2 Kings 17:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea If the king and people of Israel had applied themselves to God, made their peace with him, and addressed their prayers to him, they might, and no doubt would have recovered their liberty, ease, and honour; but they withheld their tribute, and trusted to the king of Egypt to assist them in their revolt, which, if it had been attended with success, would only have been to change their oppressors: but Egypt became to them the staff of a broken reed. This provoked the king of Assyria to proceed against them with the more severity. For he, Hoshea, sent messengers to So, king of Egypt By some heathen writers called Sua, or Sabacus, that, by his assistance, he might shake off the yoke of the king of Assyria, who now was, and for many years had been, the rival of the king of Egypt, 2 Kings 18:21; Jeremiah 37:5. “This So,” says Mr. Locke, “seems to be Sabacon, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, of whom Herodotus relates, that, being warned in a dream, he departed of his own accord from Egypt, after he had reigned there fifteen years. It was in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign that he invaded Egypt, and having taken Boccharis the king thereof prisoner, with great cruelty he burned him alive, and then seized on his kingdom.” Dodd.