In 2 Kings 17 we stand at the edge of Israel’s final chapter, watching a people carried away from their land and their homes, not by the hand of a foreign military alone, but by the slow drift of their own unfaithfulness. The story begins with Hoshea son of Elah, the last king of the northern realm, who comes to the throne in Samaria’s twelfth year of the Judean king Ahaz. Hoshea inherits a fragile kingdom, already reduced by his predecessors’ compromises and his own failure to honor the covenant. Rather than remaining loyal to Assyria’s demands, he forges an alliance with Egypt’s king So, refusing to pay the tribute that would have delivered Israel from siege. In doing so, Hoshea gambles on the strength of human agreements instead of trusting the Lord’s promises.
Shalmaneser king of Assyria responds swiftly. He marches against Samaria and hems the city in with siege works. For three long years the walls hold, but the famine deepens. We can imagine the desperation in Samaria’s streets: children pressed against their mother’s skirts, parents bargaining away their fields for a loaf of bread, the markets empty and echoing. When the walls finally fall, the Assyrians carry off the survivors and scatter them across distant provinces—Halah and Habor by the river of Gozan, the cities of the Medes—so that Samaria’s people will become strangers in exile. Their departure fulfills the very word that the Lord had spoken through Jonah son of Amittai, warning them of removal if they continued in disobedience.
With Israel’s removal, the land does not sit empty. The king of Assyria imports people from the cities of Cuthah, Hamath, Avva, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah, from the Men of Haran, from the Canaanite side of the Mediterranean, and from the Arabans. These newcomers settle in Samaria’s towns as tenants, bringing with them their gods, their customs, and their ways of worship. They offer sacrifices to their idols, and even erect altars to the Lord among them, yet their fear of Yahweh is only as deep as their fear of their native gods. The Lord sends lions among them, and the people, recognizing their error, build shrines to the God of Israel in Bethel and Dan, begging forgiveness for the blood spilled by ignoring His covenant.
But their half-hearted worship only exposes the depths of Israel’s failure. The appointed priests, many of whom had refused to go into exile, continue to serve at the high places, offering sacrifices at local shrines rather than at Jerusalem’s temple. They sprinkle the blood of bulls and goats on their own altars, as though the rituals alone could cover a nation’s guilt. Jeroboam’s golden calves still stand at Bethel and Dan, monuments to a rebellion that began under David’s son and festered under every king who followed. Even prophets arise in the land, crying “Thus says the Lord!” but their words, too, become hollow when no one listens.
Time and again, the chapter reminds us, God sent His prophets—Hosea, Amos, Micah, they hover at the edges of this lament—urging the people to return, to walk in His statutes and keep His Sabbaths. But Judah’s leaders neither heeded nor turned, and so the Lord preserved a remnant in Samaria no more. The land mourns for its tenants and for the people who once cultivated its fields in obedience. Its cities lie uninhabited for a time, waiting for those who will live not for themselves but for the One who gave them breath.
As we read this narrative, we can’t help but recognize our own fragile loyalty. How often do we make promises we do not keep? How readily we look to political alliances, to human resources, rather than to the mercy we once knew. When we build shrines in our hearts for the idols of comfort, success, or self-reliance, we mirror the Samaritans building altars but forgetting covenant. The lions that come are not always wild beasts; sometimes they are the pangs of guilt, the nightmares of regret, the realization that shallow faith will not save us from the consequences of our own turning.
Yet even in this chapter of exile, there flickers a reminder that God’s discipline is not the end of the story. His command to send lions implies both judgment and mercy—prophets still prophesy, shrined in the memory of what once was. The empty cities speak of loss but also of the space awaiting restoration. And the very remembrance of the covenant, tucked like a prayer among foreign whispers, hints that one day the exiled people would hear the familiar call to return, to rebuild, and to renew the relationship that made them a chosen people.
In 2 Kings 17, then, we find both a warning and a promise. We see how quickly a nation’s identity can unravel when it refuses to listen, how exile can follow compromise, and how the land itself bears the scars of broken covenants. Yet we also glimpse the echoes of grace: the prophets still raise their voices, a remnant still prays, and the empty fields still dream of sowing. For every Samaria emptied, God’s heart remains ready to refill the spaces we have forsaken, if only we will heed the call to turn back and trust Him with all our hearts.