5 Then the king of Assyria went throughout all the land, went up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years.
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria seized Samaria and exiled Israel to Assyria. He put them in Halah, in Habor by the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
7 This happened because the children of Israel had 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 had feared other gods
8 and walked in the statutes of the nations, whom the Lord dispossessed before the children of Israel, and walked in the statutes which the kings of Israel had made.
9 The children of Israel ascribed things to the Lord their God that were not so, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities from the watchtower to the fortified city.
10 They set up standing stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.
11 There they burned incense on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord had carried away before them. And they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger,