Sennacherib Sentence Examples
Hezekiah improved the defences and arranged for a good water supply, preparatory to the siege by Sennacherib, the Assyrian general.
Special mention may be made here of the tale of Abikar - the wise and virtuous secretary of Sennacherib, king of Assyria - and of his wicked nephew Nadhan.
Probably his judgment of the situation was correct; yet, in view of Sennacherib's failure at Jerusalem in 701 and of the admitted strength of the city, the hope of the Jewish nobles could not be considered wholly unfounded, and in any case their patriotism (like that of the national party in the Roman siege) was not unworthy of admiration.
The Elamite king was dethroned and imprisoned in 700 B.C. by his brother Khallusu, who six years later marched into Babylonia, captured the son of Sennacherib, whom his father had placed there as king, and raised a nominee of his own, Nergal-yusezib, to the throne.
His successor KudurNakhkhunte invaded Babylonia; he was repulsed, however, by Sennacherib, 34 of his cities were destroyed, and he himself fled from Madaktu to Khidalu.
At Sennacherib's approach, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab and Edom submitted; Ekron, Ascalon, Lachish and Jerusalem held out strenuously.
It is uncertain whether Sennacherib invaded Judah again shortly before his death, never,- theless the land was practically under the control of Assyria.
In 734 their king Sanip(b)u was a vassal of Tiglathpileser IV., and his successor, P(b)udu-ilu, held the same position under Sennacherib and Esarhaddon.
Sennacherib speaks of one at Tarbisu to the north of Nineveh, but it is significant that although Nebuchadrezzar II.
Thus there were two great political events (the Syro-Israelitish invasion under Ahaz, and the great Assyrian invasion of Sennacherib) which called forth the spiritual and oratorical faculties of our prophet, and quickened his faculty of insight into the future.
AdvertisementThe Sennacherib prophecies must be taken in connexion with the historical appendix, chaps.
An interesting example of the long plain variety is afforded by the prisoners of Lachish before Sennacherib (701 B.C.); the circumstances and a comparison of the details would point to its being essentially a simple dress indicative of mourning and humiliation.
Sargon, who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of the northern nations, had taken (717 B.C.) the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish and had annexed the future kingdom of Ecbatana, was now accepted as king by the Babylonian priests and his claim to be the successor of Sargon of Akkad acknowledged up to the time of his murder in 705 B.C. His son Sennacherib, who succeeded Serena- hi m on the 12th of Ab, did not possess the military or cherlb. ?
Andbabylonia Assyria Sennacherib's figure in the Bavian inscription; this he reduced by a hundred years,' instead of increasing it by sixty as Rost had suggested.
When revising his scheme of chronology in 1900, Rost abandoned his suggested emendation of Sennacherib's figure, but by decreasing his reduction of the length of Dynasty III., he only altered his date for the beginning of Dynasty I.
AdvertisementMost interesting of all, perhaps, are the annals of Sennacherib, the destruction of whose hosts by the angel of God is so strikingly depicted in the Book of Kings.
The court historian of Sennacherib naturally does not dwell upon this event, but he does tell of an invasion and conquest of Palestine.
The Hebrew account of the death of Sennacherib is corroborated by a Babylonian inscription.
One cannot avoid the suspicion that in this instance the Hebrew chronicler purposely phrased his account to convey the impression that Sennacherib's tragic end was but the slightly delayed culmination of the punishment inflicted for his attack upon the "chosen people."
Not a few of the astrological and omen tablets in the Kuyunjik collection of the British Museum, however, although found at Nineveh, were executed, according to their own testimony, at Calah for the rab-dup-sarre or principal librarian during the reigns of Sargon and Sennacherib (716-684 B.C.).
AdvertisementThis interval does not depend upon a mere list of Eponym years; we have in the annals of Sargon and Sennacherib full particulars of the events in all the intervening years.
Thus, with Isaiah in the days of Sennacherib's invasion, the prophetic word became again, as it had been in the days of the Syrian wars, "the chariots and horsemen of Israel," the stay and strength of all patriotic hope.
The withdrawal of Sennacherib's army, in which the doctrine of the inviolability of Zion received the most striking practical confirmation, was welcomed by Isaiah and his disciples as an earnest of the speedy inbringing of the new spiritual era.
