Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the countryside, a planting area for a vineyard. I will roll her stones into the valley and expose her foundations.
I will demolish the wall you plastered with whitewash and knock it to the ground so that its foundation is exposed. The city will fall, and you will be destroyed within it. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
Have you not heard? I designed it long ago; I planned it in days gone by. I have now brought it to pass, and you have crushed fortified cities into piles of rubble.
Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact a grain tax from him, you will never live in the houses of cut stone you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.
Samaria will bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword; their children will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
Look, I am against you, devastating mountain. This is the Lord’s declaration. You devastate the whole earth. I will stretch out my hand against you, roll you down from the cliffs, and turn you into a charred mountain.
For you have turned the city into a pile of rocks, a fortified city into ruins; the fortress of barbarians is no longer a city; it will never be rebuilt.
If he retreats to some city, all Israel will bring ropes to that city, and we will drag its stones into the valley until not even a pebble can be found there.’
In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Israel’s King Hoshea son of Elah, Assyria’s King Shalmaneser marched against Samaria and besieged it.
The Assyrians captured it at the end of three years. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Israel’s King Hoshea, Samaria was captured.
The Lord God has sworn by himself #– #this is the declaration of the Lord, the God of Armies: I loathe Jacob’s pride and hate his citadels, so I will hand over the city and everything in it.