They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.
Though the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes was but briefly related, it is in these verses largely commented upon by our historian, and the reasons of it assigned, not taken from the second causes - the weakness of Israel, their impolitic management, and the strength and growing greatness of the Assyrian monarch (these things are overlooked) - but only from the First Cause. Observe, 1.
Commenting on 2 Kings 17:7-23
And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God,.... Which their idolatry led them to; and indeed he that offends in one point is guilty of them all, Jam 2:10. and made them molten images, even two calves; which they set up at Dan and Bethel, in the times of their first king Jeroboam, Kg1 13:28.
SAMARIA TAKEN, AND ISRAEL FOR THEIR SINS CARRIED CAPTIVE. (2Ki. 17:7-41) For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned--There is here given a very full and impressive vindication of the divine procedure in punishing His highly privileged, but rebellious and apostate, people.
Commenting on 2 Kings 17:7-41