2 Kings 17:1-8 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.… In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years, etc. Hoshea, the king here mentioned, was the nineteenth and last King of Israel. He lived about seven hundred and twenty years or more before Christ. After a reign of nine years his subjects were carried away captive to Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end. The selection we have made from this chapter presents to us - Aspects of a corrupt nation. A nation appears here as an unfortunate inheritor of wrong; as a guilty worker of wrong; and as a terrible victim of wrong. I. AS AN UNFORTUNATE INHERITOR OF WRONG. Upon Hoshea and his age there came clown the corrupting influence of no less than eighteen princes, all of whom were steeped in wickedness and fanatical idolatry. The whole nation had become completely immoral and idolatrous. This king - the last of the Israelitish - it is said, "did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him." If one shade better than his predecessors, he was, notwithstanding, a man whose character seems unredeemed by one single virtue. It is one of not only the commonest, but the most perplexing, facts in history that one generation comes to inherit, to a great extent, the character of its predecessor. The thoughts, the principles, and the spirit that animated the men of the past, come down and take possession of the minds of the men of the present. Though the bodies of our predecessors are moldering in the dust, they are still here in their thoughts and influences. This is an undoubted fact. It serves to explain three things. 1. The vital connection between all the members of the race. Though men are countless in number, and ever multiplying, humanity is one. All are branches of the same root, members of the same body, links in one chain. None can be affected without affecting others; the motion of one link propagates an influence to the end of the chain. None of us liveth unto himself. Solemn thought! Our very breathings may produce ripples upon the mighty lake of existence, which will spread in ever-widening circles to the very shores of eternity. There are mystic springs connecting us with the universe. Can we move without touching them? Can we give a touch that will not send its vibrations along the arches of the boundless future? The effects of a man's influence, either for good or evil, will be determined by his moral character. A bad man is a moral curse; the influence that streams from him will be moral poison. A good man, under God, is a blessing; his influence, like the living waters, will irrigate and beautify the mental districts through which it flows. 2. The immense difficulty of improving the moral condition of the race. There have been men in every age and land who have "striven even unto blood" to improve the race. Poets have depicted the charms of virtue, moralists have reasoned against wrong, martyrs have died for the right; and during the last eighteen centuries, throughout Christendom, the best men throughout all communions have struggled hard to bring the world's mind under the supreme reign of the true, the beautiful, and the good. But how miserable has been the result! Evil is everywhere the dominant force - dominant not merely in markets and governments, but even in Churches. Those of us who have lived longest in the world, looked deepest into its moral heart, and labored most zealously and persistently for its improvement, feel, like Sisyphus in ancient fable, struggling to roll a large stone to the top of a mountains which, as soon as we think some progress has been made, rolls back to its old position, and that with greater impetuosity. Scripture everywhere recognizes this difficulty, and speaks of the work as a "race," a "battle," a "crucifixion." I question whether the world is morally much better than it has ever been. 3. The absolute need of superhuman agency spiritually to redeem the race. Philosophy shows that a bad world cannot improve itself, cannot make itself good. Bad men can neither help themselves morally nor help others. If the world is to be improved, thoughts and influences from superhuman regions must be transfused into its heart. Moral goodness must come in a new form, and ply new agencies. Herein is the gospel: "When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." II. AS A GUILTY WORKER OF WRONG. Hoshea and his people were not only the inheritors of the corruptions of past generations, but they themselves became agents in propagating and perpetuating the wickedness. See what is said of Hoshea here. "The King of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea." This is only one specimen or development of this man's wickedness. See what is said of his people. "The children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh King of Egypt, and had feared other gods." So that while they were the inheritors of a corrupt past, they were at the same time guilty agents in a wicked present. Strong as is the influence of the past upon us, it is not strong enough to coerce us into wrong. Gracious Heaven has endowed every man with the power of thought and resolve sufficient, if he uses it, to rise above the influence of the past, and to mount into a new moral orbit of life. He has the power to stand on the firm rock of his own individuality, and to say to the swelling sea of depravity, as its waves are approaching him, "So far shall thou come, and no further." Because the father has been bad, there is no just reason why the child should be bad also. Because all the generations that have gone have been bad, there is no reason why this generation should be wicked. We are not like logs of wood on the surging seas of past wickedness, but rather like those snowy birds that can at pleasure mount from the billows, and quit them for the wide fields of air. III. AS A TERRIBLE VICTIM OF WRONG. What was the judicial outcome of all this wickedness? Retribution stern, rigorous, and crushing. "Then the King of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years." "This was the third and final expedition of Shalmaneser against the whole of Syria, and it seems to have been after the lapse of a year or two from his second expedition. What new offence had excited his wrath has not been recorded; but as a determined resistance was made by his refractory vassal, Shalmaneser prepared for a regular siege of Samaria, which, through the stubborn valor of the Israelites themselves, or with the aid of Egyptian troops, lasted for nearly three years. At length the city capitulated; or, if Josephus is correct, was taken by storm. But the glory of this conquest was not enjoyed By Shalmaneser, who had been suddenly recalled by the outbreak of a domestic revolution occasioned, or at least encouraged, by his protracted absences from his capital. He was dethroned by the insurrection of an ambitious subject, and he seems to have died also before the fall of Samaria" (Dr. Jameson). Thus the whole of the inhabitants, one and all, were carried away by tyrannic force. "From inscriptions in the palace at Khorasbad," says a modern expositor, "which record the number of Israelitish captives, it appears that 27,280 were transported into Assyria from Samaria and other parts of the kingdom of Israel. The removal of entire populations from vanquished countries to some other portion of the conqueror's dominions had not been adopted, so far as reliable history testifies, as the policy of any ancient sovereigns in the East until it was introduced and acted upon by the later Assyrian kings. Soldiers when taken captive in battle, women and children belonging to the conquered enemy, it had, indeed, for ages been the custom to carry into the land of the victor. And even numerous tribes of foreigners, resident within the territory, and reduced to a state of bondage, like the Israelites in Egypt, had frequently, by the arbitrary will of ancient kings, been dragged to different quarters of their kingdom to labor on the public works." Here is the temporal retribution, at any rate, of two hundred years of idolatry and wickedness. During this period Israel had sinned away its liberty, its property, its country. The ten tribes sinned themselves into slavery, destitution, and everlasting obscurity. For where are they? Two thousand years have rolled away since this terrible catastrophe, and none can tell us who they are or where they are. "Be sure your sins will find you out." Retribution may move silently and slowly, but ever with a resistless step. It follows the sins of a nation as well as of an individual. It was the crimes of the Israelites that ruined the kingdom, and made them the victims of this terrible catastrophe. So it ever is; the great dynasties and kingdoms of the past have met with the same fate by the same inexorable law of retribution. There are sins in our England that are working towards its ruin. The sins of a nation work, like the subterranean fires, underground. The nation may have arts lovely as the landscape, institutions apparently grand and firm as the old mountains. But whilst the people revel in their exuberance of resources, their natural beauties, and in the grandeur of their institutions, and that for ages, sin, like an ocean of fire underground, will one day break out in flames, that will destroy the whole, as in the case of the ten tribes. - D.T. Parallel Verses KJV: In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. |
    |