The last days of Jerusalem and Judah were hard times. When a nation, a people, begin to lose their identity—their sense of who they are and where they are going—when a nation becomes morally bankrupt, indolent, self-indulgent—sooner or later, the nations around then sense the weakness and begin to gather.

Israel had a good leader in King Josiah, and leadership makes an enormous difference among the people, but things didn’t change much at the grass roots. They had just gone too far down the slippery slope to oblivion. And after the death of Josiah, when Israel could no longer effectively govern herself, God turned her over to the nations to govern.

Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against him. And the Lord sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servants the prophets.

Almost any kingdom will get a little tired and old in 300 years. The House of Israel only made it a little more than 250 years. And Israel must have been worn out by the end of the long reign of King Manasseh. No one did more to corrupt the worship of God than did Manasseh in his day.

The strange thing about all this was that it was not so much ordinary sin that destroyed Israel, it was idolatry. And the idolatry was not merely a pattern of setting up idols and bowing down to them. The idolatry involved destroying the lives of their own children, both in sacrifice and in temple prostitution. What makes idolatry different from other sins is that it destroys the way back to God for the repentant sinner. By the time King Manasseh died, some 330 years after the death of Solomon, the worship of Jehovah was on the rocks in Judah.

And Manasseh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza: and Amon his son reigned in his stead. Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh did. And he walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols that his father served, and worshipped them: And he forsook the Lord God of his fathers, and walked not in the way of the Lord. And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the king in his own house. And the people of the land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

It was a bloody and violent time. Amon was so vile that even his own servants conspired to assassinate him. But then, the people took a hand. They dealt with the assassins and put the 8-year-old son of Amon on the throne.

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

There are some strange things about the way God works that I am not sure I understand. I know what he does, it just isn’t always clear why he does it the way he does. Take Sennacherib, king of Assyria, as a case in point. Isaiah, in his prophecy, acknowledges the truth of something Sennacherib said. He was a rod in God’s hand to chastise Israel. But the lesson that creeps out from this is that if God ever gives you a job to do, it is not a good idea to get on your high horse as you do it.

When the King of Assyria besieged Jerusalem, he said quite frankly that God had sent him down there. I’m not sure he had any reason to think that. It may have been no more than a ploy on his part. But whatever the case, he went way over the line, as Isaiah will say in his prophecy. He wrote what I would call a smart-alec letter to Hezekiah that insulted God, and Hezekiah had the presence of mind to take that letter into the house of God and lay it out before him. He prayed a very short prayer. He acknowledged the greatness of God. He made only one request.

Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech you, save us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are the Lord God, even you only. Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, That which you have prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.

God seems to have rarely communicated directly with any of his kings. He sent word through a prophet. And note his answer to Hezekiah’s request. Not because of the words of the king of Assyria that reproached God, but because you have prayed to me against the King of Assyria, I have heard. This implies that if the Hezekiah had not prayed, history would have been written differently. The king’s prayer was short—shorter than the response—but it was sincere…and it worked.

The Middle East is a very curious place, but I hardly need to tell you that. For instance, everyone learns the parable of the Good Samaritan in church, and they learn that the Samaritans were pariahs to the Jews. I wonder, though, how many people know that the Samaritans are still there. Fewer still will know the story of how the Samaritans came to be.

The Assyrians carried all of northern Israel captive into lands beyond the Euphrates, and lest the land go to waste—just lie there and grow thorns—they imported people from other parts of their empire to settle there. After they arrived, though, they had a serious problem with wild animals, and assumed that it was because they didn’t know the God of the land. So the king of Assyria sent back a priest to teach them the right way. Presumably, this priest brought a copy of the Torah with him, because the Samaritans copied it and made it their own.

There is a document called the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is a Hebrew copy of the first five books of the Old Testament, but the script differs markedly from the later Hebrew. Some presume it is an older, pre-exilic style of letters. There are also some differences between what the text says and the Masoretic text—the latter being the text used in nearly all English versions of the Bible. What is fascinating about it is that, in many places where they differ, the Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan text. They both, along with some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, come from an earlier manuscript tradition. Nevertheless, the Samaritans weren’t immune from the same sort of corruption that had afflicted Israel.

So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from there.

Reading through the stories of the last kings of the house of Israel, I always get a feeling of ineffable sadness. That nation had been served by two of the greatest prophets who ever lived—Elijah, the archetype of all prophets, and Elisha, who had a double portion of the spirit of Elijah. There were only two more significant prophets during the entire history of the house of Israel. The first was Amos, who wrote during the last years of Jeroboam II. Then came Hosea, who wrote as the age of violence descended upon Israel. But after Hosea, God seems to have written Israel off. And I guess you have to expect that. There comes a point in time—when prophets are sent to them…and ignored, when they drop deeper into sex and violence—that they are judged as simply being beyond redemption. There is no significant prophet who speaks during the last 40 years of the kingdom.

In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and captured Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria. And Hoshea the son of Elah led a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and struck him down, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.

A good-sized part of the kingdom was just gone, and four of their last five kings were assassinated by their successors. For the Kingdom of Israel, the decay is well set in, and the patience of God grows short.

It was now 126 years after the death of Solomon and the division of the Kingdom of Israel into two houses—the House of Israel and the House of Judah. A man named Amaziah came to the throne to rule for 29 years. To give you a feeling for the passage of time, if you count forward from the Declaration Independence—a similar sort of division—that 126 years would bring you to 1902. The comparable time period would be from 1902 to 1931. In Ussher’s chronology, this was 849 BC.

And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David his father: he did according to all things as Joash his father did.

Note, he doesn’t hearken back to Solomon to look for an example, but to David. Now, we all know what a rounder David was at times, and a bloody man. So what does it mean when we look back to David as a kind of archetype? Well, the key element with David is that, while he did sin and was chastised for it, David never allowed idolatry to flourish and never served any other God. Thus, when David went astray—when he sinned—the way back to God, to forgiveness and restoration, was always open.

That wasn’t the case for many of David’s successors. What the Bible calls the high places had been important centers of the Canaanite religion, but had mostly been destroyed as Israel entered the land. Many later kings, however, worshipped among the high places—or least tolerated them. And this was more than burning a little incense. It was the involvement with male and female prostitutes in these sites—sometimes children. You have to know this in order to understand the fury that God directs against their continued existence.

However the high places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.

It is a sobering thought to consider that the Kingdom of Israel was once ruled by a woman—but not a very good woman. To secure her throne, she had all the royal children murdered. But a priest, Jehoiada, hid one of the boys, and thereby hangs a story. Athaliah, the queen, ruled for six years until the boy Jehoash was seven. Then the priest and the army conspired to dispose of her and place the young Jehoash on the throne. It was a good choice. The idealism of youth served Israel well for many years. The story is told in 2 Kings, chapter 11.

And Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people, that they should be the Lord’S people; between the king also and the people.

Mind you, they are not going to be the people of Baal. They are not going to the people of no god or a nameless, generic god. They are Jehovah’s people. It turns out it was none too soon, because the worship of Baal was gaining a foothold in Judah.

And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and broke it down; its altars and its images broke they in pieces thoroughly, and slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. And the priest appointed officers over the house of the Lord. And he took the rulers over hundreds, and the captains, and the guard, and all the people of the land; and they brought down the king from the house of the Lord, and came by the way of the gate of the guard to the king’s house. And he sat on the throne of the kings. And all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet: because they slew Athaliah with the sword at the king’s house.Seven years old was Jehoash when he began to reign.