fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. 15. And they
rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He made with their
fathers, and His testimonies which He testified against them; and they
followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were
round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they
should not do like them. 16. And they left all the commandments of the
Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made
a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 17.
And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the
fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do
evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. 18. Therefore
the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His
sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.'--2 KINGS
xvii. 6-18.


The brevity of the account of the fall of Samaria in verse 6 contrasts
with the long enumeration of the sins which caused it, in the rest of
this passage. Modern critics assume that verses 7-23 are 'an
interpolation by the Deuteronomic writer,' apparently for no reason
but because they trace Israel's fall to its cause in idolatry. But
surely the bare notice in verse 6, immediately followed by verse 24,
cannot have been all that the original historian had to say about so
tragic an end of so large a part of the people of God. The whole
purpose of the Old Testament history is not to chronicle events, but
to declare God's dealings, and the fall of a kingdom was of little
moment, except as revealing the righteousness of God.

The main part of this passage, then, is the exposition of the causes
of the national ruin. It is a _post mortem_ inquiry into the