XXXVI.

(1) It came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah . . .--In the judgment of nearly all Assyriologists (Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sayce, Hinckes, Lenormant, Schrader, Cheyne), we have to rectify the chronology. The inscriptions of Sennacherib fix the date of his campaign against Hezekiah in the third year of his reign (B.C. 700), and that coincides not with the fourteenth, but with the twenty-seventh year of the king of Judah. The error, on this assumption, arose from the editor of Isaiah's prophecies taking for granted that the illness of Hezekiah followed on the destruction of Sennacherib's army, or, at least, on his attack, and then reckoning back the fifteen years for which his life was prolonged from the date of his death. Most of the scholars named above have come to the conclusion that the illness preceded Sennacherib's campaign by ten or eleven years, and this, of course, involves throwing back the embassy from Babylon (Isaiah 39) to about the same period. Lenormant (Manual of Ancient History, 1:181) keeping to the Biblical sequence, real or apparent, of the events, meets the difficulty by assuming that Hezekiah reigned for forty-one instead of twenty-nine years, and that Manasseh was associated with him in titular sovereignty even from his birth, and the fifty years of his reign reckoned from that epoch.

Sennacherib king of Assyria.--According to the Assyrian inscriptions, the king succeeded Sargon, who was assassinated in his palace, B.C. 704, and after subduing the province of Babylon which had rebelled under Merodach-baladan, turned his course southward against Hezekiah with four or five distinct complaints--(1) that the king had refused tribute (2Kings 18:14); (2) that he had opened negotiations with Babylon and Egypt (2Kings 18:24) with a view to an alliance against Assyria; (3) that he had helped the Philistines of Ekron to rise against their king who supported Assyria. and had kept that king as a prisoner in Jerusalem (Records of the Past, i. 36-39).

Verse 1. - It came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah. There is an irreconcilable difference between this note of time, in the passage as it stands, and the Assyrian inscriptions. The fourteenth year of Hezekiah was B.C. 714 or 713. Sargon was then King of Assyria, and continued king till B.C. 705. Sennacherib did not ascend the throne till that year, and he did not lead an expedition into Palestine till B.C. 701. Thus the date, as it stands, is cloven or twelve years too early. It is now the common opinion of critics that the chronology of the Books of Kings, speaking generally, is "a later addition to the Hebrew narrative" (Cheyne, 'Isaiah,' vol. 1. p. 199, note 1). It is uncertain when the dates were added; but it would not be long from the time when the addition was made before "Isaiah" would be brought into accord with "Kings." Another view is that the date belongs to the original writings, but that it has suffered corruption, "fourteenth" having been substituted for "twenty-sixth," from an overstrict rendering of the expression, "in those days," which introduces the narrative of ch. 38. That narrative undoubtedly belongs to Hezekiah's fourteenth year. A third view is that of Dr. Hincks, who suggests a derangement of the text, which has attached to an expedition of Sennacherib a date originally belonging to an attack by Sargon. He supposes the original text to have run thus: "And it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that the King of Assyria came up (against him). In those days was King Hezekiah sick unto death, etc. (ch. 38, 39.). And Sennacherib, King of Assyria, came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them," etc. (ch. 36, 37.). The subject has been treated at considerable length by Mr. Cheyne ('Prophecies of Isaiah,' vol. 1. pp. 196-204), who has accidentally ascribed to Sir H. Rawlinson the second of the above theories, which really originated with the present writer. Sennacherib, King of Assyria. The Hebrew rendering of the name is Sankherib, the Greek Sanacharibus or Senacheribus. In the Assyrian the literation is Sin-akhi-irib - and the meaning" Sin (the moon-god) multiplies brothers." Sin-akhi-irib was the son and successor of Sargon. His father was murdered, and he ascended the throne in B.C. 705 (G. Smith, 'Epunym Canon,' p. 67). Came up against all the defenced cities; rather, all the fenced cities, as in 2 Kings 18:13,or "all the fortified cities" (Cheyne). And took them. Sennacberib tells us that, in the campaign of his fourth year ( B.C. 701), he "captured forty-six of the strong cities" belonging to Hezekiah, King of Judah, while of the "fortresses and small cities" he took "a countless number" ('Eponym Canon,' p. 134). (On the causes of the war and its general course, see the Introduction to the book.)

36:1-22:See 2Ki 18:17-37, and the commentary thereon.Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah,.... The following piece of history is inserted from the books of Kings and Chronicles, as an illustration of some preceding prophecies, and as a confirmation of them; see 2 Kings 18:13.

that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah; who in the Apocrypha:

"And if the king Sennacherib had slain any, when he was come, and fled from Judea, I buried them privily; for in his wrath he killed many; but the bodies were not found, when they were sought for of the king.'' (Tobit 1:18)

is said to be the son of Shalmaneser, as he certainly was his successor, who in the sixth year of Hezekiah, eight years before this, took Samaria, and carried the ten tribes captive, 2 Kings 18:10 he is called Sennacherib by Herodotus (c), who says he was king of the Arabians, and the Assyrians; who yet is blamed by Josephus (d), for not calling him the king of the Assyrians only of the Arabians, whereas he styles him both; and the same Josephus observes, that Berosus, a Chaldean writer, makes mention of this Sennacherib as king of Assyria; the same came up in a military way against the fortified cities of Judah, which were the frontier towns, and barriers of their country:

and took them; that is, some of them, not all of them; see Isaiah 37:8, he thought indeed to have took them to himself, this was his intent, 2 Chronicles 32:1, but was prevailed upon to desist, by a payment of three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold to him, by the king of Judah, 2 Kings 18:14.

(c) In Euterpe c. 141. (d) Antiqu. Jud. l. 10. c. 1. sect. 4.