2 Kings 10:32

GOD'S DISAPPROVAL OF NORTHERN ISRAEL

"In those days, Jehovah began to cut off from Israel; and Hazael smote them in all the borders of Israel; from the Jordan eastward, and all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from the Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan. Now the rest of the acts of Jehu, and all that he did, and all his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Jehu slept with his fathers; and they buried him in Samaria. And Jehoahaz his son reigned in his stead. And the time that Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty and eight years."

"Jehu's dynasty was military rather than religious, but in him Israel had her last chance. Bold as had been Jehu's repudiation of Baal worship, the great lack was that his reforms ended in the revival of the sins of Jeroboam."[22]

"Jehovah began to cut off from Israel" (2 Kings 10:32). This is a reference to God's cutting down the size of their kingdom. 2 Kings 10:33 explains what that "cutting off" was. It was the loss of all the Trans-jordanic kingdom of Israel, and also the cutting off of their dominion over Bashan in the land of Edom. The territory lost included that originally settled by the half tribe of Manasseh and by the tribes of Gad and Reuben (Joshua 22:1-9). With the continued worship of their idols at Dan and Bethel (and also Samaria), the total ruin of the Northern Israel became inevitable. Their doom, destruction and captivity, from which they would never return, loomed upon the horizon of the future; and in 722 B.C., the fall of Samaria signaled the end of the "the sinful kingdom."

It was the ambition of evil men, more than anything else, that perpetuated the calf worship at Dan and at Bethel. As Jeroboam I had wisely foreseen, the return of Northern Israel to the true sanctuary in Jerusalem would inevitably have restored the unity of all Israel; and that, of course, was absolutely incompatible with the ambition and greed of the kings of Northern Israel. Therefore, they maintained a wicked and sinful tradition that they certainly should have known to be totally contrary to God's will.