“The Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come and tread upon the high places of the earth.  And the mountains shall be molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place.  For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel.  What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?” The doom pronounced against Samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than “an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley,” saith the Lord, “and I will discover the foundations thereof.  And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into the hire of an harlot shall they return.”  Yet, even while mourning over Samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for the terrible blow which had fallen on Israel “is come even unto Judah; it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.”  Doubtless the Assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon Ahaz during the whole time of the siege, from 724 to 722, and when once the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects.  Samaria still held out when Shalmaneser died at Babylon in the month of Tebeth, 722.  Whether he had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar to that which had helped to place Tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear.  At any rate, Sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king on the 22nd day of Tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole of Assyria.  After some days of hesitation, Babylon declined to recognise him, and took the oath of allegiance to a Kaldu named Marduk-abalidinna, or Merodach-baladan.  While these events were taking place in the heart of the empire, Samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably to force.  It was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population, amounting to 27,280 souls, were carried away into Mesopotamia and distributed along the Balikh, the Khabur, the banks of the river of Gozan, and among the towns of the Median frontier.*

* Sargon does not mention where he deported the Israelites to, but we learn this from the Second Book of Kings (xvii. 6; xviii. 11).  There has been much controversy as to whether Samaria was taken by Shalmanoser, as the Hebrew chronicler seems to believe (2 Kings xvii. 3-6; xviii. 9, 10), or by Sargon, as the Assyrian scribes assure us.  At first, several scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing that Shalmaneser and Sargon were one