What Does 1 Chronicles 5:25 Mean?

(25, 26) The captivity of the three eastern tribes. A fuller account may be read in 2Kings 17:6-18. (25) **They transgressed against the God of their fathers.**—Rather, *were faithless* or *untrue* to Him (Joshua 7:1, “committed a trespass”). **Went a whoring after the gods of the people** (peoples).—Jehovah was the true Lord (*Ba’al*) and Husband (*Ish*) of Israel. Apostasy from Him is, in the prophetic language, whoredom. (See Hos. 1 Chronicles 1, 2, especially 2:16, and 1 Chronicles 3) According to Kings *50100* the fatal sin of Israel evinced itself: (1) in the worship of the high places; (2) in adoration of the heavenly bodies, and the productive powers of nature; (3) in the practice of magic and divination. **The people of the land, whom God had destroyed before them.**—Comp. Numbers 21:21-35, and Joshua 12:6; Psalm 135:10-12. The reduction of the Canaanites was, to the mind of the chronicler, a Divine work. He is not thinking only of such extraordinary events as were told of the battle of Beth-boron (Joshua 10:11-14). All the incidents of the conquest were the Lord’s doing, whether He acted through the agency of sun and moon, or storm and tempest, or the good swords of Joshua and his warriors. From the same standpoint, he ascribes the Assyrian invasions to a direct impulse from the God of Israel (1Chronicles 5:26). The Assyrian kings themselves were wont to regard their campaigns as a fulfilment of the bidding of their Divine protectors, Istar, Bel, and other imaginary beings. It was not given to them to attain to the higher vision of the Hebrew prophets and priests, who saw but one guiding and controlling power at the summit of the world. (Comp. Isaiah 10:5-15.)