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

We are told that Hoshea, the last king of Israel, did evil in the sight of the Lord, but was not as bad as his predecessors.  Nevertheless, the sins of the people of Israel had reached the point where God had had enough and He sent them into exile.  The writer suggests that the sins of the people of Israel were worse than any were aware of until after the fact.  He writes that they secretly against the Lord that were not right.  This suggests to me that the people of Israel were not aware of how prevalent the sins they themselves were committing were among their countrymen.

The writer lists out the reasons that God sent the nation of Israel into exile.  He tells us that they worshiped idols and rejected God’s decrees.  They made idols for themselves and set up an Asherah pole.  They bowed down to the starry host and worshipped Baal.  They sacrificed their sons and daughters.  They imitated the nations around them.  All of this strikes me as a warning we should take to heart today.  I think the line which should be our greatest warning is the one I used to title today’s blog: “They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”  All human beings have value, but that value derives from our being made in the image of God.  If we stop trying to reflect his image and instead reflect the image of an idol, we will become worthless.

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