The warnings of the prophets that Israel would fall into Assyrian captivity are already starting to come true. Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel had banded together in an anti-Assyrian confederacy. Judah refused to join the confederacy; therefore, she came under attack from the two northern kings.
"In those days the Lord began to send Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah against Judah.” (2 Kings 15:37, ESV)
But Judah is not the innocent by-stander here. The immediate reason for the Assyrian invasion was that the king of Judah requested help from Assyria against an alliance between Israel and Syria. Behind all these historic events and the free moral choices of kings and rulers, we read: "... the LORD began to send . . .."
As Calvin said, "God so uses the works of the ungodly and so bends their minds to carry out His judgments that he remains pure from every stain." [3] This world is not a mixed-up collage and collision of billions of human choices. Rather the billions of free, voluntary human decisions are folded into God's inestimable plan with such distinction that they ultimately form His sovereignly ordained holy will.
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1. Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 676). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
2. Criswell, W. A., Patterson, P., Clendenen, E. R., Akin, D. L., Chamberlin, M., Patterson, D. K., & Pogue, J. (Eds.). (1991). Believer’s Study Bible (electronic ed., 2 Ki 15:29). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
3. http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/calvin/indxbk1.html
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