¹² therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster^[a] that the ears of everyone who hears of it ^(A)will tingle. ^13 (B)And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. ¹⁴ And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, ¹⁵ because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.”

Hoshea Reigns in Israel

17 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, ^(A)Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years. ² And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. ^3 (B)Against him came up ^(C)Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. ⁴ But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. ⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.

The Fall of Israel

⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria ^(D)captured Samaria, ^(E)and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria ^(F)and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of ^(G)Gozan, and in the cities of ^(H)the Medes.

Exile Because of Idolatry

⁷ And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, ^(I)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 (J)and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, ^(K)and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. ⁹ And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, ^(L)from watchtower to fortified city. ¹⁰ They set up for themselves ^(M)pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, ¹¹ and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, ¹² and they served idols, ^(N)of which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this.” ¹³ Yet the Lord ^(O)warned Israel and Judah ^(P)by every prophet ^(Q)and every seer, saying, ^(R)“Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”

¹⁴ But they would not listen, ^(S)but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. ¹⁵ They despised his statutes ^(T)and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after ^(U)false idols ^(V)and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the ^(W)Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. ¹⁶ And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of ^(X)two calves; and they ^(Y)made an Asherah and ^(Z)worshiped all the host of heaven and served ^(AA)Baal. ^17 (AB)And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings^[a] and used ^(AC)divination and ^(AD)omens and ^(AE)sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ¹⁸ Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but ^(AF)the tribe of Judah only.

^19 (AG)Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. ²⁰ And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them ^(AH)and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight.

^21 (AI)When he had torn Israel from the house of David, ^(AJ)they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord ^(AK)and made them commit great sin. ²² The people of Israel walked in all the sins that Jeroboam did. They did not depart from them, ²³ until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, ^(AL)as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets. ^(AM)So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.

Fall and Captivity of Judah

25 ^(A)And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, ^(B)Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. ^(C)And they built siegeworks all around it. ² So the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. ³ On the ninth day of the fourth month ^(D)the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. ⁴ Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, by ^(E)the king's garden, and ^(F)the Chaldeans were around the city. And they went in the direction of the ^(G)Arabah. ⁵ But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army was scattered from him. ⁶ Then they captured the king ^(H)and brought him up to the king of Babylon at ^(I)Riblah, and they passed sentence on him. ⁷ They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, ^(J)and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon.

^8 (K)In the fifth month, on ^(L)the seventh day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. ^9 (M)And he burned the house of the Lord ^(N)and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. ¹⁰ And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, ^(O)broke down the walls around Jerusalem. ^11 (P)And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. ¹² But the captain of the guard left ^(Q)some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen.

^13 (R)And the pillars ^(S)of bronze that were in the house of the Lord, and ^(T)the stands and ^(U)the bronze sea that were in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke in pieces and carried the bronze to Babylon. ^14 (V)And they took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the dishes for incense and all the vessels of bronze used in the temple service, ¹⁵ the fire pans also and the bowls. What was of gold the captain of the guard took away as gold, and what was of silver, as silver. ¹⁶ As for the two pillars, the one sea, and the stands that Solomon had made for the house of the Lord, ^(W)the bronze of all these vessels was beyond weight. ^17 (X)The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits,^[a] and on it was a capital of bronze. The height of the capital was three cubits. A latticework and pomegranates, all of bronze, were all around the capital. And the second pillar had the same, with the latticework.

^18 (Y)And the captain of the guard took ^(Z)Seraiah the chief priest and ^(AA)Zephaniah the second priest and the three keepers of the threshold; ¹⁹ and from the city he took an officer who had been in command of the men of war, and ^(AB)five men of the king's council who were found in the city; and the secretary of the commander of the army, who mustered the people of the land; and sixty men of the people of the land, who were found in the city. ²⁰ And Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at ^(AC)Riblah. ²¹ And the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at ^(AD)Riblah in the land of Hamath. ^(AE)So Judah was taken into exile out of its land.

For to Us a Child Is Born

9 ^[a] But there will be no ^(A)gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he ^(B)brought into contempt the land of ^(C)Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he ^(D)has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.^[b]