* The siege of Tyre, which the historian Menander, in a passage quoted by Josephus, places in the reign of Shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of Sennacherib, or the fragment of Menander must be divided into three parts dealing with three different Assyrian campaigns against Tyre, under Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon respectively.

** The war cannot have begun earlier, for the Eponym Canon, in dealing with 726, has the words “in the country,” thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a campaign against some country whose name has disappeared.  The passages in the Book of Kings (2 Kings xvii. 1-6, and xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of Israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us two campaigns by Shalmaneser against Hoshea:  (1) Hoshea having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled him to resume its payment (2 Kings xvii. 1-3); (2) Hoshea having intrigued with Egypt, and declined to pay tribute, Shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him prisoner, and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12).  The first expedition must, in this case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have lasted from 725-722.  Most modern historians believe that the Hebrew writer has ascribed to Shalmaneser the subjection of Hoshea which was really the act of Tiglath-pileser, as well as the final war against Israel.  According to Winckler, the two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from two different versions of the final war, which the final editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the contradictions contained in them.

Hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of Tiglath-pileser, was unable to keep them quiet.  The whole of Galilee and Gilead was now an Assyrian province, subject to the governor of Damascus; Jerusalem, Moab, Ammon, and the Bedawin had transferred their allegiance to Nineveh; and Israel, with merely the central tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population to Judah.  Their tribute weighed heavily on the Israelites; passing armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat; convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their lost prosperity.  Amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, Egypt alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to Egypt that they turned their eyes.  Negotiations were opened, not with Pharaoh himself, but with Shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the Delta, whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with Syrian affairs.*