the obedient remnant.
The verse calls the prophets God's servants. That title, used strictly, belongs to a narrow group of messengers.
Both Testaments use the term "bondmen" in a narrow and restricted sense. It described the prophets of old (Amos 3:7; Dan. 9:6; 2 Kings 17:13), and also the apostles and others of reputation in the Church (Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:7, see Greek).
The verse sends them back to the law given to their fathers. But the call to turn is something the law by itself could not give.
The prophets' ministry was very different from the law considered on its own. The law left no room for repentance. It demanded obedience. When it did not get obedience, it had nothing to announce or give but condemnation and the curse. The Lord required obedience — steady, unbroken obedience. He was not asking for repentance and a return to obedience. But God sent the prophets to propose, as it were, new terms... It was a further test — a milder one — to prove whether it was in the heart or will of man to turn to God, and serve and obey Him.
The verse names not one prophet but all of them. God did not warn once, and that patience ran on to the sending of His Son.
In His goodness, God has kept renewing His testimony. In His patience He has sent His prophets, rising up early to send them, as it is said, until there was no remedy (see Jer. 7). Last of all He sent His own Son. The result, as we have already said, is that all the righteous blood, from Abel to Zacharias, came upon one generation. They filled up the measure of their fathers' wickedness by rejecting God's last witness.
Nineveh was a foreign city with far less light than Israel had. It heard God's word and turned.
When the people of Nineveh heard God's word, they believed it and put on sackcloth. Their king led the way, calling for a fast and for sackcloth, and he added, "let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands" (Jonah 3:8). Then we read, "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it" (Jonah 3:10). How very sad it is to see God's people Israel refuse His offers of mercy. They were just as evil as the Ninevites, but with less excuse, since they had more light. They would not turn from their evil ways.
God did not have to explain Himself. He did it anyway, and He put the reasons in His Word for later readers.
While God has no obligation to explain to us why He does what He does, in His Word He often does so. As He closes the story of the ten-tribe kingdom, God gives us a detailed list in 2 Kings 17:7-23. It sets out why He brought this kingdom to an end. God has placed it in His Word for our warning and instruction. We do well to examine it. Romans 11:20-21 tells us: "Do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you."
- Warning sent. Prophet after prophet was a sign of drift, not health. Prophecy only comes in when people depart from God.
- Warning owned. God called the men who carried it His own bondmen — the same title He later gave to apostles.
- Warning merciful. The law demanded obedience and could offer nothing else. The prophets came with new terms — a milder test of whether man's heart would turn to God.
- Warning repeated. God kept renewing His testimony and sending prophets until there was no remedy. Last of all He sent His Son.
- Warning recorded. Nineveh turned with far less light; Israel had more and refused. God put the reasons in His Word so that later readers would fear, not presume.
But they would not hear, and hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, who did not believe in Jehovah their God.
This verse explains why Israel fell. God kept sending prophets, but stiff necks and unbelieving hearts — the same as in their fathers — shut the message out.
Moses used the same phrase when he spoke to Israel. One writer explains what it means, and what would have to change:
So he tells them to circumcise the foreskin of their heart — that is, to cut off the selfish, fleshly desires of their heart. They are to "be stiff-necked no longer." Being stiff-necked refers to the stubbornness of wanting our own way.
Stiffening the neck was not one bad decision. It was Israel's answer to every appeal. The same writer shows what it cost them:
Over and over again they refused every appeal of the Lord. They stiffened their necks in stubborn rebellion against His authority (v.14). So, having given up any respect for God Himself, they were free to reject His statutes and the covenant He had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They wanted freedom to do their own will, and followed the folly of other nations. They did not realise that such freedom was only painful bondage to sin (v.15).
The verse names the reason the fathers behaved as they did: they did not believe the LORD their God. One commentator, writing on the Gospels, links the words "unbelief" and "disobedience":
This is not the blatant breaking of the law through human tradition, but unbelief — the source of all disobedience. In the language the Holy Spirit uses, unbelief and disobedience differ only by a shade. The first is the root; the second is the fruit… All their disobedience toward God flowed from unbelief of Him, and so from a wrong view of their own moral condition.
The comparison to "their fathers" is not flattery of the past. It is the charge that nothing had changed:
The history that follows shows that the children were like their fathers. The flesh learns nothing from its own failure, or from the failure of past generations. It never changes.
One writer asks what a son owes to the memory of his father's fall:
Suppose a child grows up knowing his father's dishonour, and hears of his disgrace and punishment. Would not that sin look especially hateful to him, if he had any right feeling? His father's evil ways would always stand before him as a public example. But suppose the son treats it lightly, and uses it as encouragement to walk the same path. Is it not just that a still more severe punishment should fall on that son?
Verse 14 stands against the background of verse 13, where God sends prophet after prophet. Judgment came only after the warnings had run out:
They served idols even though the Lord had warned them not to do such things. He testified against them when they did so. He sent many prophets to command them to turn from their wicked ways and keep God's commandments (vv.12-13).
Another writer follows what happened to those messages as judgment came closer:
We can trace the patience and goodness of God as displayed in them… But a time came when there was no remedy. Israel would not hear; God's people would have none of His reproofs. As that time drew near, the prophetic messages grew more frequent. They warned the people of the coming judgments, but they also told them of the future and final blessing.
A stiff neck can be one person's problem too. One writer applies a proverb about it to Ahab, a king who heard God's word and only sulked:
Such is the attitude of foolish unbelief. Ahab is a sad witness to the truth of Proverbs 29:1, "He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing."
- Root. Unbelief came first; disobedience was its fruit. Israel did not just break rules — they did not believe the God who gave them.
- Neck. A stiff neck is the stubbornness of wanting your own way. The cure is a heart with its selfish desires cut away.
- Inheritance. The children matched their fathers. Human nature learns nothing from past failure, and a son who copies it is more guilty, not less.
- Patience. God testified, warned, and sent prophet after prophet. Judgment came at the end of the pleading, not at the start.
- Limit. Refusal has an end point. The one who is often reproved and still stiffens his neck breaks beyond healing. God warns us now so that we do not repeat the story.
And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant which he had made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he had testified unto them; and they followed vanity and became vain, and [went] after the nations that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them.
This verse reads like a coroner's report on a nation. The ten tribes threw away what God gave them, chased what was empty, and copied the nations God had told them to avoid.
The order matters. The collapse began with a refusal of God's authority. Everything else followed from that.
Again and again they refused every appeal of the Lord. They stiffened their necks in stubborn rebellion against His authority (v.14). They had given up any respect for God Himself. So they were quite free to reject His statutes and His covenant that He had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They wanted freedom to do their own will, following the folly of other nations. They did not realise that this freedom was only painful bondage to sin (v.15).
The freedom they reached for turned out to be a chain. Statutes, covenant, warnings — all three went once they refused God Himself.
An older translation reads "they followed vanity, and became vain." Worship shapes the worshipper: worthless objects make worthless people.
What were they, these idol-images? Simply matter — silver and gold — shaped by human hands! Mouth and eyes are all there... But the idol gives its worshipper no response by word or look. He is aware of nothing: the voice that cries to him he does not hear, the smell of incense or of sacrifice he does not notice. He can stretch out no hand to help, no foot of his will move to bring relief, not even a murmur of sound is in that idle throat. What can these senseless gods do but degrade the men who bow before them into beings just as senseless? And this is the fair penalty on those who can forsake God to follow what are plainly their own inventions.
Israel did not stop worshipping when they left God. No one does. Something always rushes in to fill the empty place.
People are made so that they must worship. If they do not worship the true God, they will inevitably worship some false god. I say "inevitably" for a reason. Some claim not to believe in any God at all. Even these turn out to be worshippers of something or other that stands towards them in the place of God.
