2 Kings Chapter 17 – Don’t Misunderstand God’s Heart
2 Kings 17 truly was the end for the Israelites. Not only did God give up on them, He abandoned them to Assyria.
For three years, Assyria besieged Samaria. Then, the inevitable: “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” (2 Kgs 17:7)
An entire nation, captured.
How does this make us feel? Perhaps, we immediately pity the Israelites. They don’t deserve this. Isn’t God loving? Why didn’t God forgive them? Wouldn’t God never give up on us?
We may end up siding with the erring human, rather than the loving, righteous God who makes no mistake.
If we begin by remembering how the relationship between God and His people is like a marriage, it helps us see God’s aching heart amidst God’s faithfulness and Israel’s faithlessness.
This was how God’s relationship with His people began:
‘Thus says the Lord:
“I remember you,
The kindness of your youth,
The love of your betrothal,
When you went after Me in the wilderness,
In a land not sown.’ (Jer 2:2)
God brought Israel His betrothed out of Egypt, where they had suffered intolerably as slaves, and through the wilderness. God did so tenderly, for He “took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt” (Jer 31:32), like an eagle carrying them on its wings (Deut 32:11). God acknowledged that Israel had responded with love.
But as time passed, their hearts left Him, doing “wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger” (see 2 Kgs 17:7-12).
Israel’s unfaithfulness, then, must have been a massive stab to God’s heart.
But God’s sincere pursuit of the people who betrayed Him neither stopped here nor accelerated to abandonment.
During our study of Judges this year, we saw the Israelites’ centuries-long cycle of disobedience: they sin, are punished, plead to God. God’s compassion did not fail–He would deliver them. But they would return to sin again (Judg 2:18-19).
The Israelites’ obstinate, self-willed betrayal persisted. Yet God sent “all of His prophets, every seer” (2 Kgs 17:13) to beckon the people back to the true God and His holy standards.
Recall who some of these prophets are—Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea—and their earnest preaching to a stiff-necked people. (Amos 4 is a particularly striking chapter to me, for God laments, again and again, the heart-wrenching phrase: “Yet you have not returned to Me.”)
All these lead us to understand, then, that God’s punishments of His beloved are not brazen acts of cruelty, but His righteous justice. Through their centuries of disobedience, God’s love also spoke: He had called them back persistently to the true path of life. It was them, not God, who rejected holiness and their covenantal relationship.
“For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.” (Eph 5:29)
Even through fiery and formidable trials, even when God chastises us, let us not misunderstand God’s heart. God is not cruel or mean. Neither let us take for granted God’s lovingkindness upon us. Jesus Christ cherishes you and me. Can we hear His love speak?