NOTES for Ki2 17:1-41
The kings and many inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel brought upon themselves what happened to it through their own deeds. The result: the kingdom was defeated and destroyed, the people were deported to distant provinces, and inhabitants of other lands were resettled in their place.
In his detailed analysis of the tragedy, the biblical narrator continually emphasizes that unfaithfulness to the Lord was the cause of everything. Yet the Lord repeatedly stood up even for an unfaithful people; but time after time, once the threat had passed, the people turned away from Him until thunder struck once more, and then the cycle began again.
Did not the same thing that happened to the Old Testament people continue and repeat itself in every subsequent age, including our own? Today we see the same temptations and the same attempts to combine faith with “interesting” occult beliefs and attachment to sins that seem indispensable. Today, too, the Lord continues to love us even as we are, constantly turning away from Him, and He continues to remain beside us. But how often we go so far from Him that we come to our senses only at the edge of the precipice...