Sargon Repopulates Samaria with Foreign Peoples

When the Assyrian king Sargon II finished his three-year siege of Samaria in 722 BCE, he completed the project begun by his predecessor Shalmaneser V: deporting the ten northern tribes of Israel into exile across the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 17:5-6, 17:23-24). To prevent the depopulated land from collapsing into anarchy or being recaptured by surviving Israelite remnants, the Assyrian administration brought in fresh colonists "from Babylon, Cuth, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel" (2 Kings 17:24).

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