2 Kings 17:31
And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.
2 Kings 17:31 belongs to the history of how the Samaritans began, whose ancestors had in part belonged to Israel but became divided from it through disobedience and sin and were allowed to be overcome by an idolatrous nation. The other part of their ancestry lay in heathen colonists brought from Assyria, who were intermingled with them for many generations. Their worship of the true God was gradually contaminated by the religion of those idolaters.
The verse names the heathen gods that entered that contaminated worship, Nibhaz and Tartak of the Avites and Adrammelech and Anammelech of the Sepharvites. It shows the depth of that idolatry, for the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to their gods, and the people bowed before images of wood and stone. That heathen worship persisted among the peoples who became associated with the Samaritans.
Alongside the idolatry there persisted a justification that the idols were only to remind them of the living God, the Ruler of the universe. Yet they were still led to reverence their graven images and remained prone to that reverence.
The outcome was a lasting mixed religion that combined Jewish faith and customs with unrenounced heathenism and idolatry. It worshiped according to the Mosaic ritual on Mount Gerizim though it did not wholly renounce idolatry. It built a temple on Mount Gerizim in opposition to the temple in Jerusalem, and its claim to be God's people became a source of lasting division and hostility.