Idolatry brought sin, and sin brought bad
passions, hatred, division, weakness, ruin.
The first beginning was, the breaking up of the nation into two;--
the kingdom of Judah to the south, the kingdom of Israel to the
north. And with that division came envy, spite, quarrels; wars
between Israel and Judah, which were but madness. For what could
come of those two brother-nations fighting against each other, but
that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so fall a prey to some
third nation stronger than them both? The ruin of the kingdom of
Israel, of which the text tells us, arose out of some unnatural
quarrel of this kind. Pekah, the king of Israel, had made friends
with the heathen king of Syria, and got him to join in making war on
Judah: and a fearful war it was; for the Israelites, according to
one account, killed in that war a hundred and twenty thousand of the
Jews, men of their own blood and language, all Abraham's descendants
as well as they. On which, Ahaz, king of Judah, not to be behind-
hand in folly, sent to the heathen king of Assyria to help him, just
as the king of Israel had sent to the king of Damascus. He had
better have been dead than to have done that. For those terrible
Assyrians, who had set their hearts on conquering the whole east,
were standing by, watching all the little kingdoms round tearing
themselves to pieces by foolish wars, till they were utterly weak,
and the time was ripe for the Assyrians to pounce upon them.
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