Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
Hamath and Arphad - (note Isaiah 10:9.)
Sepharvaim - literally, the two scribes. The came as Sipphara, on the east of Euphrates, above Babylon, near the modern Mosaib. Berosus ('Fragm. Hist. Gr.,' 2: 501; 4: 280) mentions Sippara as the place where Xithrus (Noah) buried the records of the antediluvian world at the time of the deluge, whence his posterity afterward recovered them. The dual form refers to there being two Sipparas, one on either side of the river. The inscriptions call it Tsipar sha shamas, 'Sippara of the sun. 'Adrammelech and Anamelech, the gods of Sepharvaim' (2 Kings 17:31), answer to the male, or active and the female, or passive powers of the sun (G. Rawlinson). Colonists of Sepharvaim were planted in the land of Israel (thenceforth called Samaria) by the Assyrian conquerer (2 Kings 17:24: cf. 2 Kings 18:34).
Samaria. Shalmaneser began the siege against Hosea because of his conspiring with So of Egypt (2 Kings 17:4). Sargon finished it; and in his palace at Khorsabad has mentioned the number of israelites carried captive-27,280. How just the retribution in kind, that Israel, having chosen the gods of Hamath and Sepharvaim, should be sent to Hamath and Sepharvaim as their place of exile, and that the people of Hamath and Sepharvaim should be sent to the land of Israel to replace the Israelites! (Proverbs 1:31; Jeremiah 2:19.)