Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Thursday, December 6, 2012 Read - 2 Kings 17 & 18 The immanent doom of the Northern Kingdom has been known for some time. Chapter 17 tells of the final end. When we left that part of the story in chapter 15, Hoshea had killed Pekah and become king. At first Hoshea tries to maintain his kingdom by becoming a vassal of the king of Assyria, much like Ahaz had done in the South. But eventually Hoshea makes the fatal mistake of reaching out to Egypt in an attempt to free himself of the tyranny of Assyria. This was the final cog in the wheel that led the Assyrians to invade the Northern Kingdom and besiege Samaria. It took three years for Samaria to fall. One can only imagine how awful those years must have been. Eventually people run out of food and water. The weak are literally eaten by the stronger. It is not a pleasant story. The narrator provides his evaluation of why this all happened. Essentially it was because the people and their kings had been disobedient to the LORD. They had worshipped other gods. And in the end their disobedience and idolatry caught up with them. God had warned them but they had not listened. God had sent his prophets but to no avail. With the fall of Samaria, the Assyrians disbursed the people throughout the rest of their empire and replaced them with Assyrian settlers. This story differs from the story we will hear about the fall of the Southern Kingdom where the Babylonians will take many of the people into exile as a group – from which they can and will return. It is likely that some of the people from the Northern Kingdom did reunite with the people of the south over time, but the kingdom itself was destroyed never to rise again. Chapter 17 tells the interesting story of how the Assyrians had to find some former priests from the North to return to the land to teach the Assyrian settlers how to live there. It is out of this mixture of Assyrians and Israelites that the Samaritans we hear about in the New Testament emerge. They were a mixture of Assyrian and Israelite blood. As a consequence they were despised by the people of Judah. The Samaritans, however, were welcomed by Jesus and thus welcomed into the Christian community. God works in strange and wonderful ways! Chapter 18 turns the story back to the Southern Kingdom. Hezekiah has succeeded his father Ahaz. Unlike his father, Hezekiah is a good king – one of the best kings of Judah. If we were to rank the kings from best to worst Hezekiah would rank up there with David and Josiah. He was in the top three. It was during Hezekiah’s reign that Assyria defeated the Northern Kingdom. Having destroyed that kingdom it appeared that the Assyrians would move on south and destroy Judah as well. In fact the story tells of the defeat of several Southern cities and the impending end of Jerusalem.