Prophets and Kings
by Ellen G. White
Chapter 23: The Assyrian Captivity
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Instead of turning away from those practices
which had brought weakness to the
kingdom, Israel continued in iniquity
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Pacific Press Publ. Assoc. |
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The closing years of the ill-fated kingdom of Israel were
marked with violence and bloodshed such as had never been witnessed even in the
worst periods of strife and unrest under the house of Ahab. For two centuries
and more the rulers of the ten tribes had been sowing the wind; now they were
reaping the whirlwind. King after king was assassinated to make way for others
ambitious to rule. "They have set up kings," the Lord declared of
these godless usurpers, "but not by Me: they have made princes, and I knew
it not." Hosea 8:4. Every principle of justice was set aside; those who
should have stood before the nations of earth as the depositaries of divine
grace, "dealt treacherously against the Lord" and with one another.
Hosea 5:7. {PK 279.1}
With the severest reproofs, God sought to arouse the
impenitent nation to a realization of its imminent danger of utter destruction.
Through Hosea and Amos He sent [280] the ten tribes message after
message, urging full and complete repentance, and threatening disaster as the
result of continued transgression. "Ye have plowed wickedness,"
declared Hosea, "ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies:
because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.
Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall
be spoiled. . . . In a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be
cut off." Hosea 10:13-15. {PK 279.2}
Of Ephraim the prophet testified, "Strangers have
devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and
there upon him, yet he knoweth not." [The prophet Hosea often referred to
Ephraim, a leader in apostasy among the tribes of Israel, as a symbol of the
apostate nation.] "Israel hath cast off the thing that is good."
"Broken in judgment," unable to discern the disastrous outcome of
their evil course, the ten tribes were soon to be "wanderers among the
nations." Hosea 7:9; 8:3; Hosea 5:11; 9:17. {PK 280.1}
Some of the leaders in Israel felt keenly their loss of
prestige and wished that this might be regained. But instead of turning away
from those practices which had brought weakness to the kingdom, they continued
in iniquity, flattering themselves that when occasion arose, they would attain
to the political power they desired by allying themselves with the heathen.
"When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim
to the Assyrian." "Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart:
they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria." "They do make a covenant
with the Assyrians." Hosea 5:13; 7:11; Hosea 12:1. [281] {PK 280.2}
Through the man of God that had appeared before the altar at
Bethel, through Elijah and Elisha, through Amos and Hosea, the Lord had
repeatedly set before the ten tribes the evils of disobedience. But
notwithstanding reproof and entreaty, Israel had sunk lower and still lower in
apostasy. "Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer," the Lord
declared; "My people are bent to backsliding from Me." Hosea 4:16;
11:7. {PK 281.1}
There were times when the judgments of Heaven fell very heavily
on the rebellious people. "I hewed them by the prophets," God
declared; "I have slain them by the words of My mouth: and thy judgments
are as the light that goeth forth. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and
the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But they like men have
transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against
Me." Hosea 6:5-7. {PK
281.2}
"Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of
Israel," was the message that finally came to them: "Seeing thou hast
forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. As they were
increased, so they sinned against Me: therefore will I change their glory into
shame. . . . I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their
doings." Hosea 4:1, 6-9. {PK 281.3}
The iniquity in Israel during the last half century before
the Assyrian captivity was like that of the days of Noah, and of every other
age when men have rejected God and have given themselves wholly to evil-doing.
The exaltation of nature above the God of nature, the worship of the creature
instead of the Creator, has always resulted in the grossest [282]
of evils. Thus when the people of Israel, in their worship of Baal and
Ashtoreth, paid supreme homage to the forces of nature, they severed their
connection with all that is uplifting and ennobling, and fell an easy prey to
temptation. With the defenses of the soul broken down, the misguided worshipers
had no barrier against sin and yielded themselves to the evil passions of the
human heart. {PK 281.4}
Against the marked oppression, the flagrant injustice, the
unwonted luxury and extravagance, the shameless feasting and drunkenness, the
gross licentiousness and debauchery, of their age, the prophets lifted their
voices; but in vain were their protests, in vain their denunciation of sin.
"Him that rebuketh in the gate," declared Amos, "they hate,
. . . and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly." "They
afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate
from their right." Amos 5:10, 12. {PK 282.1}
Such were some of the results that had followed the setting
up of two calves of gold by Jeroboam. The first departure from established
forms of worship had led to the introduction of grosser forms of idolatry,
until finally nearly all the inhabitants of the land had given themselves over
to the alluring practices of nature worship. Forgetting their Maker, Israel
"deeply corrupted themselves." Hosea 9:9. {PK 282.2}
The prophets continued to protest against these evils and to
plead for rightdoing. "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in
mercy," Hosea urged; "break up your fallow ground: for it is time to
seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you." "Turn
thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God
continually." [283] "O Israel, return unto the
Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity: . . . say unto
Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously." Hosea 10:12;
12:6; Hosea 14:1, 2. {PK
282.3}
The transgressors were given many opportunities to repent.
