2 Kings 17:19

THE DIVINE VERDICT OF JUDGMENT AGAINST JUDAH

"Also Judah kept not the commandments of Jehovah their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. And Jehovah rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight."

"And Jehovah rejected all the seed of Israel" (2 Kings 17:20). In these terse words the very same punishment was announced for Judah that had already fallen upon Israel. This was the dramatic terminal that signaled the end of God's further concern, either for Israel as a race, or as a temporal kingdom. Henceforth, God's total emphasis would rest upon that "righteous remnant," spoken of by Isaiah and Jeremiah. There would be no further Divine preference either for racial or national Israel. Some find it very hard to understand this, but the truth of it is undeniable.

In this dramatic shift of God's concern toward individual righteousness, it meant that racial or national preference, in any sense whatever, was no more. However, this was not a discrimination against Israel, for even after the Gentiles were admitted to God's favor in the times of Christ, no Jew was ever excluded, but every man of every race is received upon identically the same conditions. One of the mysteries of human behavior is the fact of the Jewish resentment of God's calling the Gentiles, because that had been God's intention from the days of Genesis 12:3. God stated his purpose there in calling Abraham was to bless all men, "all the families of men," not Jews only.