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 17:13
Yet the Lord testified against Israel - What rendered their conduct the more inexcusable was, that the Lord had preserved among them a succession of prophets, who testified against their conduct, and preached repentance to them, and the readiness of God to forgive, provided they would return unto him, and give up their idolatries.
John Gill on 2 Kings 17:13
Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers,.... Against their sins, reproving them for them, dehorting them from them, exhorting them to repent and leave them; as in all preceding reigns, by Ahijah the Shilonite, by Elijah and Elisha, by Hosea, Amos, and Micah, and others:
saying, turn ye from your ways; repent of them, and reform from them, worship of the calves particularly:
and keep my commandments, and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers; which was given them and enjoined them at Mount Sinai:
and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets; by whom he put them in mind of them, explained them,…
