Matthew Henry on 2 Kings 17:7-23
Though the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes was but briefly related, it is in these verses largely commented upon by our historian, and the reasons of it assigned, not taken from the second causes - the weakness of Israel, their impolitic management, and the strength and growing greatness of the Assyrian monarch (these things are overlooked) - but only from the First Cause. Observe, 1. It was the Lord that removed Israel out of his sight; whoever were the instruments, he was the author of this calamity. It was destruction from the Almighty; the Assyrian was but the rod of his anger, Isa 10:5. It was the Lord that rejected the seed of Israel, else their enemies could not have seiz…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Kings 17:7
SAMARIA TAKEN, AND ISRAEL FOR THEIR SINS CARRIED CAPTIVE. (2Ki. 17:7-41)
For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned--There is here given a very full and impressive vindication of the divine procedure in punishing His highly privileged, but rebellious and apostate, people. No wonder that amid so gross a perversion of the worship of the true God, and the national propensity to do reverence to idols, the divine patience was exhausted; and that the God whom they had forsaken permitted them to go into captivity, that they might learn the difference between His service and that of their despotic conquerors.
Adam Clarke on 2 Kings 17:10
Images and groves - Images of different idols, and places for the abominable rites of Ashtaroth or Venus.
John Gill on 2 Kings 17:12
For they served idols,.... Baalim, as the Targum; dunghill gods, as the word signifies, as they are often called in Scripture; and Sterculius was one of the names of Saturn, an Heathen deity, which he had, as is supposed, by his finding out the method of making land fruitful with dung (i):
whereof the Lord said unto them, ye shall not do this thing; see Exodus 20:3.
(i) Vid. Macrob. l. 1. c. 7. Lactant. de fals. Relig. l. 1. c. 20.
