When David founded his empire his two powerful neighbours, Egypt and Assyria, were both in a state of decline. Assyria had fallen into the hands of unwarlike kings, who were unable to retain the conquests of their predecessors, even upon their immediate frontiers; while Egypt was divided among rival dynasties and rent with civil wars. Egypt, however, was the first to recover her strength. The monarchs of the twenty-second dynasty once more united the country under one rule, and Shishak or Sheshank I turned his arms against the cities of Palestine. The brief account given in 1 Kings xi, 26, and the fuller history in 2 Chron. xii. of his invasion of Judah and his capture of Jerusalem, are supplemented by his own record of it on the walls of the ruined temple of Karnak. Here the Egyptian king is represented as striking down the conquered Hebrews with a colossal club, while beside him run long rows of embattled shields, within each of which is the name of a vanquished city. Among them we find the names not only of Jewish towns but of Israelitish fortresses also such as Megiddo, Taanach, and Abel a proof that the Egyptian campaign was directed against the northern kingdom as well as against Judah, and could not, therefore, have been undertaken at the instigation of Jeroboam, as has sometimes been supposed. One of the cities is called Judah-melek, or “Judah-king,” a title by which it is possible that Jerusalem may have been intended. At any rate, there is otherwise no mention of the royal city of Rehoboam among the shields that have been preserved.

The vigorous rule of Shishak had not ceased long before Egypt once more sank into a state of anarchy and weakness, which ended in its conquest by the Ethiopian Sabako, the So of the Old Testament (2 Kings xvi. Meanwhile Assyria had recovered its strength, and had entered upon a new career of conquest. In B.C. 858 Shalmaneser II came to the throne, and his long reign of thirty-five years was one continuous history of campaigns against his neighbours, in the course of which the authority of Assyria was extended as far as the Mediterranean. The growing power of Damascus, which Rezón had torn from the empire of David in the time of Solomon (1 Kings x-25), formed the chief object of his attack. Already, in the sixth year of his reign, he had overthrown the combined forces of Damascus, of Hamath, and of the Hittites, and had slain 20,500 of his enemies in battle. Damascus was at this time governed by Hadad-idri or Hadadezer, the Ben-hadad II of Scripture, the Scriptural name being a standing title of the Syrian kings, and signifying “the son of Hadad,” the supreme deity of Damascus. Three years later Shalmaneser again attacked the Syrian king; but it was not until his fourteenth year, when he crossed the Euphrates with an army of 120,000 men, that he achieved any substantial success.

The campaign of the sixth year is narrated in detail in an inscription engraved by the Assyrian monarch on the rocks of Armenia. Here we learn that, after crossing the Euphrates, he received the tribute of the Hittite states in Pethor, the city of Balaam, which he describes as being situated at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur. He then marched to Aleppo, where more gifts were brought to him, and after capturing three of the fortresses of Hamath, reached the royal city of Karkar or Aroer. This, he says, “I threw down, I dug up, I burned with fire; 1,200 chariots, 1,200 war-magazines, and 20,000 men belonging to Hadadezer of Damascus; 700 chariots, 700 war-magazines, and 10,000 men belonging to Irkhulina of Hamath; 2,000 chariots and 10,000 men belonging to Ahab of Israel (Sirla); 500 men of the Kuans; 1,000 men from Egypt; 10 chariots and 10,000 men from the land of Irkanat; 2,000 men belonging to Matinu-baal of Arvad; 2,000 men from the land of Usanat; 30 chariots and 10,000 men belonging to Adoni-baal of Sizan; 1,000 men belonging to Gindibuh of the Arabians; and several hundred men belonging to Baasha, the son of Rehob, of the Ammonites these twelve kings led their troops to its help, and came to make war and fighting against me. By the supreme help which Assur, the lord, gave (me), with the mighty weapons which the great defender who went before me lent (to me), I fought with them. From the city of Karkar, as far as the city of Guzau I overthrew them. Fourteen thousand of their fighting men I slew with weapons; like the Air-god I bade the storm issue forth upon them; with their corpses I filled the face of the waters; their vast armies I brought down with my weapons; there was not room enough in the country for their dead bodies; to preserve the life of it I brought back a vast multitude, and distributed them among its men. The banks of the River Orontes I reached. In the midst of this battle I took away from them their chariots, their war-magazines, and their horses trained to the yoke.”

