1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hoshea, son of Elah, became king in Samaria over Israel for nine years.
2. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, yet not to the extent of the kings of Israel before him.
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.