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Prophets and Kings
that God used to carry out His purpose. Through Isaiah, who began to
prophesy shortly before the fall of Samaria, the Lord referred to the
Assyrian hosts as “the rod of Mine anger.” “The staff in their hand,”
He said, “is Mine indignation.”
Isaiah 10:5
.
Grievously had the children of Israel “sinned against the Lord
their God, ... and wrought wicked things.” “They would not hear, but
... rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He made with their
fathers, and His testimonies which He testified against them.” It was
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because they had “left all the commandments of the Lord their God,
and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove,
and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal,” and refused
steadfastly to repent, that the Lord “afflicted them, and delivered them
into the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight,” in
harmony with the plain warnings He had sent them “by all His servants
the prophets.”
“So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria,” “be-
cause they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed
His covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded.”
2 Kings 17:7, 11, 14-16, 20, 23
;
18:12
.
In the terrible judgments brought upon the ten tribes the Lord
had a wise and merciful purpose. That which He could no longer do
through them in the land of their fathers He would seek to accomplish
by scattering them among the heathen. His plan for the salvation of all
who should choose to avail themselves of pardon through the Saviour
of the human race must yet be fulfilled; and in the afflictions brought
upon Israel, He was preparing the way for His glory to be revealed to
the nations of earth. Not all who were carried captive were impenitent.
Among them were some who had remained true to God, and others
who had humbled themselves before Him. Through these, “the sons
of the living God” (
Hosea 1:10
), He would bring multitudes in the
Assyrian realm to a knowledge of the attributes of His character and
the beneficence of His law.
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