The people were so few that there were many lions multiplying in the land. Since the people in Samaria were so engrossed in their idolatry the Bible mentions that the Lord rebuked them and punished them using the lions as a plague. The people were so distressed that they cried out to the king of Assyria and he sent them a priest of Israel from among the captives. He set up an altar at Bethel and sought to worship Yahweh, but the people wanted their idols and thus the religion became mixed, much like Christianity and Paganism (Roman Catholicism) in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.