5. Then the king of Assyria invaded the entire country, marched up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years.
6. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He placed them in Halah and Habor, on the Gozan River, and in the towns of the Medes.
7. Now it was so because the men of Israel had sinned against Adonai their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods.
8. Instead they followed the customs of the nations, whom Adonai had dispossessed before Bnei-Yisrael, yet which the kings of Israel practiced.
9. Bnei-Yisrael secretly did things against Adonai their God that were not right. They built shrines for themselves in all their settlements—from watchtowers to fortified cities,
10. and they set up pillars and Asherah poles for themselves on every high hill and under every leafy tree.
11. There they burned incense on all the high places, like the nations whom Adonai had driven out before them. So they did wicked things to provoke Adonai.
12. They worshipped idols, about which Adonai had said to them, “You shall not do this thing.”
13. Yet Adonai had forewarned Israel and Judah by the hand of every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the Torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by the hand of My servants the prophets.”
14. Yet they would not listen, but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not trust in Adonai their God.