The last clause is the sharpest, because God had forbidden this one thing. Israel was meant to show the nations what God is like. Instead they copied those nations, and the nations learned nothing.
How little the nations of the earth learned about God and His word from the way Israel acted! Instead, His name was blasphemed continually because of their ways. They should have held the high and holy and happy ground of loving obedience to God's commandments. Instead they sank to the level of the nations around them. They adopted their habits, worshipped their gods, and walked in their ways. So those nations never saw the lofty wisdom, purity, and moral glory of God's statutes. They saw only the weakness, folly, and moral degradation of a people who boasted of holding the very words that condemned them.
God later put the same charge to His people as a question.
When Israel came out of Egypt they had a deep sense of the Lord's care and protection. "Thus says the LORD: 'What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?'" (Jeremiah 2:5). What a moving plea for the Lord to lay before His people. Had He changed since that day? No, there was no change on His side. They had lost His presence, and they were unaware of the loss.
A nation can trade God for nothing and never feel the moment it happens.
God did not have to explain why this kingdom fell. He explained anyway, and He put the reasons on record.
While God has no obligation to explain to us why He does what He does, in His Word He often does so. As He closes the story of the ten-tribe kingdom, God gives us a detailed list of particulars in 2 Kings 17:7-23 as to why He brought this kingdom to an end. God has placed it in His Word for our warning and instruction. We do well to examine it. Romans 11:20-21 tells us: "Do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you."
- Rejection. It starts with refusing God's authority. Once respect for Him goes, His statutes, His covenant and His warnings are easy to discard.
- Emptiness. They chose nothings. A nothing cannot help. It can only drag its worshippers down to its own level.
- Inevitability. No one stops worshipping. Drop the true God and something else takes His place, whether or not you call it a god.
- Imitation. Copying the nations was not a private failure. It robbed those nations of the one witness God had placed among them.
- Warning. God spelled out His reasons on purpose. He kept the record of Israel's fall as a warning to everyone standing today: do not be proud, but fear.
And they forsook all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images, two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of the heavens, and served Baal;
God's summary of why Israel's northern kingdom went into exile in Assyria reaches its low point here. Why does leaving God's word never leave an empty space, and how can worship that still uses God's name be real idolatry?
The verse names what they gave up before it lists what they took on. One commentator asks what was left to fill the gap, then traces how the evil spread:
Leaving the commandments of God, what else could they find as a substitute? Only the worship of idols. So verse 16 refers back to the great sin of Jeroboam in making two golden calves... and making these the centres of Israel's worship. But once a thing like this is done, the evil does not stop there. They then began to worship all the host of heaven, having "many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:5), and Baal became a favourite idol.
The calves were not offered as rival gods. One dictionary explains why an image meant to stand for the true God is the more deceptive form of idolatry:
This form of idolatry is more plausible than disowning God altogether and setting up an idol instead. But it is just as truly idolatry, and God punished it in a way no one could miss. The same worship existed in Egypt with the bull Apis, said to represent the god Osiris. This may have given the Israelites the idea of making a calf. Jeroboam repeated the same sin, because he was afraid his people would go up to Jerusalem to worship: he set up two calves, one in Bethel and one in Dan, and proclaimed, "Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28-33). Idolatry did not stop there with Israel, for they went on to worship "all the host of heaven, and served Baal." 2 Kings 17:16.
One writer points back to Sinai, and answers an excuse still made today:
Jeroboam repeated the sin of Aaron and the people of Israel at the foot of Sinai, where God had already spoken the solemn words: "You shall have no other gods before me." It has been argued that Jeroboam was really worshipping Jehovah, but with the aid of visible images. This is urged today to excuse blatant idolatry. The Bible does not support this. It says plainly: "This thing became a sin." God does not need an image for people to worship Him. In fact, the very idea is condemned throughout Scripture.
