2 Esdras 13:40-42

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁴⁰ these are the nine^[a] tribes that were taken away from their own land into exile in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, made captives; he took them across the river, and they were taken into another land.^{(A) 41} But they formed this plan for themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region where no humans had ever lived, ⁴² so that there at least they might keep their statutes that they had not kept in their own land.