2 Kings 17:1-6
"17 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years. 2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. 3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. 4 But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. 5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."
The long-threatened doom came at last, in the reign of Hoshea, and all that the prophets had so grimly and undeviatingly warned overtook the hapless northern kingdom. The Assyrians had come up against them, and subjugated them by superior force of arms and laid them under tribute. During this time of subjection, which must have been most irksome to Israel, Hoshea intrigued against the Assyrians by trying to obtain help from So, king of Egypt, in or- der to throw off their yoke. This so angered Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, that Hoshea was imprisoned unceremoniously, and the capital Samaria was besieged for three years and final- ly conquered. Large numbers of the people were deported to Assyria (6). We should try to imagine what this bald statement really means. It was not as though a thousand or so captives had been taken in battle, it was the abduction of an enormous number, including all in any position of leadership or responsibility, a national calamity of unprecedented magnitude. The large-scale transportation behind the Iron Curtain in our own time affords some illustration of what Israel experienced. Even today, hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced per- sons are huddled together in camps, with no hope, and no prospects, but they are at least re- ceiving some kind of help from the harassed nations among whom they now live. But Israel was reduced to serfdom as great as ever they had known at the beginning of their history in Egypt. How truly the words of the prophets had come to pass (see Hosea 8:13)! What Israel had doubtlessly assured herself as unthinkable and impossible had happened. Israel was no more!