Older translations call the next item in the verse a grove. One dictionary shows that the word does not mean trees at all:
The word "grove" naturally suggests a row of trees. But that cannot be the meaning, since groves were set up "under every green tree"... The groves were made of wood, as we learn from them being cut down and burnt... They are regularly linked with idols and images, and Judges 3:7 speaks of them being served along with the Baals.
The verse lists the host of heaven and Baal side by side. One writer ties both to the sky, and ties the Asherah in with them:
The "groves" so often mentioned in the history of Ahab and Elijah were really statues of Ashtoreth. Baal seems to have represented the sun, and Ashtoreth the moon. In God's charge against the Northern Kingdom, as the people went into captivity in Assyria, we read that they "made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal" (2 Kings 17:16). Note how "all the host of heaven" is here linked with Baal. In Jer. 7:18 Ashtoreth is called "the queen of heaven." From Job 31:26-27 we gather that honouring the sun and moon was the earliest form of idolatry.
The calves were not a passing phase. One writer traces the exile itself back to them:
The idolatry of Jeroboam stayed with Israel until they went into captivity, and was an outstanding cause of it. As it is written: "Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin... they did not depart from them, until the LORD removed Israel out of His sight... So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day" (2 Kings 17:21–23).
- Left. The sin starts with what they dropped: God's commandments. Everything else in the verse fills that gap.
- Substituted. The calves were sold as worship of the God who brought Israel out of Egypt. Commentators call that a more plausible idolatry than open denial — and just as real.
- Spread. Once they allowed images, the list grew: a carved Asherah, then the whole host of heaven, then Baal. No idolatry stays where it started.
- Skyward. Baal and the host of heaven stand together because both go back to sun and moon. Writers call that the earliest idolatry of all.
- Swept away. Jeroboam's calves stayed with Israel to the end. Scripture names them as an outstanding cause of the exile.
and they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke him to anger.
The ESV says Israel burned their children as offerings. Older translations say they made them "pass through the fire," and some have read that as a rite the children survived. Other passages rule it out.
The motive makes it worse. Parents offered their children as an act of worship.
This evil worship led to other abuses. Parents made their sons and daughters pass through the fire and offered them as sacrifices. They thought that such horrible evil would gain favour with God or with their gods (v.17).
The second charge names two practices that travel with idolatry. One curses people; the other flatters them.
Witchcraft and soothsaying went along with such abuses. People used witchcraft to call down curses on others. Soothsaying is predicting the future in order to soothe people. This is how evil spirits claim to predict the future: they make people feel good. The false prophets did this when they tried to make Ahab comfortable about going to fight for Ramoth Gilead (1 Kings 22:12). Only Michaiah prophesied the truth, that Ahab would die in his attempt to gain Ramoth Gilead (1 Kings 22:17).
God had warned Israel in the plainest terms long before. He had also told them why the land was theirs at all.
The third charge is the sharpest. Evil did not overtake them; they traded themselves away for it.
Israel "sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord," that is, they in effect sold themselves as slaves to satanic power.
The word behind it carries that force, and it reaches further than Israel's history.
It is the condition of us all, though we may discover it only when the light of the gospel shines upon our fallen state.
God did not act on the first offence, or the hundredth. The verse belongs to a list compiled over centuries.
Though the Lord bore patiently with Israel for years, yet the day finally came when He removed them from their land, leaving only the tribe of Judah at that time (v.18). Yet Judah is mentioned also as having failed to keep the commandments of the Lord, following too in the way of Israel. So the writing was on the wall for Judah also, but the godliness of some of their kings delayed the captivity of Judah for some years.
God did remove Israel as a nation. But being out of sight is not the same as being forgotten.
Finally He removed Israel out of His sight as a nation. Yet His all-knowing love knows where each person is. And nothing will frustrate His purposes, which are secure in Christ.
- Sacrifice — Israel burned their own children as offerings, hoping to win a god's favour.
- Sorcery — Curses and soothing predictions came in with it. Both are how evil spirits work, as with the prophets who flattered Ahab.
- Scripture — God had already named and banned every one of these practices. They were the reason the earlier nations lost the land.
