Day 194 – Hoshea (Northern King 9 years) and the Exile

• A few days ago, as we started reading about Jonah, we read that it was during the reign of Jeroboam II. We’re now reading about Hoshea, so a quick look at the timeline of the kings of Israel will tell you that we have skipped over the details five other kings in the meantime. This reading plan isn’t a history lesson, so it’s OK that we skip certain bits, but you’re free to read up about the kings we skipped.
• Hoshea is the last king of the northern territory of Israel, and as 2 Kings 17 opens, they are in a sorry state. The bible explains that they are a “vassal” nation to Assyria, which means they had to pay them a huge sum of money for protection against attack.
• What major event, after the vassal payment didn’t happen, occurred during Hoshea’s reign which brought the kingdom of Israel to an end? The actual details of the event are quite brief, aren’t they?
• According to God, why did these events happen? The bulk of 2 Kings 17 is taken over to detailing the blessings and warnings that God had given to His people. Read through verses 7-23 carefully and think back to when you read about each of the events occurring.
• How many warnings did the Israelites have? Can you even count them? Was God’s punishment fair?
• When the Asryrians attacked and defeated Israel, the exile of the people began. That meant that they had to leave Israel and were taken to live in Assyria as slaves. Imagine the vast majority of people in a nation being exiled. How would they have felt? What would be the hardest things to deal with if something like that were to happen to you?
• What did the king of Assyria do with the land after the exile? Look at 2 Kings 17:24-41. Who did the people go to for help? Do you think they genuinely wanted to follow God or were they just doing whatever they thought they had to to make life easier?
• Do you think the people of Israel believed that God would cause these events to happen? Did they believe His words of warning? How is this similar to the way Jesus was treated, such as in the passage we read in John 8? Considering all the miracles of God to the Israelite nation, and the miracles of Jesus to the people around Him, why didn’t people believe?
• Don’t let the magnitude of today’s events pass you by. Israel is no more. They’re gone. Captured. Only Judah remains. Is this the end of Israel, or do you think God has further plans for His people?

Up for a quick history lesson?

You’ll have read about Samaria in today’s first chapter, and seen a connection with that and the passages from John’s gospel. Samaria was another name for the northern area, Israel, especially after the exile. In the New Testament, the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other, and had no dealings with each other. This, you might already know, was one of the powerful things about the parable of the Good Samaritan (which we’ll read another day). It also made Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 8 even more shocking to the Jews who would have heard about it.

If you want to know a little bit more about the history of the Samaritans, here’s a very brief overview.

We saw a little about how the Samaritan community was influenced today, with the introduction of the godless Assyrian people into their land. When they arrived, many of them intermarried with the Israelites who remained in the land (as not everyone was taken away, for various reasons). These new “Samaritans” worshipped their own gods to begin with, but later (in 2 Kings 17:26-28 of today’s passage) started to learn about the Hebrew God. They learned about God from the first five books – the ones written by Moses – but still retained many of their old, ungodly customs.

In the end, they started following a complex mixture of Judaism and false idolatry. Because the Israelites who had lived in Samaria had intermarried with the Assyrians who came in and adopted their idolatrous religion, Samaritans were generally considered as “half-Jews”, and were therefore often hated accordingly. This continued all the way through to the time of Jesus, some 750 years or so later.