1. King Hoshea, son of Elah, had been king in Israel for three years when King Hezekiah, son of Ahaz of Judah, began to rule as king.
2. Hezekiah was 25 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Abi, daughter of Zechariah.
3. He did what the Lord considered right, as his ancestor David had done.
4. He got rid of the illegal places of worship, crushed the sacred stones, and cut down the poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah. He even crushed the bronze snake that Moses had made because up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. They called it Nehushtan.
5. Hezekiah trusted the Lord God of Israel. No king among all the kings of Judah was like Hezekiah.
6. He was loyal to the Lord and never turned away from him. He obeyed the commands that the Lord had given through Moses,
7. so the Lord was with him. He succeeded in everything he tried: He rebelled against the king of Assyria and wouldn’t serve him anymore.
8. He conquered the Philistines from the ⌊smallest⌋ watchtower to the ⌊largest⌋ fortified city all the way to Gaza and its territory.
9. In Hezekiah’s fourth year as king (which was the seventh year in the reign of King Hoshea, son of Elah of Israel) King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked Samaria, blockaded it,
10. and captured it at the end of three years. Samaria was taken in Hezekiah’s sixth year as king (which was Hoshea’s ninth year as king of Israel).
11. The king of Assyria took the Israelites to Assyria as captives. He put them in Halah, along the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
12. This happened because they refused to obey the Lord their God and disregarded the conditions of the promise he made to them. They refused to obey everything that Moses, the Lord’s servant, had commanded.