- 118-
Nor was the Divine judgment on Sennacherib long delayed. "In that night"* "the angel
of Jehovah" went forth to smite in the Assyrian host - probably that which still lay before
Jerusalem -"all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains" (2 Chronicles
32:21).
- The text seems to imply that it was the night after Isaiah's prediction; but this is by no
means clear. Josephus (Ant. x. 1, 5) and the Rabbis suppose the judgment to have
overtaken the army that lay before Jerusalem. This is also the view of Friedrich Delitzsch
in Herzog's Real Ency. vol. xiii., p. 386. In 2 Chronicles 32:21, and in Isaiah 37:36, the
words, "in that night," are omitted. This seems of itself to indicate that all the 185,000
had not died in that one night.
From 2 Samuel 24:15, 16, we are led to infer that, while the judgment was directly sent of
God, the means employed was a pestilence. The number of victims amounted to not less
than 185,000, although the text does not indicate, and there is certainly no reason for
believing that they all fell in one night.*
- See the previous note. Much larger numbers than these are recorded to have perished by
pestilence in one place.
But to the sacred historian it seems from his prophetic view-point but as one unbroken
scene in the great drama of judgment, and he pictorially describes it as a field of the slain,
on which they looked as they "arose early in the morning." And so the Divine judgment
completed what the turn which the campaign had taken had begun. It was only natural
that Sennacherib should depart and return to his own land.*
- That some extraordinary event had determined the retreat of Sennacherib appears also
from the Egyptian legendary account preserved by Herodotus (II. 141). It describes how,
on his advance into Egypt - perhaps mixing. up the campaign of Sargon with that of
Sennacherib (Schrader in Riehm's Worterb., II., p. 1366a) - Sennacherib had been forced
to fly through a disablement of his army, field-mice having in one night gnawed through
the quivers, bowstrings, and shield-straps of his soldiers.
But the account in Holy Scripture in this also evidences its historical accuracy, that it
describes him as dwelling "at Nineveh." For Sennacherib not only made this his
permanent residence, fortified and converted it into his grand imperial fortress, but
adorned it with two magnificent palaces.*
- For further details, we refer to the articles, "Ninive" and "Sanherib," in Riehm's
Handworterb. d. Bibl. A1terth.
There is one event in the history of Israel which the Divine judgment on Sennacherib and
the deliverance of Judah must recall to every mind. It is Israel's miraculous deliverance at
(^)