"I have overthrown some of you, As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; Yet you haven't returned to me," says Yahweh.
This literally happened. The Assyrians were extremely cruel people. They were so cruel that history does record of many cities when surrounded by the Assyrian army, the inhabitants would commit mass suicide much as Masada, rather than to be captured by the Assyrians, because they feared them. Because the Assyrians were accustomed to mutilating their captives: cutting off their ears, mutilating their bodies, mutilating their faces. One of the things the Assyrians did with their captives is that they would put fishhooks through their lips to drag them back to Assyria, or through their noses, or through their ears, so that you'd have to keep marching. You try to slow down and that thing begins to pull on your nose, or on your lip or on your ear. And here is the prophecy, "You're gonna be led away with fishhooks." So it was. The Assyrians, when they captured Samaria, attached to the people these fishhooks and drug them away, or led them away captive to Assyria. "The Lord God hath sworn by His holiness, that lo, the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks."