Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner.
The verse means the settlers in Samaria did not hearken to or obey the Lord but kept on after their former manner and religious practices. The instruction they disregarded was to worship and fear the Lord alone, to keep His laws, and to trust Him for deliverance from their enemies. They had belonged to Israel but were separated from Israel because they neglected God's statutes, so the Lord allowed an idolatrous nation to overcome them whose religion contaminated their own.
Their descendants became the Samaritans, who claimed to honor and worship the true God yet remained idolaters in heart and practice. They represented Him by images of wood and stone and bowed before them, remaining prone to reverence graven images. They worshiped according to the ceremonies given through Moses but mingled idolatry with it, so their religion remained a mixture of Jewish faith and heathenism that was divided, incomplete, corrupted, and bound to inherited traditions and forms.
They continued in this course despite disasters, efforts to reform, clearer instruction in the true religion, and a promise to adopt Jewish faith and customs more fully. Even when calamities and the destruction of their temple led them to see God's punishment for apostasy, to seek Jewish teachers, to gain clearer views of God and His requirements, and to make their service more like that of the Jews, they still clung to idolatry to a certain degree. After the Jews refused to let them help rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, they built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, producing bitter enmity, and they refused to honor Jerusalem as the true place of worship.
The verse means the settlers in Samaria did not hearken to or obey the Lord but kept on after their former manner and religious practices.
The instruction they disregarded was to worship and fear the Lord alone, to keep His laws, and to trust Him for deliverance from their enemies.
They had belonged to Israel but were separated from Israel because they neglected God's statutes, so the Lord allowed an idolatrous nation to overcome them whose religion contaminated their own.
Their descendants became the Samaritans, who claimed to honor and worship the true God yet remained idolaters in heart and practice.
They represented Him by images of wood and stone and bowed before them, remaining prone to reverence graven images.
They worshiped according to the ceremonies given through Moses but mingled idolatry with it, so their religion remained a mixture of Jewish faith and heathenism that was divided, incomplete, corrupted, and bound to inherited traditions and forms.
They continued in this course despite disasters, efforts to reform, clearer instruction in the true religion, and a promise to adopt Jewish faith and customs more fully.
Even when calamities and the destruction of their temple led them to see God's punishment for apostasy, to seek Jewish teachers, to gain clearer views of God and His requirements, and to make their service more like that of the Jews, they still clung to idolatry to a certain degree.
After the Jews refused to let them help rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, they built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, producing bitter enmity, and they refused to honor Jerusalem as the true place of worship.