Dale Ralph Davis, in his excellent commentary II Kings: The Power and the Fury, writes the following on the text of II Kings 16 (the apostasy and idolatry of King Ahaz):
If Judah shares the abominations of those nations, she will share their fate as well. Simply because this threat applied to the covenant nation of Judah does not mean that non-covenant nations (they prefer to call themselves "secular states") are off the hook (see Amos 1-2). Of course our abominations are often desacralized. In my own land our fertility rites are more often celebrated in university dormitories than at Asherah chapels and Molech receives his due in sterile clinics rather than at religious shrines. As of this writing, my own government cannot muster enough votes to stop the horror of "partial-birth" abortion. The "gathering darkness" is not confined to Judah, and organizing national prayer breakfasts or lobbying for evangelical chaplains in Congress will never disperse it.
Dale Ralph Davis, II Kings: The Power and The Fury (Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2005), p. 232.
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