3. Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, advanced against him, and Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute.
4. But the king of Assyria found Hoshea guilty of conspiracy for sending messengers to the king of Egypt at Sais, and for failure to pay the annual tribute to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria arrested and imprisoned him.
5. Then the king of Assyria occupied the whole land and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
6. In Hoshea’s ninth year, the king of Assyria took Samaria, deported the Israelites to Assyria, and settled them in Halah, and at the Habor, a river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
7. This came about because the Israelites sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. They venerated other gods,
8. they followed the rites of the nations whom the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites and those that the kings of Israel had practiced.
9. They adopted unlawful practices toward the Lord, their God. They built high places in all their cities, from guard post to garrisoned town.
10. They set up pillars and asherahs for themselves on every high hill and under every green tree.
11. They burned incense there, on all the high places, like the nations whom the Lord had sent into exile at their coming. They did evil things that provoked the Lord,
12. and served idols, although the Lord had told them: You must not do this.
13. The Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and seer: Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes, in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your ancestors and which I sent you by my servants the prophets.
14. But they did not listen. They grew as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who had not believed in the Lord, their God.
15. They rejected his statutes, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the warnings he had given them. They followed emptiness and became empty; they followed the surrounding nations whom the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.
16. They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord, their God: they made for themselves two molten calves; they made an asherah; they bowed down to all the host of heaven; they served Baal.
17. They immolated their sons and daughters by fire. They practiced augury and divination. They surrendered themselves to doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight, and provoked him.