What Enticed Israel to ‘Go After Other Gods’? Part 1

Introduction

In this and the next several posts, I intend to explore the question, ‘What Enticed Israel to Go After Other Gods?’ The Old Testament reads as a multi-author, historical record over hundreds of years about Israel going after other gods.  It is also a theological study, looking into why Israel was so enticed. 

While this series of studies will focus on the Old Testament, lessons for today are clear.  ‘What Entices Christians to Go After Our Changing Culture?’  Some in our day have actually recommended a purposeful inclusion of other religions—even in the churches—and a blessing of post-Christian sexual practices.  We have many lessons to learn, then, from a study of the Old Testament on this question.  They remind us of what it means to be God's holy, treasured possession in the world.

Part 1: The pressure and desire to be like other nations

The narrative of Israel’s desire to be like other nations began concurrently with God calling her to be a separated people unto Himself at Mt. Sinai.  While Moses was receiving God’s Ten Commandments, the rest of Israel was forming a typical Ancient Near Eastern religion with the symbol of a golden calf.  Yahwism was an exclusive religion.  Israel’s downfall as a nation was in part caused by not removing the Canaanites from the land (Deuteronomy 7.16).  Politically, Israel’s desire to be like other nations included having a king (1 Samuel 8.5, 20).

Israel, however, was not to be like other nations.  God would go before them to remove the Canaanite tribes, and Israel was not to bow down to and serve their gods (Exodus 23.23-24).  God warned Israel that they should ‘not learn to follow the abominable ways practices of those nations’ (Deuteronomy 18.9).  He said,

take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ ³¹ You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods (12.30-31).

Israel repeatedly forsook exclusive devotion to YHWH.  Hosea speaks of Israel going after her lovers like an unfaithful wife.  Ezekiel 16 makes the same accusation.  This gives a different focus from being pressured to be like other nations as Israel was actively courting relationships with them while rejecting God.

The reason that God allowed Israel to be defeated by the Assyrians and be taken into exile was their despising His statutes and covenant to go after false idols and ‘follow the nations that were around them’ (2 Kings 17.15).  They ‘walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced' (17.8).  These customs included idol worship, burning their sons and daughters as offerings, practicing divination and omens, and selling themselves to do evil (17.17).

In addition to religious syncretism, Canaanite and Egyptian sexual practices were also forbidden to God’s holy people.  Leviticus 18 begins with God saying, ‘You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan…’ (v. 3).  The rest of the chapter lists various forbidden kinship, sexual relations, homosexual acts (v. 22), bestiality (v. 23), and sacrificially offering their children to the god Molech (v. 21).  God says that the reason He removed the Canaanites from the land and gave it to Israel was that they had made the land unclean (v. 25).  The same would happen to Israel when, instead of being different from the Canaanites, they adopted their religious and sexual abominations.

This is a basic storyline for the whole Old Testament.  The cycle of Israel’s sin, punishment, and redemption by God runs through many stories and the history of Israel.  From that basic story develops the theology and ethics of the Old Testament.  At the beginning of Israel’s history, when she was made by God to be His own treasured possession and holy people with His commandments and with a land of their own, God warned them not to yield to cultural pressure and not to desire to be like the other nations.  At the end of Israel’s history, they, like the Canaanites, were removed from the land.  They had rejected God’s commandments and followed the ways of the Canaanites before them.

The lesson is one that rings true in every age.  Will the people of God follow God’s statutes or the customs of culture?  In our day, countries in the West have rejected centuries if not millennia of Christianisation.  In its place, is coming a persecution of Christians for not submitting to the reigning cultural practices and new laws.  The culture has also set up new practices regarding sexuality.  This first came with the profligacy (sexual immorality) of the 1960s, followed by the anti-naturalism of the 2010s (homosexuality, followed by transgenderism, gender fluidity, etc.).  That many in the ‘Church’ have succumbed to the pressure of the culture should be no surprise to those who have learned the lessons of Israel in the Old Testament.  It is what happens.