The first question that presents itself to us when we read this inscription is how we are to reconcile the mention of Ahab in it with the date of the battle of Karkar (B.C. 853). According to the chronology adopted in the margin of our Bibles, Ahab would have been dead long before the event. The Assyrian monuments, however, have proved that this chronology exceeds the true one by more than forty years; and the date assigned to Ahab by the inscription harmonises completely with the dates that other inscriptions assign to later kings of Israel and Judah. In all probability, the battle of Karkar took place shortly before Ahab’s death; and it was no doubt in consequence of the defeat undergone there by the Syrian forces that Ahab was not only enabled to shake off his subjection to Damascus, but also to ally himself with Judah, and endeavour to recover the frontier fortress of Ramoth, of which Israel had been robbed. The alliance between Ahab and the king of Damascus is recorded in 1 Kings x. The battle of Karkar must have followed not very long afterwards, since the attack on Ramoth was made within three years after the conclusion of the alliance. Ahab’s death may, therefore, be placed in B.C. 851.

Another question that may be asked is how the Assyrian monarch can say that twelve princes were arrayed in arms against him, when, according to his own enumeration, the forces of only eleven nations were present, some of which do not seem to have been under the command of any king. The only answer that can be given is that Shalmaneser is guilty of a similar arithmetical inaccuracy to that which makes him say that 14,000 of the enemy fell in battle, whereas, according to other accounts, the number was really 20,500; though it is possible that the latter number may include the loss in other battles that took place during the campaign besides the decisive one at Karkar. When, however, we find such arithmetical corruptions as these in contemporaneous documents, we need not wonder that the numerical statements of the Old Testament have become changed and uncertain in their passage through the hands of generations of copyists.

We may infer from the fifth chapter of 2 Kings that the god Rimmon was the chief object of worship of Hadadezer or Ben-hadad, the Syrian king. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown us why this was so. Rimmon is the Assyrian Ramman, the Air-god, and Ramman is specially identified with the Syrian deity Hadad, whose name enters into that of Hadadezer. Hadad-Rimmon, in fact, was the supreme divinity of Damascus, where he represented, not the god of the air, as among the Assyrians, but Baal, the Sun-god, himself. Hence it is that in Zechariah xi, reference is made to the “mourning of Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo,” that is to say, to the yearly festival, when the women mourned for the death of the Sun-god, slain, as it was imagined, by the winter. In Phoenicia the god was known as Adonis, the “lord,” or under his old Babylonian title of Tammuz. It was for Tammuz, it will be remembered, that Ezekiel saw the women sitting and weeping within the precincts of “the Lord’s house” itself in Jerusalem (Ezek. vii.

Hadadezer was murdered between the fourteenth and eighteenth years of Shalmaneser, and the crown seized by Hazael. In his eighteenth year the Assyrian king moved against the usurper, and captured his camp along with 1,121 chariots and 470 war-magazines. The battle took place on the summit of Sanir or Shenir the name given to Mount Hermon by the Amorites according to Deut. ii “which lies over against Lebanon.” Here 16,000 of the Syrians fell in battle, and Hazael fled to Damascus, whither he was followed by the Assyrians. Damascus, however, proved too strong to be captured, and Shalmaneser accordingly contented himself with cutting down the trees by which it was surrounded, and retiring into the Hauran, where he burnt the unwalled towns, and carried away their inhabitants into captivity. He then followed the high road from Damascus to the Mediterranean, and on the promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Dog River, near Beyrut, had an image of himself carved upon the rocks. At the same place he received the tribute of Tyre and Sidon, as well as of “Yahua, the son of Khumri,” that is to say, of Jehu, the descendant of Omri. In calling Jehu a descendant of Omri, the Assyrian king was misinformed; he had heard nothing of the revolution which had extirpated the house of Omri, and had placed Jehu upon the throne. Like Ahab, therefore, Jehu was supposed to be a son of Omri, the founder of Samaria, which is frequently termed Beth-Omri, “the house of Omri,” in the Assyrian inscriptions, though in the later days of Tiglath-Pileser II and Sargon, “Beth-Omri” is superseded by “Samirina.” This was the Aramaic form of the native name Shimron, and must consequently have been derived by the Assyrians from the Aramaic neighbours of the Israelites.

In the Assyrian Hall of the British Museum there now stands a small obelisk of black marble, which was brought from Calah by Sir A. H. Layard, on which Shalmaneser records the annals of his reign. The upper portion of the monument is occupied by a series of reliefs representing the tribute brought to the Assyrian monarch by the distant nations which had sought his favour. Among the reliefs is one in which the ambassadors of Jehu are depicted bearing their offerings of gold and silver bars, of a golden vase and a golden spoon, of cups and goblets of gold, of pieces of lead, of a royal sceptre and of clubs of wood. Their features are those which are still characteristic of the Jewish race, and their fringed robes descend to their ankles.

