Ezra 4:2

We seek your God. It was true, in a sense, that they sought God, though not like the returned exiles. The Samaritans, inhabitants of the area formerly occupied by the kingdom of Israel, were mainly Aramaeans from Syria and Mesopotamia. They had a mixed religion of paganism and Jehovah worship (see 2 Kings 17:24-33).

Since the days of Esar-haddon. Of a transplantation of people into the region of Samaria by Esarhaddon, who reigned over Assyria from 681-699 B.C., no information is available aside from this statement. However, the prophecy of Isaiah 7:8—a prediction made about a decade before Samaria’s fall—to the effect that Ephraim would be broken within 65 years so “that it be not a people,” may refer to this transplantation. The fulfillment should therefore have taken place before 665 B.C., during Esarhaddon’s reign. It seems that a new uprising against Assyrian power among the remnants of the former Israelite kingdom must have occurred at that time, with the result that the Assyrians moved them out of the country and replaced them by contingents of foreigners, as Sargon II had done after the destruction of Samaria in 723/2 B.C. (2 Kings 17:24). Another, and even later, transplantation of people under “Asnapper” (Ashurbanipal) is mentioned in Ezra 4:10.