⁶ During Hoshea’s ninth year, Assyria’s king captured Samaria and carried off the Israelites to exile in Assyria. The exiles were forced to stay in Halah and Habor on the Gozan River and also in the cities of the Medes.

⁷ This all happened because the Israelites had committed countless wicked deeds against their God, the Eternal One, who brought them out of Egypt and freed them from the oppression fueled by Pharaoh, Egypt’s king. They revered gods other than the Lord ⁸ and lived by the wicked traditions of the people whom the Eternal had forced out of the land before the Israelites arrived. They lived by the religious and cultural practices that Israel’s kings had introduced.