5. Then the Assyrian king invaded the whole country. He marched against Samaria and attacked it for three years.
6. In Hoshea’s ninth year, the Assyrian king captured Samaria. He sent Israel into exile to Assyria, resettling them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.
7. All this happened because the Israelites sinned against the Lord their God, who brought them up from the land of Egypt, out from under the power of Pharaoh, Egypt’s king. They worshipped other gods.
8. They followed the practices of the nations that the Lord had removed before the Israelites, as well as the practices that the Israelite kings had done.
9. The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that weren’t right. They built shrines in all their towns, from watchtowers to fortified cities.
10. They set up sacred pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and beneath every green tree.
11. At every shrine they burned incense, just as the nations did that the Lord sent into exile before them. They did evil things that made the Lord angry.
12. They worshipped images about which the Lord had said, Don’t do such things!
13. The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all the prophets and seers, telling them, Turn from your evil ways. Keep my commandments and my regulations in agreement with the entire Instruction that I commanded your ancestors and sent through my servants the prophets.
14. But they wouldn’t listen. They were stubborn like their ancestors who didn’t trust the Lord their God.
15. They rejected his regulations and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, along with the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless images so that they too became worthless. And they imitated the neighboring nations that the Lord had forbidden them to imitate.