Sargon II was king of Assyria and founder of the Sargonid dynasty. He is known in the Bible for completing the conquest of Samaria and the deportation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. He is the only Assyrian king with this name mentioned directly in the Bible, in Isaiah 20:1.
Sargon II completed the siege of Samaria that his predecessor Shalmaneser V had begun, and deported the people of Israel to Assyria. This marked the end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
4But the king of Assyria uncovered a conspiracy: Hoshea had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and had not paid the tribute to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year. So the king of Assyria seized him and bound him in prison.
6In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported Israel to Assyria, settling them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
9In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and laid siege to it.
12This happened because they had not obeyed the voice of the LORD their God but had violated his covenant—all that Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. They neither listened nor obeyed.
Sargon deported the Israelites and settled foreign peoples in Samaria, leading to the emergence of the Samaritans as a mixed people with a syncretistic religion.
24The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria in place of the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its towns.
26Word was sent to the king of Assyria: "The nations you deported and settled in the towns of Samaria do not know the practice of the God of the land. He has sent lions among them, and they are killing them off, because the people do not know the practice of the God of the land."
27Then the king of Assyria gave this order: "Send back one of the priests you deported from there. Let him go and live there and teach them the practice of the God of the land."
29Yet each nation went on making its own gods, and they set them up in the shrines the Samaritans had built at the high places, each nation in the towns where they lived.
The prophet Isaiah mentions Sargon directly by name in connection with a campaign against the Philistine city of Ashdod, where Isaiah was asked to go as a prophetic sign.
1In the year that the commander in chief came to Ashdod, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, he fought against Ashdod and captured it.[^1]
[^1]: "Commander in chief" renders an Assyrian military title (Tartan), the second-in-command of the army.
2At that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz: "Go, take off the sackcloth from your waist and remove the sandals from your feet." And he did so, going stripped and barefoot.
4so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, stripped and barefoot, with buttocks bared—the shame of Egypt.
6And in that day the inhabitants of this coastland will say, "Look what has become of our hope, the one we fled to for help and rescue from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?"
Sargon was an instrument of God's judgment on Israel because of their sin and idolatry. The prophets interpreted the Assyrian invasion as God's punishment upon a disobedient people.
7All this happened because the Israelites had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They feared other gods
9The Israelites secretly did things against the LORD their God that were not right. They built themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.
11There, on every high place, they burned incense, just like the nations whom the LORD had carried into exile before them. They did wicked things that provoked the LORD to anger.
13The LORD warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer: "Turn back from your evil ways. Keep my commandments and my statutes, according to the whole law that I commanded your fathers and that I sent to you through my servants the prophets."
15They rejected his statutes and the covenant he had made with their fathers, and the warnings he had given them. They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They followed the nations around them, though the LORD had commanded them not to imitate them.
16They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God. They made for themselves two cast metal calves, made an Asherah pole, bowed down to all the host of heaven, and served Baal.
17They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire, practiced divination and sorcery, and sold themselves to do what was evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger.
During Sargon's reign, Assyria continued to threaten the kingdom of Judah, and his military campaigns in the region created fear and unrest among Judah's inhabitants and their neighboring peoples.
6I send him against a godless nation; I charge him against the people of my wrath, to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to trample them down like mud in the streets.
12When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, he will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the haughty pride of his eyes.