I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.

Israel’s last king was less evil than his predecessors, but he still did evil in God’s sight.  Important note: being less evil is not the same as doing good.  As we read through the account of each of the kings of Israel it would be easy to miss the extent of the people’s sin.   The writer makes that extent clear here in today’s passage.  They adopted the practices of the people whom God had driven out of the land and worshiped idols, setting up pagan shrines in all of their settlements.  I want to note that the writer makes a distinction between following the practices of other peoples and idolatry.  Yes, idolatry was practiced by the people to whom the writer refers, but by listing it as a separate sin from following their practices he makes it clear that they had other practices which were detestable to God.  As the writer summarizes the various forms of idolatry they practiced, he singles out sacrificing their own children as going above and beyond other forms of idolatry.

After the conquering Samaria and taking many of the people in the Northern Kingdom into exile, the King of Assyria settled peoples from other lands in that territory.  These peoples had problems with lions attacks, which led them to conclude that they did not know the proper customs for worshiping God.  I think this suggests that there were Israelites remaining in the land, but those who had been educated (in particular about God’s laws, but also everyone who had been educated) had been exiled.  How else would the new people in the land know there were different customs for worshiping God than what they knew?  In any case, once a priest was brought back from among those who had been taken into exile, these new immigrants began to worship the Lord.  But, they did not give up their worship of other gods, the gods they had worshiped in their homeland.  From what is written here it seems likely that the compiler of this book was a post-Exile Jew.  His understanding of the worship practices of those who were in the land when the Exiles returned certainly colored his understanding of what he wrote here from the stories he collected into this document.