The death of Shalmaneser brought with it a period of peace for Damascus and Palestine. His son and successor turned his arms in other directions, and Hazael and his successor, Ben-hadad III, were left free to ravage Israel (2 Kings xii. It was not until the Israelites, under Jeroboam II, had taken ample revenge upon the Syrians, and the coast of Israel was restored “from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain,” that an Assyrian monarch once more marched towards the west. This was Rimmon-nirari, grandson of Shalmaneser, who reigned from B.C. 810 to 781, and reduced the kingdom of Damascus to a condition of vassalage. Damascus was now under the government of a king called Marih, the successor, probably, of Ben-hadad III, who, after undergoing a siege at the hands of the Assyrians, was glad to make terms with them by acknowledging the supremacy of Rimmon-nirari, and by giving him 2,300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3,000 talents of copper, 5,000 talents of iron, embroidered robes and clothes of fine linen, a couch inlaid with ivory and an ivory parasol, besides other treasures and furniture without number which his palace contained. It is very possible that Jeroboam’s successes against the Syrians were in large measure due to the extent to which they had been weakened by the Assyrians. Rimmon-nirari also claims to have received tribute from Tyre and Sidon, from Beth-Omri, from Edom, and from Palastu or Palestine a name under which we should probably include not only the district inhabited by the Philistines, but the kingdom of Judah as well. The tribute was no doubt sent to him after his triumphal entry into Damascus.

With Rimmon-nirari the power of the older dynasty of the Assyrian kings came to an end. His successors were scarcely able to defend themselves against the attacks of their neighbours on the north and south; diseases and insurrections broke out in the great cities of the kingdom, and finally, in B.C. 746, there was a rising in Calah; the king either died or was put to death, and before the year was over, in the month of April, B.C. 745, the crown was seized by a military adventurer, named Pul, who assumed the title of Tiglath-Pileser II. Tiglath-Pileser I had been the most famous monarch and most extensive conqueror of the older dynasty, and had reigned over Assyria five centuries previously; by assuming his name, therefore, the usurper wished to show that he intended to emulate his deeds. According to later tradition, the new king had begun his career as a gardener; whether this were true or not, he showed great military and executive capacities after he had established himself on the throne, and it was to him that the second Assyrian empire owed its origin.

Tiglath-Pileser determined to cement the various states of Western Asia into a single empire, governed by satraps appointed at Nineveh, and accountable only to the king. Each satrapy, or province, had to provide a certain number of men for the imperial army, and to pay a fixed annual tribute to the imperial treasury. Thus, Nineveh itself was assessed at 30 talents, ten of which went to the general expenditure, while the remaining twenty were devoted to the maintenance of the fleet. Calah paid 9 talents; Carchemish, once the rich capital of the Hittites, paid 100; Arpad 30; and Megiddo but 15. Besides gold and silver, the cities and provinces were called upon to furnish chariots, clothing, and other similar contributions.

Two years after his accession (B.C. 743) Tiglath-Pileser II turned his attention to the west. Arpad, now Tel-Erfad, near Aleppo, was the first object of attack. It held out for three years, and did not fall until B.C. 740. But, meanwhile, the kingdom of Hamath had been shattered by the Assyrian arms. Nineteen of its districts were placed under Assyrian governors, and the Assyrian forces made their way as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Azri-yahu, or Azariah (Uzziah), the Jewish king, had been the ally of Hamath, and from him also punishment was accordingly exacted. He was compelled to purchase peace by the offer of submission and the payment of tribute. The alliance between Judah and Hamath had been of long standing. David had been the friend of its king Tou or Toi; and at the beginning of Sargon’s reign the king of Hamath bears a distinctively Jewish name. This is Yahu-bihdi, or, as it is elsewhere written, Ilu-bihdi, where the word ilu, “god,” takes the place of the name of the covenant God of Israel. It is even possible that Yahu-bihdi was a Jew who had been placed on the throne of Hamath by Azariah. At any rate, the alliance between Judah and Hamath explains a passage in 2 Kings xi, which has long presented a difficulty. It is now clear that Jeroboam is here stated to have won over Hamath to Israel, though previously it had “been allied with Judah.” But after Jeroboam’s death, Jewish influence must once more have gained an ascendency among the Hamathites.

Two years after the fall of Arpad, Tiglath-Pileser was again in the west. On this occasion he held a levee of subject princes, among whom Rezón of Damascus and Manahem of Samaria came to offer their gifts and do homage to their sovereign lord.(7) The tribute which Tiglath-Pileser states that he then received from the Israelitish king was given, according to the Book of Kings, to Pul. We may infer from this, therefore, that the Assyrian monarch was still known to the neighbouring nations by his original name, and that it was not until later that they became accustomed to the new title he had assumed. The inference is further borne out by the statement of an ancient Greek astronomer, Ptolemy. When speaking of the eclipses which were observed at Babylon, Ptolemy gives a list of Babylonian kings, with the length of their reigns, from the so-called era of Nabonassar, in B.C. 747, down to the time of Alexander the Great. In this list, Tiglath-Pileser, after his conquest of Babylon, is named Porös or Por, Por being the Persian form of Pul.

