(Isa. 10:9–11)
In his pride, the Assyrian looks over his conquests. Carchemish (Fort of Chemosh) was the chief city of the Hittites from 1100 to 850 b.c. It was there that Pharaoh Necho was defeated in 605 b.c., five years before Lehi left Jerusalem. See Jer. 46:2; 2 Chron. 25:20).
The Assyrian king is represented as saying, Since I have made myself the master of kingdoms, the images of which were more powerful than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, why should I not gain possession of Jerusalem and her idols?
(George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 7 vols., ed. Philip C. Reynolds [Salt Lake City: Deseret book Co., 1955–1961], 1:353.)
Sargon records how he conquered and destroyed these cities:
The king’s throne would be set up before the gates of the city and the prisoners would be paraded before him, led by the monarch of the captured town, who would undergo the most agonizing torture, such as having his eyes put out or confinement in a cage, until the king of Assyria set a term to his long-drawn agony. Sargon had the defeated king of Damascus burned alive before his eyes. The wives and daughters of the captured king were destined for the Assyrian harems and those who were not of noble blood were condemned to slavery. Meanwhile the soldiery had been massacring the population, and brought the heads of their victims in into the king’s presence, where they were counted up by the scribes. Not all the male prisoners were put to death, for the boys and craftsmen were led into captivity, where they would be assigned to the hardest tasks on the royal building projects, where the swamps which cover so much of Mesopotamia must have caused an enormously high rate of mortality. The remainder of the population were uprooted and sent to the other end of the empire. (Quoted in A. Heschel, The Prophets [New York: Jewish Publ. Soc. of America, 1962], 163.)
The arrogant boasting of Assyria would eventually bring God’s wrath upon her, but only after she had completed her task against Jerusalem.
(Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 162–63.)