13The LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet [and] every seer, saying: “Turn back from your wicked ways, and observe My commandments and My laws, according to all the Teaching that I commanded your fathers and that I transmitted to you through My servants the prophets.” 14But they did not obey; they stiffened their necks, like their fathers who did not have faith in the LORD their God; 15they spurned His laws and the covenant that He had made with their fathers, and the warnings He had given them. They went after delusion and were deluded; [they imitated] the nations that were about them, which the LORD had forbidden them to emulate. 16They rejected all the commandments of the LORD their God; they made molten idols for themselves—two calves—and they made a sacred post and they bowed down to all the host of heaven, and they worshiped Baal. 17They consigned their sons and daughters to the fire; they practiced augury and divination, and gave themselves over to what was displeasing to the LORD and vexed Him. 18The LORD was incensed at Israel and He banished them from His presence; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone.
19Nor did Judah keep the commandments of the LORD their God; they followed the customs that Israel had practiced. 20So the LORD spurned all the offspring of Israel, and He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, and finally He cast them out from His presence.
21For Israel broke away from the House of David, and they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Jeroboam caused Israel to stray from the LORD and to commit great sin, 22and the Israelites persisted in all the sins which Jeroboam had committed; they did not depart from them. 23In the end, the LORD removed Israel from His presence, as He had warned them through all His servants the prophets. So the Israelites were deported from their land to Assyria, as is still the case.
24The king of Assyria brought [people] from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and he settled them in the towns of Samaria in place of the Israelites; they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its towns. 25When they first settled there, they did not worship the LORD; so the LORD sent lions against them which killed some of them. 26They said to the king of Assyria: “The nations which you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know the rules of the God of the land; therefore He has let lions loose against them which are killing them—for they do not know the rules of the God of the land.”
27The king of Assyria gave an order: “Send there one of the priests whom you have deported; let himb go and dwell there, and let him teach them the practices of the God of the land.” 28So one of the priests whom they had exiled from Samaria came and settled in Bethel; he taught them how to worship the LORD. 29However, each nation continued to make its own gods and to set them up in the cult places which had been made by the people of Samaria; each nation [set them up] in the towns in which it lived. 30The Babylonians made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, 31and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; and the Sepharvites burned their children [as offerings] to Adrammelech and Anamelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 32They worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed from their own ranks priests of the shrines, who officiated for them in the cult places. 33They worshiped the LORD, while serving their own gods according to the practices of the nations from which they had been deported. 34To this day, they follow their former practices. They do not worship the LORD [properly]. They do not follow the laws and practices, the Teaching and Instruction that the LORD enjoined upon the descendants of Jacob—who was given the name Israel—35with whom He made a covenant and whom He commanded: “You shall worship no other gods; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them. 36You must worship only the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great might and with an outstretched arm: to Him alone shall you bow down and to Him alone shall you sacrifice. 37You shall observe faithfully, all your days, the laws and the practices; the Teaching and Instruction that Ic wrote down for you; do not worship other gods. 38Do not forget the covenant that I made with you; do not worship other gods. 39Worship only the LORD your God, and He will save you from the hands of all your enemies.” 40But they did not obey; they continued their former practices. 41Those nations worshiped the LORD, but they also served their idols. To this day their children and their children’s children do as their ancestors did.
18 In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah became king. 2He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years; his mother’s name was Abia daughter of Zechariah. 3He did what was pleasing to the LORD, just as his father David had done. 4He abolished the shrines and smashed the pillars and cut down the sacred post. He also broke into pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until that time the Israelites had been offering sacrifices to it; it was called Nehushtan. 5He trusted only in the LORD the God of Israel; there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those before him. 6He clung to the LORD; he did not turn away from following Him, but kept the commandments that the LORD had given to Moses. 7And the LORD was always with him; he was successful wherever he turned. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. 8He overran Philistia as far as Gaza and its border areas, from watchtower to fortified town.
9In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, King Shalmaneser of Assyria marched against Samaria and besieged it, 10and heb captured it at the end of three years. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of King Hoshea of Israel, Samaria was captured; 11and the king of Assyria deported the Israelites to Assyria. He c-settled them in-c Halah, along the Habor [and] the River Gozan, and in the towns of Media. 12[This happened] because they did not obey the LORD their God; they transgressed His covenant—all that Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. They did not obey and they did not fulfill it.
13In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria marched against all the fortified towns of Judah and seized them. 14King Hezekiah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong; withdraw from me; and I shall bear whatever you impose on me.” So the king of Assyria imposed upon King Hezekiah of Judah a payment of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was on hand in the House of the LORD and in the treasuries of the palace. 16At that time Hezekiah cut down the doors and the doorpostsd of the Temple of the LORD, which King Hezekiah had overlaid [with gold], and gave them to the king of Assyria.
17But the king of Assyria sent e-the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh-e from Lachish with a large force to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. They marched up to Jerusalem; and when they arrived, they took up a position near the conduit of the Upper Pool, by the road of the Fuller’s Field. 18They summoned the king; and Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to them.
19The Rabshakeh said to them, “You tell Hezekiah: Thus said the Great King, the King of Assyria: What makes you so confident? 20You must think that mere talk is counsel and valor for war! Look, on whom are you relying, that you have rebelled against me? 21You rely, of all things, on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which enters and punctures the palm of anyone who leans on it! That’s what Pharaoh king of Egypt is like to all who rely on him. 22And if you tell me that you are relying on the LORD your God, He is the very one whose shrines and altars Hezekiah did away with, telling Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship only at this altar in Jerusalem.’ 23Come now, make this wager with my master, the king of Assyria: I’ll give you two thousand horses if you can produce riders to mount them. 24So how could you refuse anything even to the deputy of one of
