2 Kings 17:25
And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them.
The verse belongs to the history of Israel's downfall through its own sins and the settling of an idolatrous foreign population in its emptied land. Those settlers were heathen colonists brought from the provinces of Assyria, who intermarried with the remnant of the ten tribes left in Samaria and Galilee, and from that union sprang the mixed-race Samaritan people who in later years lived close by the Israelites rebuilding the temple. Through mixing with the people of the land their religion was corrupted by idolatry.
At the beginning of their dwelling there they did not fear the Lord, so as punishment the Lord sent lions among them that killed some of them. Further disasters they understood as punishment for their apostasy, and therefore they sought Jewish teachers in order to learn the true religion. Even afterward their religion remained a mixture of Judaism and heathenism, for they represented the true God by images and mingled idolatrous worship with the ceremonies given through Moses, still mixing idolatry with the worship of God.
Although in later years they claimed to worship the true God, in heart and practice they were idolaters who said their idols were only to remind them of the living God, the Ruler of the universe, while remaining prone to reverence graven images. Their claim to be God's people fueled lasting division and hostility.