All this is inapplicable to the invasion of Sennacherib, when a detachment only of the Assyrian army was sent against Jerusalem from the south-west, and when Isaiah was commissioned by God to promise that the king of Assyria should “not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.” The older commentators were accordingly driven to the desperate expedient of supposing that the invasion described by Isaiah in the tenth chapter of his prophecies was an ideal one. Thanks, however, to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, all is now clear, and we can now understand why it is that the Assyrian monarch, whose march is described by Isaiah, claims to be the conqueror of Calno and Carchemish, of Hamath and Arpad, of Damascus and Samaria (w. 8-10). All these were conquests of Sargon, not of Sennacherib.
Ashdod was taken and razed to the ground, and its inhabitants sold into captivity. Yavan managed to escape to the Egyptian king, who was cowardly enough to give him up to his enemies. Edom and Moab were punished for the part they had taken in the rebellion, and the authority of Sargon was paramount as far as the frontier of Egypt.
All this happened in b.c. 711. The following year the whole power of Assyria was hurled against Merodach-baladan. The Elamites were defeated and their [pg 119] border-towns sacked, and the Babylonian king was compelled to retreat southwards, leaving Babylon in the hands of the Assyrians. A year later he was pursued by Sargon into his last refuge; Bit-Yagina, his ancestral capital, was taken by storm, and he himself forced to surrender. His good fortune never returned. On Sargon's death he once more entered Babylon, but his second reign only lasted six months. After a battle which ended in the complete victory of Sennacherib, he fled again to the marshes, but was driven out of them four years later, and sailed across the Persian Gulf to find a new home on the western coast of Elam. But even here his implacable enemies followed him. In b.c. 697, Sennacherib manned a fleet with Phœnician sailors and destroyed the town the old Chaldean prince had built. After this we hear of him no more.
The tenth chapter of Isaiah teaches us to look for references to the capture of Jerusalem by Sargon in other parts of the book. It is impossible not to recognise one of these in the twenty-second chapter. Here the prophet presents us with the picture of a siege which has already lasted some time, and when the inhabitants of Jerusalem are no longer slain by the sword, but by famine, while the city is on the point of being starved out. Here also the message which Isaiah is bidden to deliver is not a promise of deliverance from the enemy, but the reverse: “It was revealed in my ears by the Lord of Hosts, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of Hosts.” It is only the campaign of Sargon that can explain these words.
Ten years later Judah was again invaded by an Assyrian king, and Jerusalem again threatened by an [pg 120] Assyrian army. Sargon had been murdered by his soldiers, and succeeded by his son, Sennacherib, who mounted the throne on the 12th of the month of Ab, or July, b.c. 705. He was a very different man from his father, weak and vain-glorious, fonder of boasting than of deeds. Trusting to the support of Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, Hezekiah threw off his allegiance to Assyria, and refused to send the yearly tribute to Nineveh. The Phœnicians did the same, while the Jewish king reasserted his former supremacy over the cities of the Philistines. Padi, the king of Ekron, who remained faithful to Assyria, was carried in chains to Jerusalem, and Zedekiah, who is named in the Assyrian records as the king of Ashkelon, was probably of Jewish origin. It was not until three years after his accession that Sennacherib found himself able to march against the rebels. In b.c. 701 he crossed the Euphrates, and made his way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Great and Little Sidon, Sarepta, Acre, and other Phœnician towns, surrendered to the invader, the Sidonian monarch fled to Cyprus, and the kings of Arvad and Gebal hastened to pay their court to the conquerer. Metinti of Ashdod, Pedael of Ammon, Chemosh-nadad of Moab, and Melech-ram of Edom, who were also suspected of having taken part in the rebellion, came at the same time. Judah and the dependent Philistine states alone still held out.