- Slavery — To sell yourself to do evil is to sell yourself into slavery. Paul uses the same word of himself, and it is the condition of us all until the gospel exposes it.
- Sentence — God removed Israel from His sight as a nation. Even then He knows where each person is, and His purposes stand secure in Christ.
Therefore Jehovah was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight there remained but the tribe of Judah only.
The northern kingdom's story ends in one sentence: God's anger, Israel put out of His sight, only Judah left. Behind that short verdict lie centuries of patience and a long list of charges — and a question: is being put out of God's sight the last word?
The verse reads like a sudden outburst. Commentators trace it instead to a long patience that ran out — and even then, Judah was not touched at once.
The Lord bore patiently with Israel for years. Yet the day came when He removed them from their land, leaving only the tribe of Judah at that time (v.18). Judah, too, had failed to keep the commandments of the Lord, following in the way of Israel. So the writing was on the wall for Judah too. But the godliness of some of their kings delayed Judah's captivity for some years.
God's case against Israel is set out in the verses just before this one. What condemned them was not one act but a refusal to listen to the prophets.
The Lord had testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets. Had they listened to these? No. They had abandoned the commandments of the covenant and given themselves up to a terrible falling away from God. Verses 14 to 17 describe it in every part. Finally, in His anger God removed them from before His face, and "None was left but the tribe of Judah only." That was no doubt for a short time, yet God still recognised Judah, as Hosea said: "Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah still walks with God, and with the holy things of truth" (Hosea 11:12).
The people also invented worship for themselves, and defended it with the best of intentions.
They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on high hills and under green trees. They would no doubt say that these things were to remind them of God. But God had forbidden such things. Using them always lowered God in their eyes, until the things themselves became the objects of their worship.
Being put out of God's sight meant being put out of the land. Nothing in the years since has reversed it.
The king of Assyria besieged Samaria for three years, finally taking it and all Israel, and moved the captives to areas in Assyria, to Halah and the cities of the Medes. This was a sweeping judgment of God against His people Israel, and the ten tribes have never returned to their land since that time… God has now allowed this great dispersion of the ten tribes. Only a miraculous act of God at the end of the Tribulation will bring His people Israel back to their land.
Judah alone was left, and that sounds like a rescue. Commentators read it instead as a spotlight on the survivor, who watched judgment fall next door and learned nothing from it.
They had proved themselves rebellious to the royal house that God Himself had chosen for them. They completed that rebellion by falling away from God altogether. After they ignored His warnings, He swept away the ten tribes of Israel first, as a most solemn lesson to those who remained. But Judah was deaf and blind to what God was pointing out through guilty Israel.
The delay changed nothing. Judah got another 130 years and ended in the same place — though that loss is not the end of God's plan.
Judah learned no lesson from the ruin of their brothers. For 130 years more the Lord bore with their evil ways, and then gave them into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar… On the ground of responsibility everything is lost. But grace will yet more than restore what Solomon and Israel so foolishly threw away.
Israel's long history closes at this verse. What closes, one writer insists, is a chapter — this people tested on their own responsibility — not God's purpose for them.
Not that it is ended for good. It is ended only as far as this people and its kings are concerned, viewed as responsible. The heart of the prophet Hosea, moved with divine compassion, announces Israel's future restoration. Hosea writes: "My heart is turned within me, my compassion is stirred. I will not carry out the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man."
- Patience — The anger came last, not first. God bore with Israel for years and warned them by every prophet.
- Provocation — They invented their own worship and called it a reminder of God. In the end they worshipped the reminders, and God sank in their eyes.
- Removal — Out of His sight meant out of the land. The ten tribes have never returned; only a future act of God will bring them back.
- Remnant — Judah was left, and God still recognised it. But Judah learned nothing from its neighbour's ruin, and followed it into captivity 130 years later.
- Restoration — What closes here is Israel's history under test, not God's purpose. Grace will restore more than they threw away.