(Isa. 7:8)
What was happening in the political world of Isaiah’s time? Assyria, the enemy of Israel, had embarked on a ruthless campaign to expand its borders. Isaiah’s specific prophecy that in “threescore and five years” Ephraim, or the northern kingdom of Israel, would no longer be a kingdom or a nation was fulfilled. Ephraim fell in 721 b.c., midway through Isaiah’s ministry.
King Sargon II of Assyria deported most of Ephraim’s citizens, some of the ten tribes of Israel, to the north countries. The author of the book of Kings reports on the attack on Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdoms: “Then, the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria” (2 Kgs. 17:5–6).
The deportation of ancient Israel occurred because of the people’s great sins. “For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God … And walked in the statutes of the heathen… . And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God” (vv. 7–10). Years later King Sennacherib campaigned against Judah, defeating many cities and villages, and again deporting many of its citizens.
(Donald W. Parry, Visualizing Isaiah,[Provo, Utah: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2001], 10.)
In this prophecy, Isaiah promises that the Syro-Israelite alliance will fail and that Israel will be scattered within sixty-five years. The fulfillment came about in successive stages. First, Tiglath-Pileser III (Pul) attacked Syria and Israel in 732 b.c. and took many Israelites captive to Assyria, especially those from the northern tribes. Secondly, in 730–727, Pul annexed the Transjordan area and deported large numbers of the Israelite tribes from that area to the far reaches of the Assyrian Empire. Third, in 726, Hoshea refused to pay Assyrian tribute, and Pul’s successor, Shalmaneser, retaliated by attacking Israel and besieging Samaria, which fell in 722 b.c. Thus, within a dozen years of Isaiah’s prophecy, the alliance had completely failed, and three major groups of Israelites had been deported. Finally, large groups of the Israelites fled from Assyria to the remote areas northward and became the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. Apparently, within about fifty years of their leaving Assyria, they were scattered so widely that many of them no longer existed as a cohesive group. Thereby Isaiah’s prophecy to Ephraim was completely realized.
(Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 141–142.)