Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Kings 18:34

"Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah? have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?" — 2 Kings 18:34 (ASV)

Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? — Sargon, Sennacherib’s father, had subdued these two cities. The reference to my fathers in 2 Kings 19:12, and the use of the general term, the king of Assyria (2 Kings 18:33), argue against Schrader’s supposition that the historian confused the campaigns of Sargon with those of Sennacherib. (Compare to 2 Kings 17:24; 2 Kings 17:30.) Sargon recorded that Ya-u-bi-h-di, king of the Hamathites, induced Arpad, Simyra, Damascus, and Samaria to join his revolt against Assyria. The confederacy was defeated at Qarqar, and Yahubihdi was taken and flayed alive (720 B.C.).

Arpad. — Tell-Erfâd, about ten miles north of Aleppo. The question, Where are the gods? etc., may imply that they had been annihilated along with their temples and statues. (Compare to Job 14:10.)

Sometimes, indeed, the Assyrians carried off the idols of conquered nations, but this need not have been an invariable practice. Isaiah 10:11 seems to imply that they were sometimes destroyed, as was likely to be the case when a city was taken by storm and committed to the flames.

Sepharvaim. — See commentary on 2 Kings 17:24. This city revolted with Babylon against Sargon at the beginning of his reign. No account of its fall has been preserved.

Hena, and Ivah. — These names do not occur in Isaiah and are wholly unknown. The words look like two Hebrew verbs (“He has caused to wander, and overturned”), as currently vocalized; and the Targum translates them as a question: “Have they not made them wander, and carried them away?”

Hoffmann thinks the two words are really one (the niphal participle of ‘av’av) and should be rendered as an epithet of Sepharvaim, “the utterly perverted”—a nickname given to it by the Assyrians because of its folly in revolting again after its former subjugation. However, the mention of Ava and the Avites (2 Kings 17:24; 2 Kings 17:31) favors the same proper name here, and the Septuagint, Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate agree with this. (The Syriac reads Avva, as in 2 Kings chapter 7:24.)

Have they delivered Samaria...? — Rather, How much less have they (that is, its gods) delivered Samaria out of my hand! So Ewald, Gram., § 256. The Syriac, Vulgate, and Arabic render this as the Authorized Version does. Perhaps the original reading was not kȋ; but hakî: “Is it the case that they have delivered?” etc. (Job 6:22).

Out of my hand? — Sennacherib speaks as if he were one with his father, a circumstance that lends some support to Schrader’s suggestion that the successive Assyrian invasions were not kept quite distinct in the Hebrew tradition. If so, the year 714 B.C., assigned as the date of the present expedition (2 Kings 18:13), may really be that of an earlier expedition under Sargon, who, in fact, invaded the West in 720, 715, and 711 (or 709) B.C.