In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. He deported the Israelites to Assyria and settled them in Halah, along the Habor (Gozan’s river), and in the cities of the Medes.
“This is what the Lord says: I am about to bring disaster on this place and on its inhabitants, fulfilling all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read,
Because of the Lord’s anger, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he finally banished them from his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
‘When all these things happen to you #– #the blessings and curses I have set before you #– #and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,
For the Lord will strike Israel so that they will shake as a reed shakes in water. He will uproot Israel from this good soil that he gave to their ancestors. He will scatter them beyond the Euphrates because they made their Asherah poles, angering the Lord.
When people ask, “For what offence has the Lord our God done all these things to us? ”, you will respond to them, “Just as you abandoned me and served foreign gods in your land, so will you serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”