5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years.
6 In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.
7 For so it was that the sons 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
8 and walked in the statutes of the Gentiles, whom the Lord had cast out from before the sons of Israel, and in the statutes of the kings of Israel, which they had made.
9 And the sons of Israel had secretly done those things that were not right against the Lord their God, building themselves high places in all their cities, from the towers of the watchmen to the fenced cities.
10 And they had set themselves up images and groves in every high hill and under every green tree;
11 and there they burnt incense in all the high places like the Gentiles, whom the Lord had carried away before them, and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: