Monday, June 22, 2026

⁵Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.

⁶In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

⁷It was so because the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,

⁸and walked in the statutes of the nations whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they made.

¹³Yet the LORD testified to Israel and to Judah, by every prophet and every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets."

¹⁴Notwithstanding, they would not listen, but hardened their neck like the neck of their fathers who didn't believe in the LORD their God.

¹⁵They rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them.

¹⁸Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

³God, you have rejected us. You have broken us down. You have been angry. Restore us, again.

⁴You have made the land tremble. You have torn it. Mend its fractures, for it quakes.

⁵You have shown your people hard things. You have made us drink the wine that makes us stagger.

¹²Haven't you, God, rejected us? You don't go out with our armies, God.

¹³Give us help against the adversary, for the help of man is vain.

¹"Don't judge, so that you won't be judged.

²For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.

³Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye?

⁴Or how will you tell your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye,' and behold, the beam is in your own eye?

⁵You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.