The rest of the history had best be told in Sennacherib's own words. “Zedekiah, king of Ashkelon,” he says, “who had not submitted to my yoke, himself, the gods of the house of his fathers, his wife, his sons, his daughters and his brothers, the seed of the house of his fathers, I removed, and I sent him to Assyria. I set [pg 121] over the men of Ashkelon, Sarludari, the son of Rukipti, their former king, and I imposed upon him the payment of tribute, and the homage due to my majesty, and he became a vassal. In the course of my campaign I approached and captured Beth-Dagon, Joppa, Bene-berak and Azur, the cities of Zedekiah, which did not submit at once to my yoke, and I carried away their spoil. The priests, the chief men, and the common people of Ekron, who had thrown into chains their king Padi because he was faithful to his oaths to Assyria, and had given him up to Hezekiah, the Jew, who imprisoned him like an enemy in a dark dungeon, feared in their hearts. The king of Egypt, the bowmen, the chariots and the horses of the king of Ethiopia, had gathered together innumerable forces and gone to their assistance. In sight of the town of Eltekeh was their order of battle drawn up; they called their troops (to the battle). Trusting in Assur, my lord, I fought with them and overthrew them. My hands took the captains of the chariots and the sons of the king of Egypt, as well as the captains of the chariots of the king of Ethiopia, alive in the midst of the battle. I approached and captured the towns of Eltekeh and Timnath, and I carried away their spoil. I marched against the city of Ekron, and put to death the priests and the chief men who had committed the sin (of rebellion), and I hung up their bodies on stakes all round the city. The citizens who had done wrong and wickedness I counted as a spoil; as for the rest of them who had done no sin or crime, in whom no fault was found, I proclaimed their freedom (from punishment). I had Padi, their king, brought out from the midst of Jerusalem, and I seated him on the throne of royalty over them, and I [pg 122] laid upon him the tribute due to my majesty. But as for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities, together with innumerable fortresses and small towns which depended on them, by overthrowing the walls and open attack, by battle, engines and battering-rams I besieged, I captured. I brought out from the midst of them and counted as a spoil 200,150 persons, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen and sheep without number. Hezekiah himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem, his royal city. I built a line of forts against him, and I kept back his heel from going forth out of the great gate of his city. I cut off his cities which I had spoiled from the midst of his land, and gave them to Metinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Zil-baal, king of Gaza, and I made his country small. In addition to their former tribute and yearly gifts I added other tribute, and the homage due to my majesty, and I laid it upon them. The fear of the greatness of my majesty overwhelmed him, even Hezekiah, and he sent after me to Nineveh, my royal city, by way of gift and tribute, the Arabs and his body-guard whom he had brought for the defence of Jerusalem, his royal city, and had furnished with pay, along with thirty talents of gold, 800 talents of pure silver, carbuncles and other precious stones, a couch of ivory, thrones of ivory, an elephant's hide, an elephant's tusk, rare woods, whatever their names, a vast treasure, as well as the eunuchs of his palace, dancing men and dancing women; and he sent his ambassador to offer homage.”
The Assyrian and the Biblical accounts complete and supplement one another. Sennacherib naturally glosses [pg 123] over the disaster that befel him in Palestine, and transfers the payment of the tribute from the time when Hezekiah vainly hoped to buy off the siege of Jerusalem to the end of the campaign. But he cannot conceal the fact that he never succeeded in taking the revolted city or in punishing Hezekiah, as he had punished other rebel kings, nor did he again undertake a campaign in the west. We find him the next year in Babylonia; then he attacked the tribes of Cilicia; but he never again ventured into Palestine. During the rest of his lifetime Judah had nothing more to fear from the Assyrian king.
At first sight there seems to be a discrepancy between the number of silver talents stated in the Bible to have been paid by Hezekiah, and the number which Sennacherib claims to have received. But the discrepancy is only an apparent one. It has been shown that there were two standards of value, according to one of which 500 talents of silver would be equivalent to 800 talents, if reckoned by the other. A more real discrepancy is to be found in the statement of Sennacherib that he had built a line of forts round about Jerusalem, and prevented Hezekiah from getting out of it. This is in flagrant contradiction to the words of Isaiah, that the Assyrian king should not shoot an arrow into Jerusalem, nor assault it under the cover of shields, nor cast a bank against it. Sennacherib claims to have performed more than he actually did.
Another discrepancy has been found in the date assigned by the Biblical narrative to the Assyrian invasion. The year b.c. 701 was the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah, not the fourteenth, which fell in b.c. 711, the year of Sargon's campaign. But this very [pg 124] fact supplies an explanation of the difficulty. In the retrospective record of the prophetical annalist, the two campaigns of Sargon and Sennacherib have been brought into association, though the history dwells only upon that one which illustrated God's way of dealing with His faithful servants. Hence it is that reminiscences of the earlier invasion are allowed to enter here and there into the narrative. It was Sargon, and not Sennacherib, who was the conqueror of Hamath and Arpad, of Sepharvaim and Samaria (2 Kings xviii. 34-36). It was Sargon, and not Sennacherib, who invaded Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign.
There is a bas-relief in the British Museum which represents Sennacherib seated on his throne in front of Lachish, and receiving the spoil of the city as it passed before him. It was while he was encamped before this city that Hezekiah despatched the embassy with gifts and tribute and prayers for pardon. Sennacherib accepted the gifts, but refused the pardon; nothing would content him but the absolute surrender of Jerusalem and its king. Hezekiah then prepared for his defence. We gather from Isaiah's writings that there were at that period three parties in the State, each of which at different times gained an influence over the king and his councillors. There was first the party headed by Shebna—whose name proves him to have been of Syrian parentage—which advocated alliance with Egypt and hostility to Assyria. This was the party with which Isaiah had mainly to contend, but its power was not finally extinguished until after the retreat of Tirhakah from the battle of Eltekeh, and this visible proof that Egypt was but a bruised reed to lean upon. The second party inherited the policy of Ahaz, [pg 125] and urged that Judah's only chance of safety lay in submission to the mighty Empire of Assyria. Isaiah was the representative of the third party. He announced God's own declaration, that He would defend His city and temple if only its inhabitants would trust and fear Him, and reject all alliances with the heathen nations that surrounded them. “In quietness and in confidence” should be their strength. It was not until events had demonstrated the truth of Isaiah's message that the rulers of Jerusalem reluctantly accepted it, and recognised at last that the true policy of Judah was to abstain from mixing in the wars and intrigues of the foreign idolater.