Abstract
No OTHER foreign king left such a profound impression upon the mind of the Hebrew people as Sennacherib, king of Assyria. His withdrawal from Palestine is still an unsolved mystery, but the enormous effect of this retirement upon the Jewish people's faith in the power of Yahweh to deliver them from even the most formidable of foes can hardly be overestimated. We do not propose here to examine the whole Biblical narrative of 2 Kings 18-19.1 Our interest is centered entirely on the statements with which it concludes: So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and went and dwelt again at Nineveh. And it came to pass as he was worshipping at the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer 2 smote him with the sword, and they escaped to the country of Ararat and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead, 2 Kings 19: 36-37. The classic brevity and conciseness of this biblical account has caused scholars to use it as a historical source and to combine it or harmonize it with the other available evidence. But the historicity of the Biblical statement can by no means be assumed a priori. The author's knowledge rests on a version of the events in question which evidently was handed about among the peoples of the East. How correct it is can only be determined from cuneiform sources.
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