During the lifetime of Menahem Israel remained tributary to Assyria, and the Assyrian king did not again turn his arms against the west. After the death of Menahem and the murder of his son Pekahiah, however, important changes took place. The usurper, Pekah, in alliance with Rezón of Damascus, attacked Judah with the intention of overthrowing the dynasty of David and placing on the throne of Jerusalem a vassal king whose father’s name, Tabeel, shows that he must have been a Syrian. Jotham, the Jewish king, died shortly after the war began, and the youth and weakness of his son and successor Ahaz laid Judah open to its antagonists, who were further aided by a disaffected party within the capital itself (Isa. vii. In his extremity, therefore, Ahaz appealed to the Assyrian monarch, who was already seeking an excuse for crushing Damascus, and reducing the Jewish kingdom, with its important fortress of Jerusalem, to a condition of vassalage. In B.C. 734, accordingly, Tiglath-Pileser marched into Syria. Rezón was defeated in a pitched battle, his chariots broken in pieces, his captains captured and impaled, while he himself escaped to Damascus, where he was closely besieged by the enemy. The territory of Damascus was now devastated with fire and sword, its sixteen districts were “overwhelmed as with a flood,” and the beautiful gardens by which the capital was surrounded were destroyed, every tree being cut down for use in the siege. The city itself, however, proved too strong to be taken by assault; so, leaving a sufficient force before it to reduce it by famine, Tiglath-Pileser proceeded against the late allies of the Syrian king. Israel was the first to be attacked. The north of the country was overrun, and the tribes beyond the Jordan carried into captivity. Gilead and Abel-beth-maachah are mentioned by name as among the towns that were taken and sacked.(8) The Assyrians then fell upon Ammon and Moab, which had aided Israel and Syria in the attack on Judah, and next made their way along the sea-coast into the country of the Philistines, who had seized the opportunity of the late war to shake off the yoke of the Jewish king. Their leader, Khanun or Hanno of Gaza, fled into Egypt; but Gaza itself was captured and laid under tribute, its gods carried away, and an image of the Assyrian king set up in the temple of Dagon. Ekron and Ashdod were also punished, and Metinti of Ashkelon committed suicide in order to escape the vengeance of the conqueror.

Now that all fear of danger in the south had been removed, Tiglath-Pileser marched back into the northern kingdom, took Samaria, and (according to his own account) put Pekah to death, appointing Hosea king in his place. A yearly tribute of ten talents of gold and a thousand of silver was at the same time exacted. Shortly afterwards some of the Assyrian troops were sent against the Edomites and the Queen of the Arabs, who had also revolted against Assyria and joined the Syro-Israelite league. Indeed, this league seems to have been formed for the purpose of checking the Assyrian advance, and the war against Judah to have been due to a refusal of Jotham to take part in it. It was an anticipation of the league that was afterwards formed in the time of Hezekiah against the growing power of Sargon.

Meanwhile, after a siege of two years, Damascus fell in B.C. 732. Rezón was slain, his subjects transported into captivity, and a great court, like a durbar in modern India, was held in his palace by Tiglath-Pileser. Among the subject-princes who attended it was Ahaz of Judah. He is called Jehoahaz in the Assyrian inscriptions, and it is therefore clear that the sacred historians have dropped the first part of the name, in consequence of the character of the king. The divine name would have been profaned by its association with an idolatrous and unworthy prince. As Khanun appeared at the court along with Kavus-melech of Edom, Metinti of Ashkelon, Solomon of Moab, and Sanib of Ammon, he must have succeeded in obtaining a pardon. It was while Ahaz was at Damascus in attendance on the Assyrian monarch that he saw the altar, the pattern of which he sent to Urijah, ordering it to be set up in the court of the Lord’s house.

Tiglath-Pileser died in B.C. 727, and was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV. The refusal of Hosea to continue the annual tribute brought the new Assyrian monarch into the west. Tyre was besieged unsuccessfully, Hosea carried away captive, and Samaria blockaded for three years. During the blockade Shalmaneser died, and the crown was seized by one of the Assyrian generals. The latter assumed the name of Sargon, in memory of the famous Babylonian monarch who had reigned so many centuries before. The capture of Samaria took place in his first year (B.C. 722); 27,280 of its inhabitants were sent into exile, but only fifty chariots were found in the city. An Assyrian governor was appointed over it, who was commissioned to send each year to Nineveh the same tribute as that paid by Hosea. The comparatively small number of Israelites who were carried into captivity shows that Sargon contented himself with removing only those persons and their families who had taken part in the revolt against him; in fact, Samaria was treated pretty much as Jerusalem was by Nebuchadrezzar in the time of Jehoiachin. The greater part of the old population was allowed to remain in its native land. This fact disposes of the modern theories which assume that the whole of the Ten Tribes were carried away. The districts to which the captives were taken were Halah, the banks of the Habor, or river of Gozan, and the cities of the Mèdes. Halah was not far from Haran in Mesopotamia, on the western side of the Habor, the modern Khabur, which flows into the Euphrates, and rises in the country called Guzana, or Gozan, in the Assyrian inscriptions. The Mèdes were the tribes who lived eastward of Kurdistan, which, like Mesopotamia, had been overrun by Tiglath-Pileser.

The places of the captive Israelites were not supplied immediately. We learn from the Old Testament that it was from Hamath and the cities of Babylonia that the new inhabitants were brought. Now Hamath was not conquered by Sargon until B.C. 720, and Babylonia not until B.C. 710. Hamath had broken into revolt under Yahu-bihdi or Ilu-bihdi, who induced Arpad, Damascus, and Samaria to follow its example. But its chastisement was speedy and sharp. Sargon captured Ilu-bihdi in the city of Aroer, and flayed him alive; while Hamath received a colony of 4,300 Assyrians and an Assyrian governor. Samaria was next punished, and Sargon then marched southward against the combined forces of Khanun of Gaza and Sabako or So of Egypt. A battle at Raphia decided the fate of the struggle, and Khanun fell into the hands of his enemies.

The Babylonian cities from which some of the new settlers in Samaria were taken were Cuthah and Sepharvaim. Cuthah is now represented by the mounds of Tel Ibrahim, to the north-west of Babylon. It was under the special protection of Nergal, whose name means “the lord of the great city,” the god of the under-world. Sepharvaim, or “the two Sipparas,” stood on opposite banks of the Euphrates. The quarter on the eastern bank, now called Abu-Habba, was Sippara proper, where, according to Babylonian tradition, Sisuthros had buried his books before the Deluge; the quarter on the other bank being Agade or Accad, the old capital of Sargon I, which gave its name to the whole of the northern portion of Chaldea. In later times the two quarters were distinguished from one another as “Sippara of Samas,” the Sun-god, and “Sippara of Anunit.” Anunit was the wife of the god Anu, “the sky”; and when the Bible says that “the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Anammelech” reference is made to “Anu the king.” Adrammelech, or “Adar the king,” was another Babylonian deity, who was originally a form of the Sun-god.

We may gather from Ezra i, 10, that Samaria was colonised a second time by the Assyrians, perhaps in consequence of an unsuccessful revolt. This took place in the reign of Esar-haddon. His son Asnapper, or Assur-bani-pal, settled a number of Elamite tribes in the country, among them being natives of Susa and of Apharsa or Mal Amir. Men from Babylon and Erech were also settled there at the same time. The names of the new colonists would suit the reign of Assur-bani-pal better than that of Esar-haddon, since it was Assur-bani-pal, and not Esar-haddon, who conquered Elam and Susa, and took by storm both Babylon and Erech. It is, therefore, probable that Esar-haddon in verse 2 is a scribe’s error for Asnapper.

The reduction of the northern kingdom of Israel into an Assyrian province brought the Assyrian empire to the very borders of Judah, and the Assyrian kings began to cast longing eyes upon the territory of the latter. Its capital, Jerusalem, was an almost impregnable fortress, the possession of which would open the road into Egypt, as well as block the passage of an Egyptian army into Asia. But as yet there was no excuse for attacking it. Hezekiah, the successor of Ahaz, continued to pay the tribute his father had consented to give to the Assyrians, and Sargon accordingly occupied himself in wars elsewhere. Suddenly, however, an event occurred which brought him once more into Palestine. In order to understand this, we must turn our eyes for a moment or two to Babylonia.

The Babylonians had seized the opportunity offered by the death of Tiglath-Pileser to shake off the Assyrian yoke. For five years they remained free. Then in B.C. 722 the country was occupied by a man of great energy and ability, Merodach-baladan, the son of Yagina.(9) Merodach-baladan was the hereditary chief of the Kalda or Chaldeans, a small tribe at that time settled in the marshes at the mouth of the Euphrates, but which, in consequence of his conquest of Babylon afterwards, became the dominant caste in Babylonia itself. For twelve years he continued undisputed master of the country we may henceforth call Chaldea. Sargon, however, was becoming every year more powerful, and it was evident that another Assyrian invasion of Babylonia would not be long postponed. Merodach-baladan determined to anticipate the attack. He therefore endeavoured to form a vast league between the states on both the eastern and the western sides of the Assyrian empire, whose independence was menaced by their powerful neighbour. Babylonia and Elam were the eastern members of the league, and ambassadors were sent to the west, to concert measures with the various states of Palestine, as well as with Egypt, for common action against Sargon.

Hezekiah, now in the fourteenth year of his reign (2 Kings x, had just recovered from a dangerous illness, which had been aggravated by the fear of Assyria, and the fact that as yet he had no son to succeed him. The illness formed the pretext by which the conspirators hoped to blind the eyes of Sargon to the real objects of the embassy; it was published to the world that the ambassadors had come merely to congratulate the Jewish king on his recovery. But Sargon knew well that Merodach-baladan would not have troubled himself to enquire after the health of a brother-king without a further motive, and he doubtless learned that Hezekiah had shown the ambassadors all the treasures and arms with which he hoped to support the league. The consequence was, that before the confederates were prepared to resist him, the Assyrian monarch had swooped down upon them and attacked them singly.

Palestine was the first to suffer. Akhimit, whom Sargon had appointed king of Ashdod, had been dethroned, and the crown given to an usurper named Yavan or “the Greek.” Yavan seems to have been the nominee of Hezekiah, who at this time exercised a sort of suzerainty over the Philistine cities, and he was set up as king for the purpose of heading the Philistine revolt against Assyria. Edom and Moab also sent contingents to the war, and the Ethiopian king of Egypt promised help. Of the details of the struggle between Sargon and the western states we unfortunately know nothing. But it did not last long; neither Babylonia nor Egypt had time to send any assistance to their allies. The Tartan or Commander-in-chief was ordered to invest Ashdod (see Isa. x, while Sargon himself overran “the wide-spreading land of Judah,” and captured its capital Jerusalem. This conquest of Judah by Sargon explains prophecies of Isaiah which have hitherto been unsolved mysteries. Thus an explanation is at length offered of the circumstances described by the prophet in chapters x. and xi. Here the Assyrian army is described as marching along the usual high-road from the north-east, and as halting at Nob, only an hour’s journey distant from Jerusalem, on the very day when the oracle was uttered,(10) while Isaiah declares that the capital itself shall fall into the hands of the enemy , 12, 22, 24, 34).

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 -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 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 Phoenician 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 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 Phoenicians 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 Phoenician 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 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 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 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 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 xvii-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, 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.

When the Jewish embassy arrived at Lachish, the Egyptian party seems still to have been in the ascendant. In spite of the prophet’s warning, envoys had been sent to Egypt (Isa. xxx. xxxi.), and had returned full of confidence in an alliance, which yet was to be to them not “an help nor profit, but a shame and also a reproach.” The battle of Eltekeh dissipated their hopes. This was fought after the capture of Lachish, when Sennacherib was endeavouring to take the neighbouring fortress of Libnah (2 Kings xi, 9). The Rab-shakeh or Prime Minister had been sent against Jerusalem along with the Tartan or Commander-in-chief and the Rab-saris or Chamberlain, and after delivering his message to its defenders had returned to Sennacherib, leaving a considerable force under the Tartan encamped outside its walls. The message had been delivered in Hebrew, not in Assyrian or in Aramaic (Syrian), which at that time was the general language of trade and diplomacy in Western Asia, like French in modern Europe. Every politician was expected to speak it, and Hezekiah’s ministers take it for granted that the Rab-shakeh would be able to do so. The fact that he preferred to speak in Hebrew gives us a high idea of the education of the age. Every cultivated Assyrian was acquainted with Accadian, the old dead language of Babylonia, which was to an Assyrian what Latin is to us; and in addition to this diplomatists and men of business were required to know Aramaic, while we here find the highest of Assyrian officials further able to converse in Hebrew.

A reminiscence of the disaster which befel the Assyrian army was preserved in an Egyptian legend, which ascribed it to the piety of an Egyptian king. Influenced by this legend, some scholars have supposed that it took place at Pelusium, on the Egyptian frontier; but the language of Scripture seems hardly to leave a doubt that it really happened before Jerusalem. The result was the abrupt breaking up of the Assyrian camp and the termination of the siege of Jerusalem. Sennacherib hastened back to Nineveh, and the court annalists were bidden to draw a veil of silence over the conclusion of the campaign.

Hezekiah did not long survive his wonderful deliverance. Next to Solomon he seems to have been the most cultivated of the Jewish kings. His public works rendered Jerusalem one of the most formidable fortresses of the ancient world; and if the tunnel of Siloam belongs to his reign, it is clear that he had at his disposal engineering skill of a high order. He was not only himself a poet, but a restorer of the old psalmody and a patron of literature. In imitation, probably, of the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia, he established a library in Jerusalem, where scribes were employed, as they were at Nineveh, in making new editions of ancient works (see Prov. xx.). Ahaz had introduced into Judah the study of astronomy, for which the Babylonians were renowned, and had set up a gnomon or sun-dial in the palace-court (2 Kings x. It is possible that some of the astronomical literature of Babylonia, which has been recovered from the cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum, was introduced at the same time, with its multitudinous observations and prediction of eclipses, its notices of the appearance of comets, of the movements of the planets and fixed stars, of the phases of Venus, and even of spots on the sun. It is also possible that the Assyrian calendar and the Assyrian names of the months now first became familiar to the Jews. At any rate, it would seem, from Jer. xxii, 11, that clay came to be used in Judah as a writing material, just as it was at Babylon or Nineveh, the inner clay record of a contract being covered with an outer coating, on which was inscribed an abstract of its contents, together with the names of the witnesses. Jeremiah’s deed of purchase, moreover, was preserved in a jar, like the numerous clay deeds of the Egibi banking-firm, which existed at Babylon from the age of Nebuchadrezzar to that of Xerxes. These jars served the purpose of our modern safes.

Sennacherib lived for twenty years after his withdrawal from Palestine. In B.C. 681 he was murdered by his two elder sons, Adar-melech and Nergal-sharezer, who were jealous of the favour shown by him towards their younger brother Esar-haddon. A curious evidence of this favour exists among the tablets in the British Museum. This is nothing less than the will of Sennacherib, made apparently some years before his death, in which he bequeaths to Esar-haddon certain private property. The document reads as follows: “I, Sennacherib, king of multitudes, king of Assyria, bequeath armlets of gold, quantities of ivory, a platter of gold, ornaments, and chains for the neck, all these beautiful things of which there are heaps, and three sorts of precious stones, one and a half manehs and two and a half shekels in weight, to Esar-haddon my son, whose name was afterwards changed to Assur-sar-illik-pal by my wish. The treasure is deposited in the house of Amuk.” The king was excused the necessity of having his will attested by witnesses, as was obligatory in the case of other persons; and it is plain that at the time when it was made Esar-haddon was not the recognised heir to the throne.

The murder of the old king took place, according to the Bible, “as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god.” The reading of the god’s name, however, is corrupt, since no such deity was known to the Assyrians, and it is possible that Nusku, the companion of Nebo, the patron of literature, is intended. A war was going on at the time between Assyria and Armenia, and the murderers finding, apparently, no adherents in Nineveh, fled to Erimenas, the Armenian king. Esar-haddon, at the head of the Assyrian veterans, met them and the Armenian forces, a few weeks afterwards, at a place not far from Melitene, the modern Malatiyeh, in Kappadokia. The battle ended in the complete victory of the Assyrians, and Esar-haddon was saluted “king” on the spot by his soldiers. He then returned to Nineveh, and there formally ascended the throne.

Esar-haddon resembled his father but little. He was one of the ablest generals Assyria ever produced, and was distinguished from his predecessors by his mild and conciliatory policy. Under him the Assyrian empire reached its furthest limits, Egypt being conquered, and placed under twenty Assyrian satraps, while an Assyrian army penetrated into the very heart of the Arabian desert. But the conquests which had been won in war were cemented by a policy of justice and moderation. Thus Babylon, which had been razed to the ground by Sennacherib in B.C. 691, and the adjoining river choked with its ruins, was rebuilt, and Esar-haddon endeavoured to win over the Babylonians by residing in it during half the year. This affords an explanation of a fact mentioned in the Second Book of Chronicles (xxxii, which has long been a stumbling-block in the way of critics. It is there said that the king of Assyria, after crushing the revolt of Manasseh, carried him away captive to Babylon. The cause of this is now clear. As Esar-haddon spent part of his time at Babylon it merely depended on the season of the year to which of his two capitals, Nineveh or Babylon, a political prisoner should be brought. The treatment of Manasseh was in full accordance with the treatment of other rebel princes in the time of Esar-haddon’s son, Assur-bani-pal. Like them, he was at first loaded with chains, but was afterwards allowed to return to his kingdom and reinstated in the government of it.

The name of “Manasseth, king of Judah,” twice occurs on the Assyrian monuments. Once he is mentioned among the tributaries of Esar-haddon, once among those of Assur-bani-pal. It is clear, therefore, that at some period shortly after Hezekiah’s death, Judah was again forced to pay tribute and do homage to the Assyrian king. When Esar-haddon passed through Palestine on his way to Egypt, he found there only submission and respect. Sidon alone withstood him, and Sidon was accordingly destroyed.

