1. Hoshea, Elah’s son, became king in Samaria in the twelfth year of Judah’s king Ahaz. He ruled over Israel for nine years.
2. He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, but he wasn’t as bad as the Israelite kings who preceded him.
3. Assyria’s King Shalmaneser marched against Hoshea, and Hoshea became Shalmaneser’s servant, paying him tribute.
4. But the Assyrian king discovered that Hoshea was a traitor, because Hoshea sent messengers to Egypt’s King So. Hoshea stopped paying tribute to the Assyrian king as he had in previous years, so the Assyrian king arrested him and put him in prison.
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.