2 Kings 17:16

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, James 2:10 and made them molten images,

And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. No JFB commentary on these verses.

They left all the commandments of the Lord; they grew worse and worse; from a partial disobedience to some of God’ s laws, they fell by degrees to a total apostacy from all of them. The host of heaven; the stars, as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, &c. See .

2 Kings 17:16 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.Ver. 16. And they left all the commandments of God.] So they will soon do, who take liberty to leave any; for the whole law is but one copulative, as the schools speak. All the host of heaven.] So the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars are called, for their (1.) number; (2.) order; (3.) obedience.

(16) Molten images.—1 Kings 12:28. Literally, a casting.A grove.—An Asherah (1 Kings 14:23; 1 Kings 16:33). Schlottmann writes: “That Ashera was only another name for the same supreme goddess (i.e., Ashtoreth) is at once shown by the parallelism of ‘Baal and Ashtaroth’ (Judges 2:13) with ‘Baal and Asherim’ (the plural of Ashera) in Judges 3:7. In quite the same way Baal and Ashera stand side by side in Judges 6:28, 2 Kings 23:4; and in 1 Kings 18:19 the 450 prophets of the Baal and the 400 of the Ashera. further, in 2 Chronicles 15:16; 2 Chronicles 24:18, the LXX. render Ashera by Astarte; and in other passages Aquila, Symmachus, and the Peshito do the same thing.” He then refers to 1 Kings 14:23 and Isaiah 17:8; Isaiah 27:9, and continues: “according to these and many other passages, Ashera was used as the designation of the commonest material representation of the goddess. It consisted of a block of wood, of considerable size (Judges 6:26), and resembling a tree, as is shown by the expressions used in connection with it, such as ‘setting up,’ ‘planting,’ and ‘cutting down’ (2 Kings 17:10; Deuteronomy 16:21; Judges 6:28; 2 Kings 18:4, &c). In Isaiah 27:9 the LXX. actually renders tree; ‘and so the Peshito in Deut. vi 21, Micah 5:13. Hence, we must not think of pillars like the Greek Hermae, but of a real trunk planted in the ground, rootless, but not branchless; for which purpose pines and evergreens were preferred. The tree signifies, according to an ancient and widespread conception, nature, or the world, which in this case stands as goddess at the side of the Baal——the lord of the world. (Comp. the Norse tree, Yggdrasil, and the Assyrian sacred tree.) Hence, the Ashera was set up by the altar of Baal (Judges 6:28). (Comp. Deuteronomy 16:21.)” Schlottmann adds that Movers is wrong in making Astarte and Ashera two different goddesses, the former being “the stern, cruel virgin,” the latter, “the goddess who excites to pleasure;” and he justly observes that, as in the case of Baal, the same deity may be conceived under contrary aspects (Riehm’s Handworterbuch Bibl. Alterthums, pp. Ill—114). For the Hebrew conception of Astarte see Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 44:17 seq. Kuenen, Rel. of Isr. i. 88 seq., agrees with Movers, but hardly proves his case. Worshipped all the host of heaven.—2 Kings 21:3; comp. 2 Kings 23:4.

16. And they left [R.V. forsook] all the commandments] The R.V. adopts the most usual rendering of the verb, which is stronger in such a combination than ‘left’. It is noteworthy that the sin of the calves is connected with the casting away of all the divine law. As soon as any other object is set up instead of God, all that He values has perished from man’s worship. a grove] R.V. an Asherah. See above on verse 10. and worshipped all the host of heaven] On the temptation to this worship of the heavenly bodies, and its prohibition, cf. Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 17:3. See also what is said of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s reformations. That God’s people did fall into this sin we know from Jeremiah 8:2; Jeremiah 19:13; Zephaniah 1:5. Most likely it was introduced through the communications of Ahaz with Assyria.

In 2 Kings 17:10 there is a reference to the old high-place worship, which was professedly a worship of Yahweh, but with unauthorized rites and emblems; here the reference is to Ahab’s setting up a

16. Two calves — See at 1 Kings 12:28. Grove — See note on 1 Kings 14:15.