In Second Kings, chapter fourteen, verse twenty-six, in compassion for His people, God used Jeroboam to help Israel. However, God’s goodness did not lead to repentance. Israel’s prosperity was a time of corruption spiritually, morally, and socially. Both Amos and Hosea spoke of a people deeply depraved. Luxury, revelry, immorality, injustice, violence, and deceit of all kinds were the way of life as in Amos two, verses six through eight, chapter three, verse nine, chapter five, verses eleven through thirteen, and chapter six, verse four through seven, respectively.
About this period in Israel’s history, Hosea wrote: “There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, lying, killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood,” as in Hosea four, verses one through two. The agonizing time for God and His prophets, as in Hosea one, verses one to two, chapter three, verses one through five, and chapter eleven, verses one through twelve, respectively. The prophets spoke, but Israel would not hear. Therefore, the Lord caused the people of Israel to be “carried away out of their land to Assyria, as in Second Kings seventeen, verse twenty-three.
The higher ground for strengthening Israel in the time of Jeroboam was in the compassion of God. The Lord saw great oppression and the helpless condition of Israel. And yet pronounced the decree of rejection. He sent help through Jeroboam. How does it come to pass that so great a deliverance to Israel was given under a king who maintained the worship of the calves?
We can view this as the consequence of God’s infinite compassion and the extreme bitterness of Israel’s sufferings under the Syrians. Apart from Jehovah, Israel had no one to come to her aid. Judah would not help her, for they had just suffered at her hands, as in verses eleven through fourteen.