[578] Isaiah's phrase, na'arî melek, "lads of the king," is contemptuous. LXX., παιδάρια.
[579] Heb., ruach; LXX., δίδωμι ἐν αὐτῷ πνεῦμα. Theodoret calls this "spirit" cowardice (τὴν δειλίαν οἶμαι δηλοῦν).
[580] Libnah means "whiteness." Dean Stanley (S. and P., 207, 258) identifies it with a white-faced hill, the Blanchegarde of the Crusaders.
[581] The dates usually given are Sabaco, b.c. 725-712; Shabatok, 712-698; Tirhakah, 698-672. Manetho, Τάραχος; Strabo, Τεράκων, ὁ Αἰθιώψ. He was third king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, and the greatest of the Egyptian sovereigns who came from Ethiopia. He reigned gloriously for many years. We see his figure at Medinet Abou, smiting ten captive princes with an iron mace; but he was finally defeated by Esarhaddon, and in 668 by Assurbanipal at Karbanit (Canopus). He is called by his conqueror "Tar-ku-u, King of Egypt and Cush" (Schrader, K. A. T., 336 ff.).
[582] Heb., Sepharîm; Vulg., litteræ; 2 Chron. xxxii. 17. The more ordinary term for a letter is iggereth.
[583] 2 Kings xix. 12 (Heb.); Ezek. xxvii. 23. On these places see Schrader, ii. 11, 12. It had been indeed Sennacherib's work "to reduce fenced cities to ruinous heaps." He boasts on the Bellino Cylinder, "Their smaller towns without number I overthrew, and reduced them to heaps of rubbish" (Records of the Past, i. 27).
[584] "It is a prayer without words, a prayer in action, which then passes into a spoken prayer" (Delitzsch).
[585] The Assyrians are sometimes represented in their monuments as hewing idols to pieces in honour of their god Assur (Botta, Monum., pl. 140).
[586] LXX., κινεῖν τὴν κεφαλήν, "a gesture of scorn" (Psalm xxii. 7, cix. 25; Lam. ii. 15). With the vaunts of Sennacherib compare Claudian, De bell. Geth., 526-532.
"Cum cesserit omnis
Obsequiis natura meis? Subsidere nostris
Sub pedibus montes, arescere vidimus amnes ...
Fregi Alpes, galeis Padum victricibus hausi."
Keil, ad loc.