Two years after the fall of Samaria he had again been summoned to war. Hamath had broken into revolt, and induced Damascus, Arpad and Samaria to follow her example. Promises of aid had been received from Egypt, while the restless Khamin of Gaza had again declared himself in dependent of Assyria. It is possible that Heze kiah, who had now succeeded his father Ahaz as the king of Israel, may also have been concerned in the movement. At all events the name of the Hamathite king Yahu-bihdi, which is once writ ten El-bilidi, contains the name of the God of Israel, and the friendship between Hamath and Judah was of long standing.
The rebels, however, proved no match for the Assyrian king. Yaliu-bihdi was captured at Aroer and flayed alive. Hamath was colonized by Assyrians under an Assyrian governor, while its former inhabitants were transplanted to Samaria. The Assyrian army then marched southward, the Egyptian forces being routed at Raphia, and for nine years Palestine remained sullenly submissive to Assyrian rule.
The interval was used by Sargon in securing his road to the Mediterranean. Carchemish, the rich capital of the Hittites south of the Taurus, fell into his hands (B. C. 717), and henceforth it became the seat of an Assyrian satrap.
ASsyria was now connected with its posses sions in the west by a well guarded and continu ous road. The tributary kingdoms which lay south of the Assyrian satrapy of Samaria served only as a thin screen of division between the de caying power of Egypt and the ever increasing and ever menacing might of Nineveh. The As syrian had indeed come in like a flood.
In the south Merodach-baladan, backed by the armies of Elam, still governed an independent Babylonia ; but as year after year went by the power of Sargon steadily grew, and consolidated. Merodach-baladan saw the doom that awaited him in the near future. It could not be long before the Assyrian king would consider that the time was ripe for an invasion of Babylonia, although for twelve years the "son of Yagina" had succeeded in keeping him at bay.
Merodach-baladan therefore determined to an ticipate the attack. In the neighboring monarchy of Elam he had a powerful though untrustworthy ally ; but his only chance of successfully resisting the invader was by compelling him to divide his forces. If he could induce Egypt and Palestine to rise in arms, at the same time that he himself fell upon Sargon from the south, there was a hope that the common enemy could be crushed, and that the terrible scourge which was afflicting all Western Asia might be exterminated.
In the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah (B. C. 711) ambassadors came from the court of Babylon under the pretext of congratulating the Jewish king on his recovery from sickness. Their real object, however, was something very differ ent. It was to concert measures with Hezekiah for a general uprising in the West, and for the formation of a league against Sargon. which should embrace Babylonia, Palestine and Elam. Hezekiah was flattered by this proof of his own importance. He opened the gates of his armory and his treasure house.
"At that time Merodach-baladan, king of Baby lon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and was re covered" (Is. xxxix :1). This whole chapter is an eloquent description of the folly of the king, and the prophetic denunciation of Isaiah. But the advice of the prophet was ignored, and Hezekiah proved himself only too ready to ally himself with the heathen powers, and to rely for salvation upon an "arm of flesh." Sargon, however, was not blind to what was going on, and he resolved to strike before his enemies could unite their forces. Palestine was the first to suffer. Ashdod had become the center of opposition to Assyrian authority. Its punish ment was not long delayed. Sargon swept "the widespread land of Judah" and coerced the Edom ites and the Moabites, while the Ethiopian king of Egypt hid himself behind the frontiers of the Delta (Is. xx :r). The Tartan, or commander-in chief, was sent against Ashdod, the city captured and razed to the ground, its inhabitants sold into slavery, and the unfortunate Yavan, who had es caped to Egypt, was handed over by his cowardly hosts to the mercy of his enemy. The prophecy contained in chapters x and xi of Isaiah seems to have been uttered, when the implacable Assyrian was already at Nob, within a day's journey of Jerusalem.
'Ho! Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation! I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people of my wrath I will give him a charge, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them clown like the mire of the streets' (Is. x is, 6).