Commentari biblici

In the twelfth year - Compare 2 Kings 15:30 note. The history of the kingdom of Israel is in this chapter brought to a close.

Not as the kings of Israel that were before him - The repentance of a nation like that of an individual, may be "too late." God is long-suffering; but after national sins have reached a certain height, after admonitions and warnings have been repeatedly rejected, after lesser punishments have failed - judgment begins to fall. Forces have been set in motion, which nothing but a miracle could stop; and God does not see fit to work a miracle in such a case. Compare Butler, 'Analogy, ' Pt. 1 Chronicles 2 end.

Of Shalmaneser, the successor of Tiglath-pileser in the Assyrian Canon, we know little from Assyrian sources, since his records have been mutilated by his successors, the Sargonids, who were of a wholly different family. The archives of Tyre mention him as contemporary with, and warring against, a Tyrian king named Elulaeus. The expedition, referred to here, was probably in the first year of Shalmaneser (727 B.C.). Its main object was the reduction of Phoenicia, which had re-asserted its independence, but (except Tyre) was once more completely reduced. Shalmaneser probably passed on from Phoenicia into Galilee, where he attacked and took Beth-arbel (Arbela of Josephus, now Irbid), treating it with great severity Hosea 10:14, in order to alarm Hoshea, who immediately submitted, and became tributary (see the marginal rendering and 1 Kings 4:21 note). Shalmaneser then returned into Assyria.

So, king of Egypt, is generally identified with Shebek (730 B.C.), the Sabaco of Herodotus. Hoshea's application to him was a return to a policy which had been successful in the reign of Jeroboam I((1 Kings 12:20 note), but had not been resorted to by any other Israelite monarch. Egypt had for many years been weak, but Sabaco was a conqueror, who at the head of the swarthy hordes of Ethiopia had invaded Egypt and made himself master of the country. In the inscriptions of Shebek he boasts to have received tribute from "the king of Shara" (Syria), which is probably his mode of noticing Hoshea's application. References to the Egyptian proclivities of Hoshea are frequent in the prophet Hosea Hos 7:11; Hosea 11:1, Hosea 11:5; Hosea 12:4. King Hoshea, simultaneously with his reception as a vassal by Sabaco, ceased to pay tribute to Shalmaneser, thus openly rebelling, and provoking the chastisement which followed.

All the land - The second invasion of Shalmaneser (723 B.C., his fifth year), is here contrasted with the first, as extending to the whole country, whereas the first had afflicted only a part.

Three years - From the fourth to the sixth of Hezekiah, and from the seventh to the ninth of Heshea; two years, therefore, according to our reckoning, but three, according to that of the Hebrews. This was a long time for so small a place to resist the Assyrians but Samaria was favorably situated on a steep hill; probably Sabaco made some attempts to relieve his vassal; the war with Tyre must have distracted Shalmaneser; and there is reason to believe that before the capture was effected a revolt had broken out at Nineveh which must have claimed Shalmaneser's chief attention, though it did not induce him to abandon his enterprise.

The king of Assyria took Samaria - i. e., from the Assyrian inscriptions, not Shalmaneser but Sargon, who claims to have captured the city in the first year of his reign (721 B.C.). At first Sargon carried off from Samaria no more than 27,280 prisoners and was so far from depopulating the country that he assessed the tribute on the remaining inhabitants at the same rate as before the conquest. But later in his reign he effected the wholesale deportation here mentioned.

Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan - Rather, "on the Habor, the river of Gozan." Halah is the tract which Ptolemy calls Chalcitis, on the borders of Gauzanitis (Gozan) in the vicinity of the Chaboras, or Khabour (Habor, the great affluent of the Euphrates). In this region is a remarkable mound called Gla, which probably marks the site, and represents the name, of the city of Chalach, from where the district Chalcitis was so called.

In the cities of the Medes - Sargon relates that he overran Media, seized and "annexed to Assyria" a number of the towns, and also established in the country a set of fortified posts or colonies.

The reasons for which God suffered the Israelites to be deprived of their land and carried into captivity were:

1. their idolatries;

2. their rejection of the Law;

3. their disregard of the warning voices of prophets and seers.

Idolatry was worse in the Israelites than in other nations, since it argued not merely folly and a gross carnal spirit, but also black ingratitude Exodus 20:2-3. The writer subdivides the idolatries of the Israelites into two classes, pagan and native - those which they adopted from the nations whom they drove out, and those which their own kings imposed on them. Under the former head would come the great mass of the idolatrous usages described in 2 Kings 17:9-11, 2 Kings 17:17; "the high places" 2 Kings 17:9, 2 Kings 17:11; the "images" and "groves" 2 Kings 17:10; the causing of their children to "pass through the fire" 2 Kings 17:17; and the "worship of the host of heaven" 2 Kings 17:16 : under the latter would fall the principal points in 2 Kings 17:12, 2 Kings 17:16, 2 Kings 17:21.

Which they had made - "Which" refers to "statutes." The lsraelites had "walked in the statutes of the pagan, and in those of the kings of Israel, which (statutes) they (the kings) had made."