chapter 19

:9), again demanding a surrender. These messengers are said to have been sent when Sennacherib heard that Tirhakah, King of Ethiopia, was marching against him. This narrative goes on to tell how Hezekiah, acting under the advice of Isaiah, delayed his surrender, and how the camp of the Assyrians was decimated by the angel of the Lord, and Jerusalem escaped.

Meinhold and his followers hold that there are here two inconsistent accounts. According to the first, Hezekiah surrendered; according to the second, he did not. According to the first, Hezekiah paid tribute; according to the second, Sennacherib’s army was destroyed. The first of these accounts is confirmed by Sennacherib’s inscription; the second is, so Meinhold holds, shown by it to be unhistorical: first, by the fact that Sennacherib gives no hint that his army was harmed, and, secondly, by the mention of Tirhakah, who did not come to the throne until 688 B. C., and could not, therefore, have been a factor in the war of 701 B. C.

A third view was suggested by Winckler[531] and is held by Prašek,[532] Fullerton,[533] and Rogers.[534] According to this view, Sennacherib made two expeditions against Jerusalem, and 2 Kings 18:13-19:8 is an account of the first of these (the expedition of 701), while 2 Kings 19:9-36 is the account of the second,--an expedition which did not occur until after the accession of Tirhakah, eight or ten years later. The inscription of Sennacherib, already quoted, refers to the first of these expeditions only. We have no inscription of Sennacherib referring to the later disastrous campaign, but that is not surprising, for unless the account of his expedition against the queen of Arabia, already quoted above, belongs to this period, we have no inscriptions referring to the last eight years of his reign. It is thought by the scholars who believe that there were two expeditions, that Sennacherib would approach the queen of Arabia only from the west, so that that inscription is regarded as an incidental confirmation of this view. Of course, an Assyrian king would not record a disaster.

The account in 2 Kings 19:9-36 receives confirmation from an interesting passage in Herodotus, the Greek “father of history.” He says (Book II, 141):

And after this the next king [of Egypt] was a priest of Hephaistos, called Sethôs. He held the warrior class of the Egyptians in contempt as though he had no need of them. He did them dishonor and deprived them of the arable lands which had been granted them by previous kings, twelve acres to each soldier. And afterward Sennacherib, King of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched a great army into Egypt. Then the soldiers of Egypt would not help him; whereupon the priest went into the inner sanctuary to the image of the god and bewailed the things which he was in danger of suffering. As he wept he fell asleep, and there appeared to him in a vision the god standing over him to encourage him, saying that, when he went forth to meet the Arabian army he would suffer no harm, for he himself would send him helpers. Trusting to this dream he collected those Egyptians who were willing to follow him and marched to Pelusium, where the entrance to his country was. None of the warriors followed him, but traders, artisans, and market men. There, as the two armies lay opposite to each other, there came in the night a multitude of field mice, which ate up all the quivers and bowstrings of the enemy, and the thongs of their shields. In consequence, on the next day they fled, and, being deprived of their arms, many of them fell. And there stands now in the temple of Hephaistos a stone statue of this king holding a mouse in his hand, bearing an inscription which says: “Let any who look on me reverence the gods.”

George Adam Smith[535] pointed out several years ago that, when this passage is compared with 2 Kings 19:36, it points clearly to the conclusion that Sennacherib’s army was attacked by bubonic plague. In modern times this plague first attacks rats and mice, which in their suffering swarm the dwellings of men and spread the disease. The Hebrews regarded the attack of such a plague as a smiting by the angel of God. This is shown by 2 Sam. 24:16, 17; Acts 12:23; 2 Kings 19:36. Such a pestilence would render the Assyrian army helpless, and would be regarded by the Hebrews as a divine intervention on their behalf. As it is supported by both the book of Kings and Herodotus, it probably affords us a clue to what really happened to Sennacherib’s army.

We hold, then, that the last of the three views concerning the campaigns of Sennacherib to Palestine is probably correct.

The Elteke mentioned in the inscription of Sennacherib is the city referred to in Josh. 19:44 and 21:23. The Merodachbaladan referred to is mentioned in Isa. 39:1, where it is said that he sent to congratulate Hezekiah upon his recovery from sickness. It is clear from what the Assyrian accounts tell us that his real motive in sending to Hezekiah was to induce him to rebel against Assyria.

=12. The Siloam Inscription.=

The following inscription was discovered in 1880 on the right wall of the tunnel which connects the Virgin’s Well (Ain Sitti Maryam) at Jerusalem with the Pool of Siloam (Birket Silwân).

The boring through [is completed]. And this is the story of the boring through: while yet [they plied] the drill, each toward his fellow, and while yet there were three cubits to be bored through, there was heard the voice of one calling unto another, for there was a crevice in the rock on the right hand. And on the day of the boring through the stone-cutters struck, each to meet his fellow, drill upon drill; and the waters flowed from the source to the pool for a thousand and two hundred cubits, and a hundred cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the stone-cutters;[536] (see Fig. 297).

This inscription, though not dated, is believed to come from the time of Hezekiah. Hezekiah is said in 2 Kings 20:20 to have built a conduit and to have brought the water into the city. This inscription was found in a remarkable conduit which still runs under the hill at Jerusalem, cut through the solid rock. It is about 1,700 feet long. It was cleared of silt by the Parker expedition of 1909-1911, and the tunnel is about 6 feet in height throughout its entire length. When it was cut the wall of Jerusalem crossed the Tyropœon Valley just below it, so that, while the Virgin’s Spring (the Biblical Gihon) lay outside the walls, this aqueduct brought the water to a pool within the walls, so that the inhabitants of the city could, in case of siege, fill their water-jars without exposing themselves to the enemy.

The inscription is now in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople.

=13. Esarhaddon, 681-668 B. C.=

I overthrew the kings of the Hittite country and those beyond the sea; Baal, King of Tyre, Manassah, King of Judah, Kaushgabri, King of Edom, Musuri, King of Moab, Silbaal, King of Gaza, Mitinti, King of Askelon, Ikausu, King of Ekron, Milkiashapa, King of Gebal, Matanbaal, King of Arvad, Abibaal, King of Shamsimuruna, Puduel, King of Beth-Ammon, Ahi-milku, King of Ashdod, 12 kings of the sea-coast; Ekishtura, King of Idalion, Pilagura, King of Kiti, Kisu, King of Sillua, Ituander, King of Paphos, Erisu, King of Sillu, Damasu, King of Kuri, Atmizu, King of Tamesu, Damusi, King of Kartihadasti, Unasagusu, King of Lidir, Bususu, King of Nurenu; 10 kings of Cyprus in the midst of the sea--altogether 22 kings of the Hittite land, of the sea-coast and the midst of the sea--I sent to them and great cedar beams, etc. ......... [they sent].[537]

Esarhaddon, the author of the inscription from which this extract is taken, is mentioned in 2 Kings 19:37 and Isa. 37:38 as Sennacherib’s successor, a statement which the inscriptions abundantly confirm. The above quotation from his inscription shows that Manasseh, King of Judah, 2 Kings 20:21 and