12. Even though the Lord had commanded the Israelites not to worship idols, they did it anyway.
13. So the Lord made sure that every prophet warned Israel and Judah with these words: “I, the Lord, command you to stop doing sinful things and start obeying my laws and teachings! I gave them to your ancestors, and I told my servants the prophets to repeat them to you.”
14. But the Israelites would not listen; they were as stubborn as their ancestors who had refused to worship the Lord their God.
15. They ignored the Lord's warnings and commands, and they rejected the solemn agreement he had made with their ancestors. They worshipped worthless idols and became worthless themselves. The Lord had told the Israelites not to do the things that the foreign nations around them were doing, but Israel became just like them.
16. The people of Israel disobeyed all the commands of the Lord their God. They made two gold statues of calves and set up a sacred pole for Asherah; they also worshipped the stars and the god Baal.
17. They used magic and witchcraft and even sacrificed their own children. The Israelites were determined to do whatever the Lord hated.
18. The Lord became so furious with the people of Israel that he allowed them to be carried away as prisoners.Only the people living in Judah were left,
19. but they also disobeyed the Lord's commands and acted like the Israelites.
20. So the Lord turned his back on everyone in Israel and Judah and let them be punished and defeated until no one was left.
21. Earlier, when the Lord took the northern tribes away from David's family, the people living in northern Israel chose Jeroboam son of Nebat as their king. Jeroboam caused the Israelites to sin and to stop worshipping the Lord.
22. The people kept on sinning like Jeroboam,
23. until the Lord got rid of them, just as he had warned his servants the prophets.That's why the people of Israel were taken away as prisoners to Assyria, and that's where they remained.
24. The king of Assyria took people who were living in the cities of Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and forced them to move to Israel. They took over the towns where the Israelites had lived, including the capital city of Samaria.
25. At first these people did not worship the Lord, so he sent lions to attack them, and the lions killed some of them.
26. A messenger told the king of Assyria, “The people you moved to Israel don't know how to worship the god of that country. So he sent lions that have attacked and killed some of them.”
27. The king replied, “Get one of the Israelite priests we brought here and send him back to Israel. He can live there and teach them about the god of that country.”
28. One of the Israelite priests was chosen to go back to Israel. He lived in Bethel and taught the people how to worship the Lord.
29. But in towns all over Israel, the different groups of people made statues of their own gods, then they placed these idols in local Israelite shrines.