¹¹ See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. Shall you be delivered?

¹³ Do you not know what I and my ancestors have done to all the peoples of other lands? Were the gods of the nations of those lands at all able to save their lands out of my hand?^{(A) 14} Who among all the gods of those nations that my ancestors utterly destroyed was able to save his people from my hand, that your God should be able to save you from my hand?^(B)

¹⁷ Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands ¹⁸ and have hurled their gods into the fire, though they were no gods but the work of human hands—wood and stone—and so they were destroyed.^(A)

Israel Carried Captive to Assyria

⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. ⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.^(A)

⁷ This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods^{(B) 8} and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced.^{[a](C) 9} The people of Israel did^[b] things that were not right against the Lord their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city;^{(D) 10} they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles^[c] on every high hill and under every green tree;^{(E) 11} there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger;