2 Kings 17:8 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

Idolatry was worse in the Israelites than in other nations, since it argued not merely folly and a gross carnal spirit, but also black ingratitude Exodus 20:2-3. The writer subdivides the idolatries of the Israelites into two classes, pagan and native - those which they adopted from the nations whom they drove out, and those which their own kings imposed on them. Under the former head would come the great mass of the idolatrous usages described in 2 Kings 17:9-11, 2 Kings 17:17; “the high places” 2Ki 17:9, 2 Kings 17:11; the “images” and “groves” 2 Kings 17:10; the causing of their children to “pass through the fire” 2 Kings 17:17; and the “worship of the host of heaven” 2 Kings 17:16 : under the latter would fall the principal points in 2 Kings 17:12, 2Ki 17:16, 2 Kings 17:21.

Which they had made - “Which” refers to “statutes.” The lsraelites had “walked in the statutes of the pagan, and in those of the kings of Israel, which (statutes) they (the kings) had made.”

2 Kings 17:8

8 And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.