keep all my statutes and all my judicial decisions and do them, that the land to which I am bringing you to dwell in it may not vomit you out. And you must not walk in the statutes of the nations whom I am sending out from before you, because they have done all these things and I abhor them.”—1 Cor. 15:33; Lev. 20:22, 23, NW.

THE LAND VOMITS OUT ISRAEL

13, 14. What did the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel do, and what did it result in?

¹³ But the Israelites did not drive out the Canaanites, nor did they stick to God’s law and keep separate from these lewd nations. The Israelites walked in the statutes of the heathen and fraternized with them, and how spoiled did Israel become by these bad associations! Listen to how degraded the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel became: “My people ask a piece of wood to guide them, a pole gives them their oracles! For a harlot-spirit has led them astray, they have left their God for a faithless way; they sacrifice on mountain heights, and offer incense on the hills, below the oak, the terebinth, the poplar—so pleasant is their shade. Thus your daughters play the harlot, matrons commit adultery. But I will not punish your daughters for harlotry, nor your matrons for adultery, when the men themselves go off with harlots, and sacrifice with temple-prostitutes. This brings a senseless people to their ruin.”—Hos. 4:12-14, Mo.

¹⁴ It brought these senseless Israelites to their ruin: “They kept setting up for themselves sacred pillars and sacred poles upon every high hill and under every luxuriant tree; and there on all the high places they continued to make sacrificial smoke the same as the nations whom Jehovah had taken into exile because of them and they kept doing bad things to offend Jehovah. And they continued to serve dungy idols, concerning which Jehovah had said to them: ‘You must not do this thing’; and they kept leaving all the commandments of Jehovah their God and proceeded to make for themselves molten statues, two calves, and to make a sacred pole, and they began to bow down to all the army of the heavens and to serve Baal; and they continued to make their sons and their daughters pass through the fire and to practice divination and to look for omens, and they kept selling themselves to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, to offend him; Jehovah therefore got very incensed against Israel, so that he removed them from his sight.” How did Jehovah do this? “Israel went off its own soil into exile in Assyria.” Thus did the land vomit out the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel.—2 Ki. 17:10-12, 16-18, 23, NW.

15, 16. What does the historical record show as to the conduct of the two-tribe kingdom of Judah?

¹⁵ This expulsion of Israel from the land should have been a warning to the two-tribe kingdom of Judah to the south, but it effected no reformation. Isaiah lashed out at Judah’s apostate plunge into filthy religious sex orgies: “Are you not apostate children, a faithless brood—you who inflame yourselves with lust among the terebinths, under every spreading tree, who slaughter children in the valley, among the clefts of the crags? With the smooth stones of the valley your lot is cast; they, they are your portion; to them have you poured libations, and offered cereal-offerings; and for these things can I be appeased? On a high and lofty mountain you have set up your bed; and thither have you climbed to offer sacrifice. Behind the door and the side posts you have set up your phallic symbol; and apart from me have you stripped and gone up, you have distended your parts; you have bargained for those whose embraces you love; and with them have you multiplied your harlotries, while gazing on the phallus.”—Isa. 57:4-8, AT.

¹⁶ There is a tradition that says Isaiah was bloodthirstily sawn asunder by wicked King Manasseh, and that it was this vile deed that prompted Paul’s expression, “they were sawn asunder.” However that may be, the above words of Isaiah would perfectly fit the evil reign of Manasseh. He built up the high places, erected altars to Baal, used spirit mediums and professional foretellers of events, put altars for star worship in the courtyards of Jehovah’s temple and even put in the temple one of the A.sheʹrah images, and he made his own son a flaming sacrifice to Molech. Manasseh seduced Judah “to do what was bad more than the nations whom Jehovah had annihilated.” Jehovah said: “He has acted more wickedly than all that the Amorites did that were prior to him and he proceeded to make even Judah sin with his dungy idols.”—Heb. 11:37; 2 Ki. 21:9, 11, NW.

17. What did Jehovah say about Judah’s lot, and what happened?

¹⁷ The land was polluted by its inhabitants, even more than when the Canaanites controlled it. Would Jehovah play favorites and show respect of persons? “Here I am bringing a calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah,” said Jehovah, “of which if any one hears both his ears will tingle.” With a homely illustration Jehovah continues: “I shall simply wipe Jerusalem clean just as one wipes the handleless bowl clean, wiping it clean and turning it upside down. And I shall indeed forsake the remnant of my possession and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they will simply become a spoil and plunder to all their enemies, for the reason that they did what was bad in my eyes and were continually offending me.” The Babylonians invaded the land, conquered it, and emptied it of inhabitants just like a dish is emptied of its contents when it is turned upside down. When the nation of Israel entered the land they were told that the Canaanites were being dispossessed because of their religious depravity, and were warned that if Israel copied these immoral, bloodthirsty religionists the land would again become defiled and polluted and nauseated and would vomit Israel out to cleanse itself. The Israelites ignored the warning; they were vomited out.—2 Ki. 21:12-15, NW.

18. How did Isaiah foretell the desolation of the land and show that God would show no respect of persons?

¹⁸ Isaiah foretold this dumping out of the land’s inhabitants, when he said: “Behold, the LORD [Jehovah] will lay waste the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the slave, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.” No respect of persons was shown. No exceptions were made because of religious or financial or social position. All classes of people shared guilt for the pollution of the land, and all classes of people suffered for this guilt. They had transgressed God’s laws and violated the statutes given to protect them. They had broken the law covenant given through Moses that was to run until an indefinite, concealed time, until it had safeguarded them to the time of Messiah’s coming. But now their failure to keep it meant their removal from the land, their captivity in Babylon.—Isa. 24:1, 2, 5, 6, RS.

19. How is this a warning for us?

¹⁹ Jehovah did not create the earth to have it polluted by wicked persons. It was to reflect his praise, the living plants and animals on it were to do so, and certainly the specially privileged human creatures with their higher intellectual capacities were to be a praise to their Creator. If they fail to praise God themselves, and prevent others from doing so, and even pollute the earth until it is too soiled to mirror brightly the praise of its Maker, then those persons must be removed. Jehovah is no respecter of persons. He did it to the Canaanites. He did it to the Israelites. He will do it to the polluters of the earth today. These ancient happenings “that were written aforetime were written for our instruction,” and “these things went on befalling them as examples and they were written for a warning to us upon whom the accomplished ends of the systems of things have arrived.” Jehovah does not waver in his principles, nor does he swerve from his purposes: “I, Jehovah, change not.” We have our warning from God about polluting the earth, just as the Israelites had theirs. Let us obey ours, profiting from their failure to heed theirs.—Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11, NW; Mal. 3:6, AS.

Will You Get to Live on Earth Forever?

“The upright will inhabit the land, and men of integrity will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.”—Prov. 2:21, 22, RS.

1. In what ways do men now pollute the earth?

MEN are now defiling the earth. In their greed to get rich quick from its resources they denude the hills of forests and the plains of grasses, and valuable topsoil is washed or blown away. Wild animals and birds are wantonly slain for money or just for the fun of it. The air we breathe is needlessly polluted with factory smoke that many industrialists are too greedy to control. For thousands of years national and international wars have spilled lakes of blood that have defiled the land. Now in their quest for quicker ways to kill more the most powerful nations are poisoning the atmosphere, the vegetation, the land, the sea, the fish—everything—with radioactive elements. Scientists confess that the trend could lead to making the earth uninhabitable. Some parts have already been made so. The San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 1956, editorializes: “FOREVER MADE UNINHABITABLE.