The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Kings — Section 359

What a picture of the hon·ors of war have we in 2 Kings viii. 12. Yet such horrorll must have been of common occm,:ence in Israel. And they culminated in the saok of Samaria and the captivity of the nation. 4. Loss of ter,·itory. Israel was "cut short" (2 Kings x. 82). In 2 Kings i. 1 (cf. iii. 5) Moab rebels. Syria, its great adversary, was once an appanage of Israel. Now Israel is made a dependency of Assyria (2 Kings xv. 19, 20). 5. Famine. It was the Lord called for this (2 Kings viii. 1). It was one of His " sore judgments " (Ezek. xiv. 13, 21). And it would seem to have been almost chronic in Israel (cf. chs. xvii. 1, 12; xviii. 2; 2 Kings iv. 38; vi. 25 sqq.; vii.; viii. 1). And the terrible straits to which the people were reduced thereby may be inferred from 2 Kings vi. 25, 29; cf. Deut. xxviii. 56, 57. 6. Captivity. For the carrying away beyond Babylon into the oities of the Medes was part of the reckoning for J erobon.m's sin, and for the allied sin of idolatry (eh. :xiv. 15; 2 Kings xvii. 22, 23). The "carrying into captivity"-these are familiar words on our lips. But which of us can form any conception of the untold, unspeakable miseries which they cover ? The gangs of prisoners tramping to Siberia give us but a faint idea. " Hermann and Dorothea" is a tale of modern times, and the :flight it pictures conveys no just impression of the horrors of a wholesale transportation. When the land was swept as with a drag net (cf. 2 Kings xxi. 18, and compare Herod. iii. 149, vi 81, where the manner in which the Persians carried away the population of some of the Greek islands is described), and the entire population marched in gangs across the burning plains, under brutal and lustful overseers-men in comparison with whom a " Legree'' would be mildness itself-we may imagine some of the horrors of that journey. Nor did those suffer- ings end in the land of their captivity. Before the people was absorbed amongst the neighbouring nations, and so effaced from the page of later history, we may be pretty sure they paid a constant tribute of suffering for their sin. V ae victis, this was the unvarying law of ancient warfare, and the exiles of Assyria proved it in their own persons. Two hundred and fifty years after the schism, the seed sown by Jeroboam was still reaped in cruelty and agony and blood. Ver. 2.-The Working of Jeroboam's Sin. The punishment which Jeroboam's sin brought down upon himself, his successors, and his people, was not its worst part. Its in:fiuences upon others, the lessons of disobedience and defiance taught by that malign example, were even more disastrous. Let us now trace, as far as we can, its workings; let us see how the leaven of the calves leavened the whole lump. 1. He begat a son in his own likeness. " The evil that men do lives after them" -it lives in their children; it is inwrought into their constitution. AB a rule, the child reproduces the character of the parent, the moral traits, quite as closely as the physical. There are exceptions-Abijah was one-but they help to prove the rule. He was the only exception in the house of Jeroboam (eh. xiv. 8). Fortes creantwr fortibus et bonis, and the converse is equally true. Nabab, and the other children of that house, not only practised the lessons the;ir had leo.rned in J ero- boam's school, but they reproduced in their own persons the self-will, the impo.- tience of control, and the other faults and vices of their father. What wonder if " N adab did evil in the sight of the Lord "? he only " walked," as the next words remind us, "in the way of hie father" (eh. xv. 26). 2. He begat a spirit of lawlessness and insubordination among his people. There are not a few indications of demoralization and oorruption in Israel, corre- sponding with the depravation of religion. The very revolutions, which followed one after another, are in themselves a proof of this. The chronic disaffection and the periodical upheavings of society in the northern kingdom, especially when oon- tra.sted with the quietness and security of Judah, co.n only be accounted for by the influences of the court. North and south were of one blood, and lived under one sky. It was because the form.er had been taught disobedience and disregard of constituted authority, it was because the sense of reverence and duty had been Weakened by the action of Jeroboam, that it became like a reed shaken in the water-so often rebelled against its sovereigns. Jeroboam had acoustomed them CB, XV, 21!-XVJ, 28,] THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS. 865