The Fall of Samaria

Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against him, and Hoshea had to serve him and bring him tribute.

But the king of Assyria found out that Hoshea was plotting against him. Hoshea had sent messengers to King So of Egypt. He had also stopped paying the tribute he used to pay the king of Assyria every year. Because of this, the king of Assyria seized Hoshea and put him in chains in prison.

Then the king of Assyria marched through the whole land. He went up to Samaria and surrounded it with his army, and he kept the city under siege for three years.

In the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. He carried the people of Israel away to Assyria and settled them in Halah, by the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the towns of the Medes.

The people of Israel did wrong things against the Lord their God in secret. In all their towns, from lookout towers to walled cities, they built high places for themselves. They set up stone pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. At all the high places they burned incense, as the nations that the Lord carried away before them had done. They did wicked things, and they made the Lord angry.

They served idols, though the Lord had said to them, “You must not do this.”

Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah, speaking through every prophet and every seer. “Turn back from your evil ways,” he told them. “Keep my commands and my rules. Follow all the law I gave your ancestors, the law I sent you through my servants the prophets.”

But they would not listen. They were stubborn, just like their ancestors, who had no faith in the Lord their God. They rejected his rules, the covenant he made with their ancestors, and the warnings he gave them. They went after empty things and became empty themselves. They copied the nations around them, though the Lord had commanded them not to do as those nations did.

They abandoned every command of the Lord their God. They made themselves two calves out of melted metal, and they made an Asherah pole. They worshiped the stars, all the army of the sky, and they served Baal. They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire. They used divination and magic spells. They gave themselves over to doing what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, and they made him angry.

Judah, too, failed to keep the commands of the Lord their God, and lived by the customs that Israel had made.

The Lord rejected all of Israel’s descendants. He made them suffer and handed them over to raiders, until he had thrown them out of his sight.

He had torn Israel away from the family of David, and they had made Jeroboam son of Nebat their king. Jeroboam drove Israel away from following the Lord, and he led them into a great sin.

The people of Israel followed Jeroboam in all the sins he had committed. They never turned away from them, until the Lord removed Israel from his sight, just as he had said through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, and they are there to this day.

When they first came to live there, they did not fear the Lord, and so the Lord sent lions among them. The lions killed some of them.

Word reached the king of Assyria: “The nations you carried off and settled in the towns of Samaria don’t know the law of the god of that land. So he has sent lions among them, and the lions are killing them, because they don’t know the law of the god of the land.”

Then the king of Assyria gave an order. “Take one of the priests you brought from there back to that land. Let him live there and teach the people the law of the god of the land.”

So one of the priests they had carried off from Samaria came and made his home in Bethel. He taught them how they should fear the Lord.

Those from Babylon made Succoth Benoth. Those from Cuth made Nergal. Those from Hamath made Ashima, and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak. The people of Sepharvaim burned their children in the fire as offerings to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

So they feared the Lord, but they also chose priests for the high places from among their own people. These priests offered sacrifices for them in the shrines there. They feared the Lord, and they served their own gods too, following the ways of the nations they had been carried away from.

To this day they keep doing what they did before. They do not fear the Lord, and they don’t follow the rules, the decrees, the law or the command that the Lord gave Jacob’s descendants. Jacob was the man the Lord had named Israel.

The Lord had made a covenant with Jacob’s descendants, and he had commanded them: “You must not fear other gods, or bow down to them, or serve them, or sacrifice to them. Fear the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power, with his arm stretched out. Bow down to him, and sacrifice to him. Always be careful to keep the rules and the decrees, the law and the command that he wrote down for you. You must not fear other gods. Never forget the covenant I made with you. You must not fear other gods. Fear the Lord your God, and he will save you from the power of all your enemies.”

But they would not listen. They kept on doing what they had done before.

So these nations feared the Lord, and they also served their carved idols. Their children did the same, and so did their grandchildren. To this day they do as their ancestors did.