Hoshea was to be the last king of Israel. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but apparently was not quite as bad as his predecessor. Shalmaneser had succeeded Tigleth-Pileser as king of Assyria. Hoshea was a vassal of Assyria, but was also making overtures to Egypt. Now Israel should have made overtures to neither Assyria nor Egypt, but acting dishonestly just made the situation worse. Hoshea must have thought things were going well with Egypt and he stopped paying tribute to Assyria. Not surprisingly Assyria was none too pleased, so he had Hoshea arrested. Then he invaded the land and many Israelites were eventually deported.
We then get an account of all the sins of Israel. The reason Israel had fallen was very simply a result of their continual disobedience to God, especially their idol worship. Numerous prophets and seers had been sent to the nation warning them, but to no avail. This was no snap judgement of God, He had shown enormous patience with them. Their idol worship even involved the sacrifice of children. A key difference between Judaism and the pagan religions was that child sacrifice was forbidden (Deut 18:10).
As well as Israelites being deported, Assyria resettled various peoples in Samaria. People in those days thought that different lands had different gods. So they got one of the priests sent back to Assyria to teach people how to worship the god of the land. This could have been a great opportunity, but given the track record of Israel it seems unlikely that proper advantage could be taken of it. So the settled peoples indulged in their own idol worship.
The chapter closes with a reiteration of the fact that Israel was suffering because of her sin against the Lord.
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