2 Kings Chapter 17
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2 Kings 17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years.
2 Kings 17:2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him.
2 Kings 17:3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute.
2 Kings 17:4 But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison.
2 Kings 17:5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.
2 Kings 17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
2 Kings 17:7 And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods
2 Kings 17:8 and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.
2 Kings 17:9 And the people of Israel did secretly against the LORD their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.
2 Kings 17:10 They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree,
2 Kings 17:11 and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger,
2 Kings 17:12 and they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this.”
2 Kings 17:13 Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”
2 Kings 17:14 But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God.
2 Kings 17:15 They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them.
2 Kings 17:16 And they abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal.
2 Kings 17:17 And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger.
2 Kings 17:18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.
2 Kings 17:19 Judah also did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced.
2 Kings 17:20 And the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight.
2 Kings 17:21 When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin.
2 Kings 17:22 The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them,
2 Kings 17:23 until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.