In the history of the fall of Samaria and the Assyrian inroads, there are questions of chronology partly internal partly comparative with profane history (cuneiform). The margin (Usher and Lloyd) have resolved the interval by an interregnum. This is at any rate in substance right, because Hoshea is said to have reigned nine years. Yet in the twelfth year of Ahaz he begins to reign, and Pekah was slain in the third year of Ahaz, for Ahaz began in the seventeenth year of Pekah, and Pekah reigned twenty years. I do not enter here into the nicety of current or complete years. What was the condition of Hoshea, said to reign instead of Pekah, whom he slew, I do not know, therefore I say “in substance."
Then in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, i.e., the eighth current year after Samaria was taken, Sennacherib came up. This all hangs together perfectly; then fifteen years were added after his illness. That his illness was before the Assyrian invasion is clear from verse 6, and the same in Chronicles. The external difficulty is this: Shalmaneser came, it seems, three times against Samaria, was overthrown, and Sargon, mentioned by Isa. 20, took Samaria ("they" in Kings, i.e., Assyrians). But by the Assyrian Sargon reigned at any rate seventeen years. After Samaria he conquered Philistia, Egypt, or at any rate the Ethiopians, and thus was in or near Judaea. This puts Sennacherib's attack in the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah, in the sixth Sargon takes Samaria; Sargon seventeen at least, twenty-three at least complete. Now it has been a question whether it should not be read "in the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah" instead of the fourteenth. "In those days" it is said "of his sickness," but it was certainly before. Further Merodach Baladan sent to congratulate him on his recovery. Now Merodach Baladan was put down by Sargon his first year, but, it is said, immediately returned. But Sennacherib put him down again on his accession to the crown. Thus it might be in the reign of Sargon, when he was king in Babylon, that he sent to Hezekiah, and as Sargon was attacking or had attacked and conquered Philistia and Egypt, the promise to preserve from Assyria was quite natural. Jerusalem would be evidently in danger when Samaria, Philistia and Egypt were conquered, and Merodach Baladan, having resumed his power, would naturally seek to coalesce with Jerusalem, and after chapter 18:15, he had not many treasures to show his ambassadors.