15. They despised and rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings to them, and they followed vanity (false gods–falsehood, emptiness, and futility) and [they themselves and their prayers] became false (empty and futile). They went after the heathen round about them, of whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do as they did.
16. And they forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the [starry] hosts of the heavens and served Baal.
17. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire and used divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.
18. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah.
19. Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs which Israel introduced.
20. The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight.
21. For He tore Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drew and drove Israel away from following the Lord and made them sin a great sin.
22. For the Israelites walked in all the sins Jeroboam committed; they departed not from them
23. Until the Lord removed Israel from His sight, as He had foretold by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria to this day.
24. The king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the Israelites. They possessed Samaria and dwelt in its cities.
25. At the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear and revere the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.
26. So the king of Assyria was told: The nations you removed and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the manner in which the God of the land requires their worship. Therefore He has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the manner of [worship demanded by] the God of the land.
27. Then the king of Assyria commanded, Take to Samaria one of the priests you brought from there, and let him [and his helpers] go and live there and let him teach the people the law of the God of the land.
28. So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel and taught them how they should fear and revere the Lord.
29. But every nationality still made gods of their own and put them in the shrines of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nationality in the city in which they dwelt.
30. The men of Babylon made [and worshiped their deity] Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima,
31. The Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.
32. So they feared the Lord, yet appointed from among themselves, whether high or low, priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places.
33. They feared the Lord, yet served their own gods, as did the nations from among whom they had been carried away.
34. Unto this day they do after their former custom: they do not fear the Lord [as God sees it], neither do they obey the statutes or the ordinances or the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel,