1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz, the king of Judah: Hoshea, the son of Elah, reigned over Israel, in Samaria, for nine years.
2. And he did evil before the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel who had been before him.
3. Shalmaneser, the king of the Assyrians, ascended against him. And Hoshea became a servant to him, and he paid him tribute.
4. And when the king of the Assyrians discovered that Hoshea, striving to rebel, had sent messengers to Sais, to the king of Egypt, so as not to present the tribute to the king of the Assyrians, as he had been accustomed to do each year, he besieged him. And having been bound, he cast him into prison.
5. And he wandered through the entire land. And ascending to Samaria, he besieged it for three years.
6. And in the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of the Assyrians captured Samaria, and he carried away Israel to Assyria. And he stationed them in Halah and in Habor, beside the river of Gozan, in the cities of the Medes.
7. For it happened that, when the sons of Israel had sinned against the Lord, their God, who had led them away from the land of Egypt, from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, they worshipped strange gods.
8. And they walked according to the rituals of the nations that the Lord had consumed in the sight of the sons of Israel, and of the kings of Israel. For they had acted similarly.