Isaiah and Jerusalem's Deliverance

"This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth." Isaiah: "Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard… Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land." Sennacherib hears that Tirhakah king of Ethiopia is coming and sends a letter: "Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee."

"And Hezekiah received the letter… and went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD." "O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth… Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations… and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods." Isaiah's oracle: "The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee… I will put my hook in thy nose… He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there… For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake."

"And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." Sennacherib returns to Nineveh. "As he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead."

Why did Sennacherib withdraw?

Sennacherib's annals end the Judah episode with Hezekiah's tribute sent to Nineveh. Proposed explanations: the tribute satisfied him; the Egyptian–Kushite army under Tirhakah forced a withdrawal; an epidemic in the camp (Herodotus 2.141 tells an Egyptian story of mice destroying Sennacherib's army's equipment at Pelusium); or the miracle the Bible describes. Some scholars propose a second campaign later in Sennacherib's reign, partly because Tirhakah was young in 701 BC; others reject it. None of these can be confirmed. The 185,000 is not attested outside the Bible; the site neither confirms nor dismisses it.

Sennacherib's murder

Babylonian chronicles and later sources confirm that Sennacherib was murdered by a son in 681 BC, about twenty years after the campaign; Esarhaddon then took the throne. Esarhaddon's own inscription speaks of brothers who rebelled. One name, Adrammelech, corresponds to Arda-Mulissi (Ardumuzan), a son of Sennacherib named in Assyrian letters. "Nisroch" has not been identified. The library's Greek has "Méserach" and "Asordan."

Three accounts

2 Kings 18:13–19:37 is repeated almost word for word in Isaiah 36–37 (without the tribute verses 18:14–16), and summarized in 2 Chronicles 32. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran preserves Isaiah 36–37 complete.