In the conversation recorded in Isa 36 between the palace officials and the Assyrian field commander, he says this (V16-18) -
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with med and come out to me. Then every one of you
will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and drink water from
his own cistern, 17 until I come and take you away to a land like
your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18 Do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from
the hand of the king of Assyria?
The field commander is setting out the options to the people as he (incorrectly) sees them - either they will:
- Resist him and endure a siege and starve to death and the few survivors will be killed
- Surrender and be deported to Assyria to live in a nice country and have plenty to eat.
How truthful this was is a separate question for the moment (he paints a rosier picture than would have actually been the case); nevertheless, it was broadly correct - surrender would be easier for the people. A similar thing had occurred just a few years to Samaria and was also occurring to Lachish.
[Of course, this assumes that God would not interfere and destroy the army as actually occurred but he did not know that then.]
The Pulpit commentary records this:
Verse 17. - Until I come and take you away. It was so much thee usual
policy of Assyria to remove to a new locality a conquered people,
which had given them trouble, that Rabshakeh felt safe in assuming
that the fate in store for the Jews, if they submitted themselves, was
a transplantation. Sargon had transported the Israelites to Gozan and
Media (2 Kings 18:11), the Tibarcni to Assyria, the Commageni to
Susiana ('Ancient Monarchies,' vol. 2. p. 423). Sennacherib himself
had transported into Assyria more than two hundred thousand Aramaeans
(ibid., p. 430). It might be confidently predicted that, if he
conquered them, he would transplant the Jews. Rabshakeh tries to
soften down the hardship of the lot before them by promises of a
removal to a land equal in all respects to Palestine. To a land like
your own land. This was certainly not a general principle of Assyrian
administration. Nations were removed from the far north to the extreme
south, and vice versa, from arid to marshy tracts, from fertile
regions to comparative deserts. The security of the empire, not the
gratification of the transported slaves, was the ruling and guiding
principle of all such changes. A land of corn and wine, a land of
bread and vineyards. The writer of Kings adds, "a land of oil olive
and of honey."
Barnes says something similar:
And take you away - It was common for conquerors in ancient times to
remove a vanquished people from their own country. They did this
either by sending them forth in colonies to people some unsettled
region, or by removing the body of them to the land of the conqueror.
This was done for various purposes. It was sometimes to make slaves of
them; sometimes for the purposes of triumph; but more commonly to
secure them from revolt. In this manner the ten tribes were removed
from the kingdom of Samaria; and thus also the Jews were carried to
Babylon. Suetonius says (chapter xxi.) of Augustus. that he removed
the Suevi and the Sicambri into Gaul, and stationed them on the Rhine.
The same thing was also practiced in Egypt, for the purpose of
securing the people from revolt Genesis 47:21.
