For Israel had rent [the kingdom] from the house of David; and they had made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king; and Jeroboam violently turned Israel from following Jehovah, and made them sin a great sin.
This verse looks back to explain how the northern kingdom came to ruin. It names the moment the ten tribes were torn away from David's family and given to Jeroboam. Two questions follow. Whose act was the split, God's or man's? And what made Jeroboam's sin so great that his name still carries it?
One writer walks through the verse step by step, starting with who did the tearing.
It was God who tore Israel from the house of David after Solomon's death. Jeroboam then became king. He drove Israel from following the Lord and caused them to commit a great sin. Their bad condition showed in their willingness to follow a wicked leader and accept all his sinful decrees and actions.
God had settled that judgment long before it landed. One writer goes back to the day a prophet met Jeroboam.
Ahijah the prophet meets Jeroboam outside Jerusalem. He tears the new garment he is wearing — the kingdom itself was still quite new — and gives ten parts to Jeroboam. At that very moment the kingdom is torn out of Solomon's hands, although this only becomes clear later. One tribe is left to the house of David, because of grace's free choice toward David and Jerusalem.
The same event has two sides, and the same writer holds both.
No doubt it was a judgment of the Lord against Solomon, and God ordered it as such. But on the other hand it was the fruit of the evil heart of Israel. The temple of God at Jerusalem meant little to them once they thought of becoming a nation independent of Judah. Even so, Israel might never have dreamed of piecing together a new religion of its own out of scraps, if Jeroboam's political aims had not pushed the people onto this path. He was a complete stranger to the fear of God.
Jeroboam had a political problem. He solved it by changing how the people worshipped.
He judged by human wisdom and forgot the fear of Jehovah. So he made two golden calves. Shared worship was a powerful link, and he wanted it broken, so that it would no longer tie his subjects to Judah and Jerusalem. He had to set up a new priesthood. Everything about worship he invented out of his own heart. Israel's sin became a fixed rule, and the phrase "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" became the sad title of their first king.
Another writer lists what Jeroboam set up, and turns it into a warning.
He appointed priests from among the common people, and sacrifices were offered and feast days invented. So the nation, led by their king, sank at once into open idolatry. It is a warning to everyone in the Christian world who invents forms of worship out of his own heart.
The verse says Jeroboam drove Israel away. One writer weighs what that did to the nation.
Jeroboam stands out in the Old Testament as the great division maker. Under him the great mass of God's people, ten of the twelve tribes, broke away from God's centre at that time. Again and again, like a death knell, the Spirit marks this man out with these sad words: "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin." … Personal sins are bad enough. But to turn God's people away from the centre which He has set up — what could be worse?
Jeroboam held the throne, and that changes the reckoning.
Wickedness in a man who holds an office of trust is worse, and rightly treated as more serious, than the same evil would be in someone under him.
What one man started, later kings kept going.
What Jeroboam brought in went on dishonouring Jehovah until He removed Israel from the land. Eighteen kings sat on Israel's throne after Jeroboam. Of almost every one the record says that he followed, or did not turn from, the ways of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin.
Kings are remembered for many things. Jeroboam is remembered for one.
This is that Jeroboam who "drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin" (2 Kings 17:21). God has placed the stamp of eternal infamy on his name.
- Torn — God tore the kingdom away in judgment. Ahijah showed it before Solomon died, and grace left one tribe to David's house.
- Chosen — commentators hold both sides. God ordered the tearing, and Israel's own heart no longer valued the temple at Jerusalem.
- Devised — the great sin was invented worship: calves, a new priesthood, feast days, all from Jeroboam's own heart, all to hold a throne.
- Driven — his guilt was not private. He moved a whole people off God's chosen centre, and God weighs a leader's sin by the trust he holds.
- Repeated — eighteen kings walked in his ways. God removed Israel from the land, and the stamp of that sin stays on Jeroboam's name.
And the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them
This verse sits at the end of the northern kingdom's story. Israel kept the religion their first king invented, and they never let it go. So who carries the blame? Jeroboam "made Israel to sin" — but what about the nation that followed him?
The previous verse says Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord. This verse says Israel walked. One writer holds both statements together.
Maybe Israel would never have dreamed of forging a new religion for itself out of bits and pieces. But the political aims of Jeroboam, a complete stranger to the fear of God, forced the people onto this path. "Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit great sin" (v. 21). On the other hand, "the people of Israel walked" (so they were themselves guilty) "in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them" (v. 22). And Israel was carried away to Assyria.
A second writer draws the same line from the people's side: what the verse exposes is not merely a bad king but a nation content with him.
Their bad condition was exposed by their willingness to follow a wicked leader and accept all his sinful decrees and actions (v. 22).
Jeroboam's golden calves served a purpose. That purpose is why the ten tribes held on to them.
The golden calves were a political religion, and it suited the policy of the ten tribes to keep it. If the ten tribes had no calves of gold, they would have gone back to their loyalty to the Lord in Jerusalem. The calves were the great means of having another centre... To make a kingdom he had to make a religion. Dissolve a bond as important as a shared religion, and men's minds divide; then you cannot count on them in politics.
