Then Bnei Yisrael begin to act on their thoughts. They begin to incorporate some of the ways that the other nations worship into their worship of Hashem. They still worshipped Hashem in this point of the process. Bnei Yisrael is beginning to become influenced by the practices of other nations. They begin to incorporate other nations' practices of Avodah Zara into the worship of Hashem. Some of Bnei Yisrael had even begun to worship other gods while they were still worshipping Hashem.
Hashem started to send נביאים to warn Bnei Yisrael that they are doing wrong and they need to change their ways. Bnei Yisrael acknowledges that the נביא is a messenger of Hashem and they should change their ways. They don't change their ways. Bnei Yisrael realizes that they are acting improperly. At this point they are still willing to recognize that they should be acting differently.
Even after being told multiple times, Bnei Yisrael still refused to change their actions. They are at a point of no return. They have that messenger to tell them that what they are doing is wrong but they are still refusing to listen to him. At this point, Bnei Yisrael is finished with Hashem. They altogether stopped believing in Hashem.
Bnei Yisrael has now become completely opposed to anything realting to Judaism and Hashem. They hated Mitzvot and they hated Judaism. They adopted hedonistic values of society. They completely left the Torah and the Mitzvot. They embraced hedonism. And finally after all that they had done, the 10 tribes were exiled and they remain in exile.
Bnei Yisrael had started off just doing small sins-nothing major that couldn't be changed. They were serving Hashem but they weren't treating their fellows respectfully. Bnei Yisrael began to adopt other nations practices. That is when it became a major issue where they had come to a point of no return-there was no way that they would return to Hashem. By now they had gone too far to come back to Hashem. Then Hashem does much to get them to return. He sent נביאים in to tell them that they are sinning and they need to change their ways but they refuse to take in the words of these נביאים. They stick with the actions that they wish to act upon. Then they completely reject any of the rules that Hashem had given to them. Because of this process we are shown why Bnei Yisrael was exiled.
From this whole process we can learn that with one little thought can lead to a whole series of thoughts that can later lead into actions. We also see that the actions of others can lead to a punishment that lasts for many generations to come. A mind has the power to do wonders. You can learn to convince yourself that what you are doing is completely acceptable because it is something you wish to do and you don't want to feel guilty for doing it. This is what Beni Yisrael is doing. They are allowing their minds to take over morality and they are convincing themselves that what they are doing is okay. Even when Hashem sends someone to try and save them, they will still refuse to even digest the נביא's words.
These processes of thought are still occurring today. I believe that this mainly occurs within teenage community. Nowadays peer pressure has the same affect. A person will want to fit in and when they come to situations where they have to make decisions, they have to go through a thought process. They can either choose to do the right or they can tell themselves that they are just doing this once so they don't have to be made fun of and they don't have to ever do it again. That, however, is not necessarily true because there are limits, and there are many types of wrong in this world that when you go past the limit you many become addicted and from that one little actions you caused so much more trouble for yourself than what your intentions were.
I agree with Racheli. My post last week was very similar. I liked how Racheli said that one little action can cause so much trouble even if the intetions were good. I think that happens a lot these days. People seem to have good intentions before everything goes wrong. It's always that one little thing they do first that initiates their downfall. It's an interesting lesson for everyone. Even if our intentions are good and we don't think its possible for any bad to come out of anything, we must think about all the possible consequences our actions could have.
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