NOTES for Ki2 17:41
The double faith was the ordinary state of the Jewish people in the period before captivity. The mass religious consciousness, at the time of the Judges, almost immediately after the conquest of the land promised by God, and at the time of kings, quietly reconciled with the worship of the local heathen gods, whom they revered alongside with Yahweh. Certainly, they were considered lower than Him, but it did not change the bottom of things: the yahvism was transformed into paganism, the God of Abraham and Moses stopped being the Unique and only, He became the head of a large pantheon, like Zeus or Jupiter. And only at the time before captivity, when was formed the people-community, when the Judaism became an ethno-confessional community, when the paganism was definitively overcome.
But why the desire for paganism was so hardly? We could have of course tried to explain everything by the influence of the local customs and traditions. Such explanation could have been partially correct. But in particular only partially: because, the double faith persisted even when was already formed a yahviste religious tradition rather powerful.
As seen, the problem is not only in the heathen influences, as such. In fact, what is paganism? The religious need in man is indestructible. But it can be satisfied differently. As seen, it owes its origin to this natural capacity for man, capacity largely lost after the fall, to direct communion with God, without which man can exist normally neither spiritually, nor psychologically.
And now, when such a communion with God was if not impossible, at least, seriously hindered; man begins to look for himself palliatives. All right; But why not go back to a direct communion with God, especially that the God of Israel has never refused it to His people.
Yes, but such a communion with God obliges, obliges, at least the keeping of the commandments, and further what is more, with the development and the deepening of the relations. And the gods created by men, oblige not at all, they only create a psychological comfort. And in search for a comfortable religion for themselves, people leave communication with the One Who created the heavens and the earth, to communicate with anyone, as long as such communication, as they say today, «is not annoying ". And God - well, He too will find a place in the pantheon. Place of honor. So that everything is decent and not burdensome.