Verse 3. - Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not there from. The maintenance of the calf-worship was, no doubt, viewed as a political necessity. If the two sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel had been shut up, the images broken, and the calf-worship brought to an end, there would, as a matter of course, have been a general flocking of the more religious among the people to the great sanctuary of Jehovah at Jerusalem; and this adoption of Jerusalem as a spiritual center would naturally have led on to its acceptance as the general political center of the whole Israelite people. Israel, as a separate kingdom, a distinct political entity, would have disappeared. Hence every Israelite monarch, even the Jehovistic Jehu, felt himself bound, by the political exigencies of his position, to keep up the calf-worship, and maintain the religious system of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.
3:1-5 Jehoram took warning by God's judgment, and put away the image of Baal, yet he maintained the worship of the calves. Those do not truly repent or reform, who only part with the sins they lose by, but continue to love the sins that they think to gain by.
Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin,.... He closely adhered to the worship of the calves set up by him:
he departed not therefrom: that being a piece of state policy, to keep up the division of the two kingdoms.
Therefrom.--Heb., from it (a collective feminine). So in 2 Kings 13:2; 2 Kings 13:6; 2 Kings 13:11.
he departed not therefrom: that being a piece of state policy, to keep up the division of the two kingdoms.