“And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet.” (II Chronicles 35:17-18)
“And Jeroboam said in his heart…If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me. Whereupon the king…said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem:
- made two calves of gold, and said, behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt…
- the people went to worship unto Dan.
- And he made an house of high places,
- and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi…which he had devised of his own heart;
- and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.” (I Kings 12)
And God wasn’t having it.
“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, And rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in mine eyes; But hast done evil above all that were before thee: for thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back:
Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall [all males excepting only the youngest toddlers], and him that is shut up and left in Israel [geriatrics and invalids], and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone. Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat: for the LORD hath spoken it…
Moreover the LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: but what? [Prophet appears to be responding to screams of horror or denial from his audience] even now [Oh this WILL happen].
For the LORD shall…root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond “the river” [always means Euphrates, the eastern boundary of the promised land], because they have made their groves [nature places of worship], provoking the LORD to anger. And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.” (I Kings 14:7-16)
This did not happen the very next day.
“The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18)
However, God is true to his covenant with Israel.
“all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them.” (Deuteronomy 29)
“The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of [same time frame as Isaiah’s ministry in Judah] Jeroboam II the son of Joash, king of Israel…
- I will…cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel…
- I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel...
- [because] ye are not [by your choice] my people, and I will not be your [defined as transactional] God.” (Hosea 1)
“My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.” (Hosea 9)
“In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years…[then] carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” (II Kings 17:6)
The Irish experience in America gives some idea of the terrible famine conditions the Israelites experienced under siege, then the misery in being expelled to a strange land.
Irish immigration to America after 1846 was driven by the potato-blight famine. Ireland’s population was nearly halved during seven terrible years of famine onto which was added typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and cholera exploding in mass graves and invading the weakened bodies of the yet-living.
Approximately 1 million perished, another 2 million abandoned the land in the largest single population movement of the 19th century. Most of the refugees boarded cargo ships—some had been used in the past to transport slaves from Africa. Herded like livestock in dark, cramped quarters, the Irish passengers choked on fetid air, were showered by excrement and vomit, and lacked sufficient food and water. Nearly a quarter of the 85,000 passengers who sailed to North America in 1847 died en route.
Once they arrived in eastern seaboard cities like Boston and New York these desperate, destitute, unskilled and illiterate Catholics who didn’t speak English were as inimical to the Anglo-American-Protestants English descendants as the Americans were to them. ‘No Irish Need Apply’ was a familiar comment in job advertisements. They accepted the most menial jobs, forced to work long hours for minimal pay on the construction infrastructure projects for America’s expansion west.
Currently, of the 60 million displaced people worldwide, close to 40 percent originate from the Arab region, mainly Syria and Palestine…For the refugees, the crisis has resulted in a systematic decline in their rights, the quality of their lives, and in the educational standards and the future prospects of their children.
“And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee…the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, And shalt return unto [not the land! but] the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul;
That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee…And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers…
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” (Deuteronomy 30)
Kingdom Come 