(Please read the passage above before reading the commentary.)
It was a sorrowful and horrendous time, the defeat and the deportation of the Israelites from their homeland. This would have violated the UN Charter if it had happened in today’s world. The total destruction of town and countryside was a usual result of defeat in war. Civilians, women, girls, and boys were routinely killed or carried off to other territories, with their heritage, customs and language destroyed.
It is somewhat the way the Russians seem to be treating Ukraine and its citizens. It is somewhat how we “won the West”, taking land from Mexico. It is how colonialism has worked in the Europeans settlements in the Americas. It is the way the United Nations has decided we should no longer use.
We do not go to war with people we like. We can only shoot at people if we have convinced ourselves that the enemy is totally evil with no redeeming characteristics. We have also named the enemy as a way of controlling them. So, we named the Japanese, “the Japs”, the Germans “Nazis”.
Our Congress shifts its power between Democrats and Republicans and each dominant party tries to undo the policies of the previous administration.
Why did the calamity of exile and deportation come upon the northern kingdom? Was it simply because the Israelites had failed to observe God’s law? Or was it the result of human greed and selfishness and all the malice humans have contrived against each other? If it is simply because of the reason given in the Bible, then perhaps we can forget about it because have not done all the things condemned by God. If it for other reasons, then we should be concerned because we have the same vices now that the people of old had.
Who, then, is our Shalmaneser and our Hoshea?