Carried Israel away into Assyria, &c.— The policy of any prince in transplanting a conquered people in another country, is, to prevent their combining (which they cannot so well do in a strange land, and amongst a mixed multitude of different languages), in order to shake off their uneasy yoke, and recover their liberty. Among other rich things which Shalmaneser took and carried away in this expedition was the golden calf which Jeroboam had set up at Bethel, and which ever since his time had been worshipped by the ten tribes that had revolted with him from the house of David, as the other golden calf, which he set up at the same time at Dan, had been taken thence about ten years before by Tiglath-pileser, when he invaded Galilee, the province wherein that city stood. See Prideaux, A. 729 and Seder Olam Rabbi, ch. 22.
Placed them in—the cities of the Medes— Media was then subject to the king of Assyria, which destroys the credit of Ctesias. The king of Assyria here mentioned, Shalmaneser, is not the same king who is mentioned Exodus 17:24 of this chapter (see Ezra 4:2.); unless Shalmanezer and Ezar-haddon was the same king. Marsham makes them to be two different kings. Stackhouse would render the latter part of this verse, he placed them in Halah, and by the river Habor, in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.