They Feared the Lord and Served Their Own Gods 2Ki 17:27-41 The policy of peopling Israel with other races was intended to keep the land under cultivation, and to break the ties of fatherland, which are the spring of patriotism. Men will not fight for a land which does not pull at their heart-strings. These newly-imported peoples believed that each country was under the care of its own local deity. They therefore deemed it advisable, that, without renouncing their own gods, they should give the God of Israel some sort of recognition. Samaritan religion of this kind is still very popular. Too many people feel that they ought to do something to show their respect for God. They attend to the outward forms of worship, lest they should lose caste; but in their hearts they enthrone worldly and worthless ideals. The Jews, as we learn from Joh 4:9 , hated the Samaritans, as a kind of mongrel race. But how generous was the Savior, ministering to the woman of Sychar, healing the Samaritan leper, and making one of this despised people the central figure in his parable of mercy, thus compelling the world to speak of the good Samaritan!