In their hour of deepest apostasy and greatest need, God's message to them was
one of forgiveness and hope. "O Israel," He declared, "thou hast
destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help. I will be thy King: where is any
other that may save thee?" Hosea 13:9, 10. {PK 283.1}
"Come, and let us return unto the Lord," the
prophet entreated; "for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath
smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us: in the third
day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight. Then shall we know, if
we follow on to know the Lord: His going forth is prepared as the morning; and
He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the
earth." Hosea 6:1-3. {PK
283.2}
To those who had lost sight of the plan of the ages for the
deliverance of sinners ensnared by the power of Satan, the Lord offered
restoration and peace. "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them
freely," He declared: "for Mine anger is turned away from him. I will
be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots
as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive
tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under His shadow shall return;
they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be
as the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I [284] to do
any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir
tree. From Me is thy fruit found.
"Who is wise, and he shall understand these things?
Prudent, and he shall know them?
For the ways of the Lord are right,
And the just shall walk in them:
But the transgressors shall fall therein."
Hosea 14:4-9. {PK 283.3}
The benefits of seeking God were strongly urged. "Seek
ye Me," the Lord invited, "and ye shall live: but seek not Bethel,
nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go
into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought." {PK 284.1}
"Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the
Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil,
and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord
God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph." Amos 5:4, 5,
14, 15. {PK 284.2}
By far the greater number of those who heard these
invitations refused to profit by them. So contrary to the evil desires of the
impenitent were the words of God's messengers, that the idolatrous priest at
Bethel sent to the ruler in Israel, saying, "Amos hath conspired against
thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his
words." Amos 7:10. {PK
284.3}
Through Hosea the Lord declared, "When I would have
healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness
of Samaria." "The pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do
not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this. " Hosea 7:1,
10. [285]
{PK 284.4}
From generation to generation the Lord had borne with His
wayward children, and even now, in the face of defiant rebellion, He still
longed to reveal Himself to them as willing to save. "O Ephraim," He
cried, "what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for
your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away."
Hosea 6:4. {PK 285.1}
The evils that had overspread the land had become incurable;
and upon Israel was pronounced the dread sentence: "Ephraim is joined to
idols: let him alone." "The days of visitation are come, the days of
recompense are come; Israel shall know it." Hosea 4:17; 9:7. {PK 285.2}
The ten tribes of Israel were now to reap the fruitage of
the apostasy that had taken form with the setting up of the strange altars at
Bethel and at Dan. God's message to them was: "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath
cast thee off; Mine anger is kindled against them: how long will it be ere they
attain to innocency? For from Israel was it also: the workman made it;
therefore it is not God: but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in
pieces." "The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves
of Beth-aven: for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests
thereof that rejoiced on it. . . . It shall be also carried unto
Assyria for a present to King Jareb" (Sennacherib). Hosea 8:5, 6; 10:5, 6.
{PK 285.3}
"Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful
kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saying that I
will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For, lo, I will
command, and I will sift the [286] house of Israel among all
nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall
upon the earth. All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, which say,
The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us." {PK 285.4}
"The houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses
shall have an end, saith the Lord." "The Lord God of hosts is He that
toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall
mourn." "Thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy
land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and
Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land." "Because I
will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." Amos 9:8-10;
3:15; Amos 9:5; 7:17; Amos 4:12. {PK 286.1}
For a season these predicted judgments were stayed, and
during the long reign of Jeroboam II the armies of Israel gained signal
victories; but this time of apparent prosperity wrought no change in the hearts
of the impenitent, and it was finally decreed, "Jeroboam shall die by the
sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land."
Amos 7:11. {PK 286.2}
The boldness of this utterance was lost on king and people,
so far had they gone in impenitence. Amaziah, a leader among the idolatrous
priests at Bethel, stirred by the plain words spoken by the prophet against the
nation and their king, said to Amos, "O thou seer, go, flee thee away into
the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not
again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's
court." Verses 12, 13. {PK
286.3}
To this the prophet firmly responded: "Thus saith the
Lord, . . . Israel shall surely go into captivity." Verse 17. [287]
{PK 286.4}
The words spoken against the apostate tribes were literally
fulfilled; yet the destruction of the kingdom came gradually. In judgment the
Lord remembered mercy, and at first, when "Pul the king of Assyria came
against the land," Menahem, then king of Israel, was not taken captive,
but was permitted to remain on the throne as a vassal of the Assyrian realm.
"Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be
with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. And Menahem exacted the money of
Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of
silver, to give to the king of Assyria." 2 Kings 15:19, 20. The Assyrians,
having humbled the ten tribes, returned for a season to their own land. {PK 287.1}
Menahem, far from repenting of the evil that had wrought
ruin in his kingdom, continued in "the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
who made Israel to sin." Pekahiah and Pekah, his successors, also
"did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord." Verses 18, 24,
28. "In the days of Pekah," who reigned twenty years,
Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, invaded Israel and carried away with him a
multitude of captives from among the tribes living in Galilee and east of the
Jordan. "The Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of
Manasseh," with others of the inhabitants of "Gilead, and Galilee,
all the land of Naphtali" (1 Chronicles 5:26; 2 Kings 15:29), were
scattered among the heathen in lands far removed from Palestine. {PK 287.2}
From this terrible blow the northern kingdom never
recovered. The feeble remnant continued the forms of government, though no
longer possessed of power. Only one more ruler, Hoshea, was to follow Pekah.
Soon the kingdom [288] was to be swept away forever.
But in that time of sorrow and distress God still remembered mercy, and gave
the people another opportunity to turn from idolatry. In the third year of
Hoshea's reign, good King Hezekiah began to rule in Judah and as speedily as
possible instituted important reforms in the temple service at Jerusalem. A
Passover celebration was arranged for, and to this feast were invited not only
the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, over which Hezekiah had been anointed king,
but all the northern tribes as well. A proclamation was sounded
"throughout all Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan, that they should come
to keep the Passover unto the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem: for they had not
done it of a long time in such sort as it was written. {PK 287.3}
"So the posts went with the letters from the king and
his princes throughout all Israel and Judah," with the pressing
invitation, "Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and He will return to the remnant of you, that are
escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. . . . Be ye not
stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and
enter into His sanctuary, which He hath sanctified forever: and serve the Lord
your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you. For if ye
turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion
before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this
land: for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away His
face from you; if ye return unto Him." 2 Chronicles 30:5-9. [291]
{PK 288.1}
"From city to city through the country of Ephraim and
Manasseh even unto Zebulun," the couriers sent out by Hezekiah carried the
message. Israel should have recognized in this invitation an appeal to repent
and turn to God. But the remnant of the ten tribes still dwelling within the
territory of the once-flourishing northern kingdom treated the royal messengers
from Judah with indifference and even with contempt. "They laughed them to
scorn, and mocked them." There were a few, however, who gladly responded.
"Divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came
to Jerusalem, . . . to keep the feast of unleavened bread."
Verses 10-13. {PK 291.1}
About two years later, Samaria was invested by the hosts of
Assyria under Shalmaneser; and in the siege that followed, multitudes perished
miserably of hunger and disease as well as by the sword. The city and nation
fell, and the broken remnant of the ten tribes were carried away captive and
scattered in the provinces of the Assyrian realm. {PK 291.2}
The destruction that befell the northern kingdom was a
direct judgment from Heaven. The Assyrians were merely the instruments that God
used to carry out His purpose. Through Isaiah, who began to prophesy shortly
before the fall of Samaria, the Lord referred to the Assyrian hosts as
"the rod of Mine anger." "The staff in their hand," He
said, "is Mine indignation." Isaiah 10:5. {PK 291.3}
Grievously had the children of Israel "sinned against
the Lord their God, . . . and wrought wicked things." "They
would not hear, but . . . rejected His statutes, and His covenant
that He made with their fathers, and His [292]
testimonies which He testified against them." It was because they had
"left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten
images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshiped all the host of
heaven, and served Baal," and refused steadfastly to repent, that the Lord
"afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until He
had cast them out of His sight," in harmony with the plain warnings He had
sent them "by all His servants the prophets." {PK 291.4}
"So was Israel carried away out of their own land to
Assyria," "because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God,
but transgressed His covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the Lord
commanded." 2 Kings 17:7, 11, 14-16, 20, 23; 18:12. {PK 292.1}
In the terrible judgments brought upon the ten tribes the
Lord had a wise and merciful purpose. That which He could no longer do through
them in the land of their fathers He would seek to accomplish by scattering
them among the heathen. His plan for the salvation of all who should choose to
avail themselves of pardon through the Saviour of the human race must yet be
fulfilled; and in the afflictions brought upon Israel, He was preparing the way
for His glory to be revealed to the nations of earth. Not all who were carried
captive were impenitent. Among them were some who had remained true to God, and
others who had humbled themselves before Him. Through these, "the sons of
the living God" (Hosea 1:10), He would bring multitudes in the Assyrian
realm to a knowledge of the attributes of His character and the beneficence of
His law. {PK 292.2}
Click here to read the next chapter:
"Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge"
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