Study Desk

He did a very disgusting thing in going after false gods, doing all the things the Amorites did, whom the Lord sent out before the children of Israel.)

And turning back, he saw them, and put a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the wood and put forty-two of the children to death.

Now a certain woman, the wife of one of the sons of the prophets, came crying to Elisha and said, Your servant my husband is dead; and to your knowledge he was a worshipper of the Lord; but now, the creditor has come to take my two children as servants in payment of his debt.

And Hazael said, Why is my lord weeping? Then he said in answer, Because I see the evil which you will do to the children of Israel: burning down their strong towns, putting their young men to death with the sword, smashing their little ones against the stones, and cutting open the women who are with child.

When he came across the brothers of Ahaziah, king of Judah, and said, Who are you? And they said, We are the brothers of Ahaziah, king of Judah; we are going down to see the children of the king and of the queen.

(And the Lord gave Israel a saviour, so that they became free from the hands of the Aramaeans; and the children of Israel were living in their tents as in the past.

But he did not put their children to death; for the orders of the Lord recorded in the book of the law of Moses say, The fathers are not to be put to death for the children, or the children for their fathers; but a man is to be put to death for the sin which he himself has done.

But he went in the ways of the kings of Israel, and even made his son go through the fire, copying the disgusting ways of the nations whom the Lord had sent out of the land before the children of Israel.

Living by the rules of the nations whom the Lord had sent out from before the children of Israel.

And the children of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things which were not right, building high places for themselves in all their towns, from the tower of the watchmen to the walled town.

And the children of Israel went on with all the sins which Jeroboam did; they did not keep themselves from them;

Then the king of Assyria took men from Babylon and from Cuthah and Avva and Hamath and Sepharvaim, and put them in the towns of Samaria in place of the children of Israel; so they got Samaria for their heritage, living in its towns.

The Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites gave their children to be burned in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

So to this day they go on in their old ways, not worshipping the Lord or keeping his orders or his ways or the law and the rule which the Lord gave to the children of Jacob, to whom he gave the name Israel;

So these nations, worshipping the Lord, still were servants to the images they had made; their children and their children's children did the same; as their fathers did, so do they, to this day.

He had the high places taken away, and the stone pillars broken to bits, and the Asherah cut down; and the brass snake which Moses had made was crushed to powder at his order, because in those days the children of Israel had offerings burned before it, and he gave it the name Nehushtan.

And they said to him, Hezekiah says, This day is a day of trouble and punishment and shame; for the children are ready to come to birth, but there is no strength to give birth to them.

Did the gods of the nations keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar?

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, copying the disgusting ways of those nations whom the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

But they did not give ear; and Manasseh made them do more evil than those nations did, whom the Lord gave up to destruction before the children of Israel.