Today is the 30th day of June. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible.

I'm Brian. It's great to be here with you.

It's always good to greet a brand new week together and just look out there and nothing's happened

so we're gonna happen to it. Let's see how that goes.

One of the ways that we can do that is to orient ourselves to God.

One of the ways that we can do that is to interact and spend time in the scriptures and another way that we can do that is to do that together.

And so that's what we've come to do around the global campfire today. We will read from the Evangelical Heritage

version this week and we're picking up where we left off obviously. Second Kings

chapter 17 verse 1 to 18, verse 12 today. In the 12th year of Ahaz, King of Judah,

Hoshia, son of Ila became King of Israel in Samaria and ruled for nine years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel who came before him. Shalamanizer, king of Assyria, went up against him and Hoshiya became his vassal and paid tribute to him.

But the King of Assyria caught Hoshiya in a conspiracy.

He had sent messengers to So, King of Egypt, and he did not send tribute

to the King of Assyria as he had done in previous years. That is why the King of Assyria

arrested him and confined him in prison.

Then the King of Assyria invaded the whole land. He went up against

Samaria and laid siege to it for three years. In O'Shia's ninth year, the king of

Assyria captured Samaria and exiled Israel to Assyria. He made them live in Halah along the Harbor River, which is the river of

Gosan in the cities of the Meads. This happened because the people of Israel

sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up

from the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh,

king of Egypt, and they feared other gods. They walked in the practices of the

nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel, and the practices which the kings of Israel had introduced.

...