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Prophets and Kings
The boldness of this utterance was lost on king and people, so far
had they gone in impenitence. Amaziah, a leader among the idolatrous
priests at Bethel, stirred by the plain words spoken by the prophet
against the nation and their king, said to Amos, “O thou seer, go, flee
thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy
there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king’s
chapel, and it is the king’s court.”
Verses 12, 13
.
To this the prophet firmly responded: “Thus saith the Lord, ...
Israel shall surely go into captivity.”
Verse 17
.
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The words spoken against the apostate tribes were literally fulfilled;
yet the destruction of the kingdom came gradually. In judgment the
Lord remembered mercy, and at first, when “Pul the king of Assyria
came against the land,” Menahem, then king of Israel, was not taken
captive, but was permitted to remain on the throne as a vassal of the
Assyrian realm. “Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that
his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. And
Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men
of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of
Assyria.”
2 Kings 15:19, 20
. The Assyrians, having humbled the ten
tribes, returned for a season to their own land.
Menahem, far from repenting of the evil that had wrought ruin in
his kingdom, continued in “the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
who made Israel to sin.” Pekahiah and Pekah, his successors, also “did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
Verses 18, 24, 28
. “In
the days of Pekah,” who reigned twenty years, Tiglath-pileser, king
of Assyria, invaded Israel and carried away with him a multitude of
captives from among the tribes living in Galilee and east of the Jordan.
“The Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh,”
with others of the inhabitants of “Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of
Naphtali” (
1 Chronicles 5:26
;
2 Kings 15:29
), were scattered among
the heathen in lands far removed from Palestine.
From this terrible blow the northern kingdom never recovered. The
feeble remnant continued the forms of government, though no longer
possessed of power. Only one more ruler, Hoshea, was to follow
Pekah. Soon the kingdom was to be swept away forever. But in that
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time of sorrow and distress God still remembered mercy, and gave the
people another opportunity to turn from idolatry. In the third year of
Hoshea’s reign, good King Hezekiah began to rule in Judah and as