Isaiah 20:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod Namely, to besiege it. Tartan is mentioned (2Ki 18:17) as one of the generals of Sennacherib, who is generally supposed to be here meant by Sargon, which was probably one of the seven names by which Jerome, on this place, says he was called. Ashdod, or Azotus, was an eminent and strong city, formerly belonging to the Philistines, in the utmost part of the land of Canaan toward Egypt. Afterward, according to Herodotus, it held out twenty-nine years against Psammitichus, king of Egypt. It is likely that at this time it belonged to Hezekiah's dominions, and that its inhabitants expected to be relieved during the siege by the Egyptians and Cushites, or Ethiopians. The taking of it, Bishop Lowth thinks, must have happened before Sennacherib's attempt on Jerusalem; when he boasted of his late conquests, Isaiah 37:25: and the warning of the prophet had a principal respect to the Jews also, who were too much inclined to depend on the assistance of Egypt.