The “burden” pronounced upon Egypt by Isaiah (ch. xix.) must belong to the age of Esar-haddon. The condition of Egypt at the time was exactly that described by the prophet. The country was divided into hostile kingdoms, which fought “every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.” Tirhakah the Ethiopian, whom the Assyrians had driven out, invaded it from the south, and Esar-haddon came down upon it from the north. He it is who is “the fierce king” who, the Lord declared, should rule over the Egyptians. For about twenty years the unhappy country was wasted with fire and sword. The twenty governors appointed by the Assyrians were constantly intriguing against one another and their suzerain; and again and again the Assyrian armies were called upon to return to Egypt to suppress a revolt. It was during one of these campaigns that which happened about B.C. 665, in the reign of Assur-bani-pal that Thebes, the ancient capital of Upper Egypt, was destroyed. It is termed Ni in the Assyrian texts, a name which corresponds to the Hebrew No-Amon, or No of Amun, the supreme god of the city. Its temples and palaces were overthrown, their treasures were carried away, and two obelisks, which together weighed over seventy tons, were sent as trophies to Nineveh. Nahum (ii alludes to this destruction of Thebes as a recent event, and thus fixes the approximate age of his life and ministry.

The reign of Esar-haddon was a short one. In B.C. 670, on the 12th day of Iyyar, or April, he convened by edict a great assembly in Nineveh, and there associated his son Assur-bani-pal, whom the Greeks called Sardanapalus, in the government. Two years later he died, and Assur-bani-pal was proclaimed sole king on the 27th of Ab, or July. Assur-bani-pal, the grand monarque of Assyria, whose long reign was a continuous series of wars, and building, and magnificent patronage of art and literature, has little direct contact with Biblical history. The conquest of Elam by his generals removed the last civilized power which could struggle with Assyria; but it was not fully accomplished when the mighty empire began to totter to its fall. A general rebellion broke out, at the heart of which was Assur-bani-pal’s own brother, the viceroy of Babylonia. All the strength of Assyria was spent in crushing it; and Egypt, which had revolted through the help of Gyges of Lydia, was never reconquered. Palestine, strangely enough, seems to have been but little affected by the almost universal outbreak; indeed, Chemosh-khalta of Moab materially assisted Assur-bani-pal, by defeating the Kedarites and sending their sheikh in chains to Nineveh. One or two Phoenician cities alone took occasion to refuse their tribute. We do not know the year of Assur-bani-pal’s death, but it was probably about B.C. 630. He left a troubled heritage to his successors. The viceroy of Babylonia was becoming more and more independent; Elam, the latest Assyrian conquest, was threatened by the Persians, and a new and ferocious enemy had appeared in the north. These were the Scythians, who had descended upon the civilised world from the steppes of Southern Russia. They extended their ravages as far as Palestine, and their occupation of Beth-Shan caused it to be known in later days as Scythopolis, “the city of the Scythians.” The earlier prophecies of Jeremiah refer to the miseries inflicted on the country by these barbarians, who must have entered it towards the middle of Josiah’s reign. By this time the authority of Assyria in the west could have been but nominal. Nineveh itself had undergone a siege at the hands of the Mèdes, and was only saved from utter destruction by the Scythian irruption. Hence we can understand how it was that Josiah was able to re-unite the monarchy of David, and extend his sway over what had once been the kingdom of Samaria. There was no longer an Assyrian governor to forbid his overthrowing the altar at Bethel or the “houses of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria.”

The date of the final fall and destruction of Nineveh is not certain, and much depends on the interpretation given to the words “the king of Assyria” in 2 Kings xxii. If, as is usually supposed, these really signify the king of Babylon, who had succeeded to the power of Assyria, we may place the fall of the Assyrian capital in B.C. 610; otherwise the date must be as late as B.C. 606. It cannot be later, since, when Jeremiah reviews in this year the existing nations of the east (xx-26), he says not a word about either Nineveh or Assyria. The vengeance the prophets had predicted for the Assyrians had already fallen upon them. What it was to be like we may gather from the language of Nahum.

The last king of Assyria was Esar-haddon II, called Sarakos by the Greek writers. He has left us a few records, which were written when his enemies were gathering about him, and when his people were vainly calling upon their gods for help. The Mèdes, the Minni, the Kimmerians or Gomer, had all banded themselves together, and were steadily approaching Nineveh. The frontier cities had been stormed, and the enemy was spreading like an inundation over the whole country. In their despair the Assyrian rulers ordained a solemn fast of 100 days and 100 nights, and besought the Sun-god to pardon their sin. But all was in vain. The measure of the iniquities of Assyria was filled up; the time had come when the desolater should himself be desolate, and Nineveh, as God’s prophets had threatened, was laid utterly waste.(11)