the symbols of the calves, and must explain the inexactness of the expression “their statutes and their right” from the fact that the historian was thinking of the Israelites who had been left behind in the land, or of the remnant of the Israelitish population that had become mixed up with the heathen settlers (2Ki 23:19-20; 2Ch 34:6, 2Ch 34:9, 2Ch 34:33). The meaning of the verse is therefore evidently the following: The inhabitants of Samaria retain to this day the cultus composed of the worship of idols and of Jehovah under the form of an image, and do not worship Jehovah either after the manner of the ten tribes or according to the precepts of the Mosaic law. Their worship is an amalgamation of the Jehovah image-worship and of heathen idolatry (cf. 2Ki 17:41). - To indicate the character of this worship still more clearly, and hold it up as a complete breach of the covenant and as utter apostasy from Jehovah, the historian describes still more fully, in 2Ki 17:35-39, how earnestly and emphatically the people of Israel had been prohibited from worshipping other gods, and urged to worship Jehovah alone, who had redeemed Israel out of Egypt and exalted it into His own nation. For 2Ki 17:35 compare Exo 20:5; for 2Ki 17:36, the exposition of 2Ki 17:7, also Exo 32:11; Exo 6:6; Exo 20:23; Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15, etc. In 2Ki 17:37 the committal of the thorah to writing is presupposed. For 2Ki 17:39, see Deu 13:5; Deu 23:15, etc.
Verses 40-41
They did not hearken, however (the subject is, of course, the ten tribes), but they (the descendants of the Israelites who remained in the land) do after their former manner. הראשׁון משׁפּטם is their manner of worshipping God, which was a mixture of idolatry and of the image-worship of Jehovah, as in 2Ki 17:34. - In 2Ki 17:41 this is repeated once more, and the whole of these reflections are brought to a close with the additional statement, that their children and grandchildren do the same to this day. - In the period following the Babylonian captivity the Samaritans relinquished actual idolatry, and by the adoption of the Mosaic book of the law were converted to monotheism. For the later history of the Samaritans, of whom a small handful have been preserved to the present day in the ancient Sichem, the present Nablus, see Theod. Guil. Joh. Juynboll, commentarii in historiam gentis Samaritanae, Lugd. Bat. 1846, 4, and H. Petermann, Samaria and the Samaritans, in Herzog’s Cycl.
