Joel M Bradshaw

23The members of the half-tribe of Manasseh lived in the land. They were very numerous from Bashan to Baal-hermon, Senir, and Mount Hermon. 24These were the heads of their fathers’ houses: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, and Jahdiel, mighty warriors, famous men, heads of their fathers’ houses. 

25But they broke faith with the God of their fathers, and whored after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, to this day.–1 Chronicles 5

1. Why did the Assyrian Empire come and conquer the northern tribes of Israel?
2. Why did the Assyrians also carry the north of Israel into exile?
3. The Bible here says that God first worked in those foreign leaders.
4. Just read verse 25 again. The northern tribes broke their covenant with God, and “whored after” pagan gods. What a terrible image.
5. So God sent the enemy army to destroy.
6. God stirred and decreed Assyria. God didn’t simply allow. Verse 26 is actually a big theological moment in our understanding of God.
7. It’s fair for each of us to ask how we break faith with God. What things of this earth do we long for and replace God with?–JMB