It was the prophecy of Isaiah that Jerusalem would not fall into the hands of the king of Assyria and that the king who blasphemed the Lord would be destroyed by "a blast" sent by the Lord.
The story is described in detail three times in the Scriptures—in II Kings 18-20, II Chronicles 32, and Isaiah, Chapters 36-38. The first version alone contains the first part of the story about Sennacherib, who conquered all the fenced cities of Judah, and Hezekiah, king of Judah, who submitted to the Assyrian king and paid tribute to him. All three scriptural sources tell about Hezekiah's rebelling against Sennacherib and refusing to submit or to pay tribute. It is obvious that, despite the repeated mention of Lachish, there must have been two different campaigns: in the first, Hezekiah submitted and agreed to pay tribute; the second campaign was a number of years later. In the meantime, Hezekiah had built up "all the wall that was broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall without, and repaired Milo in the city of David, and made darts and shields in abundance. And he set captains of war over the peo-WORLDS IN COLLISION 229
pie. And when Sennacherib came and entered Judah, Hezekiah ordered to stop all the fountains without Jerusalem, and spoke to the people in the city to be strong and courageous." And then came the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian host.
The annals of Sennacherib tell only the first part of the story: the capture of the cities of the land, the submission of Hezekiah, and the tribute he paid. The siege of Lachish is not mentioned on the prism, but an Assyrian relief of this siege is preserved. Nothing is told in the Assyrian sources about defeat in Judea, and only the epilogue, the killing of Sennacherib by his own sons, is described identically in the Scriptures and in a cuneiform inscription of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib.
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The destruction of Sennacherib's army having taken place in a later—evidently the last—
campaign of Sennacherib before his assassination, it was not inserted on the eight-campaign prism; this must have been his ninth, or possibly his tenth, campaign. Its disastrous outcome would not have inspired the king to order a new prism which should include this campaign, too.
In the last century it was realized that the first part of the story in the Book of Kings is the counterpart of the record on the prism, and that the second part of the story in the Book of Kings, as well as the whole story in Chronicles and in the Book of Isaiah, is a separate record of a separate campaign in Palestine.2
2 H. Rawlinson was the first to assume two campaigns of Sennacherib against Palestine. G.
Rawlinson was of the same opinion. The Taylor Cylinder covers the time down to the 20th of Adar —691. H. Winckler supported this view with the argument that Tirhakah the Ethiopian became king of Ethiopia and Egypt after —691: "It can signify only a new campaign of Sennacherib which must have taken place after the destruction of Babylon (689 b. c. ) and of which we have no record by Sennacherib himself."
The reference, "in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah," in the beginning of the record in the Book of Kings, explains why the obvious fact that there were two campaigns escaped earlier commentators. Also, the mention of Lachish in both campaigns was a stumbling block. In this connection K. Fullerton remarked ("The Invasion of Sennacherib" in Biblioteca Sacra, 1906) that Richard Cceur de Lion also made Lachish a base of operations on two different crusades.
Modern historians support the view that Tirhakah did not become king before -689.
See also J. V. Prasek, "Sanheribs Feldziige gegen Juda," Mitt. d. Vorderasiat. Ges. (1903), and R. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1926), p. 259.
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The first campaign against Judah took place in —702 or —701. The date of the second campaign is established as —687, or less probably, -686.
"Of the remaining eight years of his reign [after the conclusion of the prism records] we have no information from his own annals, which now cease. Sennacherib once more arrived in the West (687 or 686?)."3
Ignis e Coelo
The destruction of the army of Sennacherib is described laconically in the Book of Kings: "And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when the people arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt in Nineveh." It is similarly described in the Book of Chronicles: "And the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, prayed and cried to heaven. And the Lord sent an angel which cut off all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he [Sennacherib] returned with shame of face to his own land."
What kind of destruction was this? Malach, translated as "angel," means in Hebrew "one who is sent to execute an order," supposed to be an order of the Lord. It is explained in the texts of the Books of Kings and Isaiah that it was a "blast" sent upon the army of Sennacherib.1 "I will send a blast upon him . . . and [he] shall return to his own land," was the prophecy immediately preceding the catastrophe. The simultaneous death of tens of thousands of warriors could not be due to a plague, as it is usually supposed, because a plague does not strike so suddenly; it develops through contagion, if rapidly, in a few days, and may infect a large camp, but it does not
SH. R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East (1913), p. 490. "The Jewish account seems to be confused, as it stands, with that of the earlier invasion of 701 b. c. In the story of II Kings, Tirhakah is spoken of as king, which he was not till 689 b.c. at the earliest." (Ibid.) See also D.
D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (1924), p. 12. 1II Kings 19 : 7; Isaiah 37 : 7.
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affect great multitudes without showing a curve of cases mounting from day to day.
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The Talmud and Midrash sources, which are numerous, all agree on the manner in which the Assyrian host was destroyed: a blast fell from the sky on the camp of Sennacherib. It was not a flame, but a consuming blast: "Their souls were burnt, though their garments remained intact."
The phenomenon was accompanied by a terrific noise.2
Arad ftbil is the Babylonian designation of ignis e coelo (fire from the sky).3
Another version of the destruction of the army of Sennacherib is given by Herodotus. During his visit in Egypt, he heard from the Egyptian priests or guides to the antiquities that the army of Sennacherib, while threatening the borders of Egypt, was destroyed in a single night. According to this story, an image of a deity holding in his palm the figure of a mouse was erected in an Egyptian temple to commemorate the miraculous event. In explanation of the symbolic figure, Herodotus was told that myriads of mice descended upon the Assyrian camp and gnawed away the cords of their bows and other weapons; deprived of their arms, the troops fled in panic.
Josephus Flavius repeated the version of Herodotus, and added that there is another version by the Chaldeo-Hellenistic historian Berosus. Josephus wrote introductory words to a quotation of Bero-sus, but the quotation itself is missing in the present text of the Jewish Antiquities.
Obviously, it was an explanation different from that of Herodotus. Josephus' own account, somewhat rationalistic as usual, says a (bubonic) plague was the cause of the sudden death of one hundred and eighty-five thousand warriors in the camp of the Assyrians before the walls of Jerusalem on the very first night of the siege.