2 Kings 17:7-23

New Catholic Bible

⁷ This happened because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had revered other gods ⁸ and they had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before them and that the kings of Israel had introduced.

⁹ The people of Israel secretly did what was wrong against the Lord, their God. They built high places for themselves in all of their cities, whether it be a simple watchtower or fortified city. ¹⁰ They set up pillars and Asherahs for themselves on every high hill and under every green tree. ¹¹ They burned incense on all of the high places like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the anger of the Lord. ¹² They served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You are not to do this thing.”

¹³ The Lord had testified against Israel and against Judah through every prophet and every seer saying, “Turn from your evil ways. Keep my commandments and my statutes according to the law that I gave your fathers and which I sent you by my servants, the prophets.” ¹⁴ But they would not listen. They hardened their necks to make them just like the necks of their fathers who had not believed in the Lord, their God. ¹⁵ They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers and the warnings by which he bore witness against them. They followed after vain idols, becoming foolish. They also followed after the nations that surrounded them, the ones of whom the Lord had told them that they should not do what they did. ¹⁶ They abandoned the commandments of the Lord, their God, and they made molten images of two calves for themselves. They made Asherah, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served the Baals.^{[a] 17} They burned their sons and their daughters in fire, and they practiced divination and sorcery. They sold themselves to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord and to provoke him to anger.

¹⁸ The Lord was thus very angry with Israel. He removed them from out of his sight, so that there were none of them left except for the tribe of Judah.

¹⁹ Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord, their God, but they walked in the practices that Israel had introduced. ²⁰ The Lord rejected all of the descendants of Israel, punishing them and delivering them into the hands of those who plundered them until he had cast them out of his sight.

²¹ When he tore Israel away from the house of David, they made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, their king. Jeroboam misled Israel, causing them to turn away from following the Lord, making them commit a great sin. ²² The Israelites walked in all of the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not turn away from them ²³ until the Lord had removed them from out of his sight as he had predicted through all of his servants, the prophets. Israel was exiled out of their own land into Assyria where they are up until the present.