"They did not depart from them" is not a new sentence in Kings. The record says it of ruler after ruler. Writing about Pekah, the king before Israel's last, one writer marks the last time it appears.
"And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord: he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin." How painfully this often-repeated testimony falls on the ear! It sounds like a sad refrain. But this is the last time. Under Hoshea, Pekah's slayer and successor, God made "to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel" (Hosea 1:4).
Israel's sins carry Jeroboam's name. One writer weighs what that costs a man who leads others into sin.
One person's sin becomes far more serious when it turns into a stumbling block for others. Its consequences fall on those who drag the ignorant and the unsteady down the path of their own disobedience.
Another writer points to what Jeroboam pulled people away from.
Jeroboam stands out in the Old Testament as the great division maker. Under him the great mass of God's people, ten of the twelve tribes, broke away from God's centre at that time. Again and again, like a death knell, the Spirit marks out this man with the same sad words: "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin."
The chapter goes on to the Assyrian captivity. History never reversed it.
The history of the ten tribes is a tale of evil with no redeeming feature. Then we come to 2 Kings 17. Under their last king, Hoshea, Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up and led the nation of Israel away captive... These tribes have never been restored.
Yet the writer who calls Israel guilty here says the story is not shut for good.
It is not finished for good. It is finished only for this people and its kings, seen as responsible. Divine compassion moves the heart of the prophet Hosea, and he announces their future restoration: "My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger... for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst."
- Driven, yet walking. Jeroboam forced Israel onto the path. But they walked in his sins, so the guilt was theirs too.
- Held by convenience. The calves were a political religion. They kept the ten tribes away from Jerusalem, and dropping them meant losing the kingdom.
- Repeated to the end. "He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam" runs like a refrain through the kings. With Pekah it sounds for the last time.
- Multiplied by influence. Sin grows far heavier when it trips up others. Its results fall on whoever led them there.
- Removed, not written off. Assyria carried Israel away, and the tribes have never returned. Yet through Hosea God announces their future restoration.
until Jehovah had removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said through all his servants the prophets; and Israel was carried away out of their own land to Assyria, unto this day.
This verse ends the story of the northern kingdom: God removes Israel from His sight, and Assyria carries them away. Two questions follow — was this only Assyrian power, or God's word arriving on time, and has God now forgotten them?
God did not act without warning. One writer sets the prophets' testimony beside Israel's answer to it:
The Lord had testified against Israel and against Judah through all the prophets. Did they listen? No. They had abandoned the commandments of the covenant and given themselves up to terrible apostasy. Verses 14 to 17 describe every side of it. In the end, in His anger, God removed them from before His face, and "none was left but the tribe of Judah only."
The exile is not left as a bare fact. God first sets out His case in detail. One writer explains why God kept that record:
God is under no obligation to explain why He does what He does. Yet in His Word He often does. As He closes the story of the ten-tribe kingdom, God gives us a detailed list of charges in 2 Kings 17:7-23, showing why He brought this kingdom to an end. He has placed it in His Word to warn us and teach us. We do well to study 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."
Jeroboam set the pattern, but Israel kept walking in it. The blame does not rest on the first king alone:
"Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin" (v. 21). But on the other hand, "the people of Israel walked" — so they were guilty themselves — "in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them" (v. 22). And so Assyria carried Israel away.
That sin outlived the king who introduced it:
The idolatry of Jeroboam remained with Israel until they were led into captivity, and was an outstanding cause of it.
"Removed out of His sight" is the language of a nation losing its standing before God. It does not mean God lost track of them:
In the end He removed Israel out of His sight as a nation. Yet in His all-knowing love He knows exactly where each individual is. And nothing will frustrate His purposes, which are secure in Christ.
The verse ends with "until this day." One writer measures how far that reaches:
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 allowed this great scattering of the ten tribes. Now only a miraculous act of God at the end of the Tribulation will bring His people Israel back to their land.
Their hiding place is God's own doing, and no obstacle to what He has promised:
No one knows clearly or certainly where the ten tribes are. It does not seem to be anyone's business to search for them ahead of time. We may leave them in the obscurity that God has put them in. If we believe His word, we know this: He has kept the scattered remnant of the two tribes, and just as surely He will bring the descendants of the ten out of their hiding place... "They shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms" (Ezek. 37:22). God will fulfill every letter of the promises. Scripture cannot be broken.
- Warned. God warned Israel through all the prophets. The exile came only after Israel had ignored every warning.
- Refused. They abandoned the commandments of the covenant and gave themselves to idolatry. Scripture names the people as guilty, not only the king who first led them into it.
- Removed. The end came just as God had said. He set out His reasons in detail so that later readers would take warning: "For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you."
- Remembered. God put Israel out of His sight as a nation. Yet He knows where every individual is, and His purposes in Christ are secure.
- Restored. "Until this day" describes a scattering that history has never undone. Yet God Himself put them in that obscurity, and every letter of His promise to gather them will stand.