Sennacherib records that several of his royal ancestors had been buried in Nineveh and they presumably had resided there.
At the commencement of his reign Sennacherib found Nineveh a poor place.
AdvertisementSennacherib restored and enlarged the northern platform now covered by the Kuyunjik mound and built his palace on the south-western portion of it.
On the adjoining platform to the south, now Nebi-Yunus, Sennacherib erected an arsenal for military supplies.
Nineveh was badly supplied with water for drinking; the inhabitants had to " turn their eyes to heaven for the rain," but Sennacherib conducted water by eighteen canals from the hills into the Husur and distributed its waters round the moats and into store tanks, or ponds, within the city.
Sennacherib made Nineveh his court residence and, after his destruction of Babylon and the influx of the enormous booty brought back from his conquests, it must have been the most magnificent and wealthiest city of the East.
He rebuilt the temples and a palace for himself north of Sennacherib's on the site of the latter's harem; which was adorned with extraordinary variety and richness.
Especially is his palace famous for the celebrated library, of which Sennacherib had made a commencement.
The enormous mound of Kuyunjik now separated from that of Nebi-Yunus by the deep and rapid Khausar, marks the site of the palace of Sennacherib and Assur-bani-pal.
Excavations at two of the great city gates showed them to have been erected by Sennacherib.
In the great campaign of 701 Sennacherib came down upon the revolting provinces; he forced Lull., king of Sidon, to fly, for refuge to Cyprus, took his chief cities, and set up Tuba'lu (Ethbaal) as king, imposing a yearly tribute ii.
The blockade of Tyre by sea, significantly passed over in Sennacherib's inscription, is described by Menander.
Sennacherib, however, so far accomplished his object as to break up the combination of Tyre and Sidon, which had grown into a powerful state.'
To the great powers Phoenician ships and sailors were indispensable; Sennacherib, Psammetichus and Necho, Xerxes, Alexander, all in turn employed them for their transports and sea-fights.
Further, we know that in the 8th century B.C., there were observatories in most of the large cities in the valley of the Euphrates, and that professional astronomers regularly took observations of the heavens, copies of which were sent to the king of Assyria; and from a cuneiform inscription found in the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, the text of which is given by George Smith,5 we learn that at that time the epochs of eclipses of both sun and moon were predicted as possible - probably by means of the cycle of 223 lunations or Chaldaean Saros - and that observations were made accordingly.
From Assyrian inscriptions it has been gathered that Padi, king of Ekron, was for a time the vassal of Hezekiah of Judah, but regained his independence when the latter was hard pressed by Sennacherib.
The Ethiopian could do no more than encourage or support the Syrians in their fight for freedom against Sargon and Sennacherib.
A recently published inscription of Sennacherib (of 694 B.C.) mentions enslaved peoples from Philistia and Tyre, but does not name Judah.
From the description of Sennacherib's invasion it is clear that social and economic conditions must have been seriously, perhaps radically disturbed,' and the quiescence of Judah during the next few decades implies an internal weakness and a submission to Assyrian supremacy.
Whether he came to the throne before or after the fall of Samaria (722721 B.C.) is disputed,' nor is it clear what share Judah took in the Assyrian conflicts down to 701.2 Shortly before this date the whole of western Asia was in a ferment; Sargon had died and Sennacherib had come to the throne (in 705); vassal kings plotted to recover their independence and Assyrian puppets were removed by their opponents.
Here the Assyrian record ends somewhat abruptly, for, in the meanwhile, Babylonia had again revolted (700 B.C.) and Sennacherib's presence was urgently needed nearer home.
For a discussion of Sennacherib's record, see Wilke,, Jesaja (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 97 sqq.
This theory of a second campaign (first suggested by Sir Henry Rawlinson) has been contested, although it is pointed out that Sennacherib at all events did not invade Egypt, and that 2 Kings xix.
It is quite possible that later events which belong to the time of the Egyptian supremacy and the wars of Esarhaddon have been confused with the history of Sennacherib's invasion.
In the Book of Tobit Ahikar is represented as the prime minister of Sennacherib and his son Esar-Haddon, and is claimed by Tobit as his nephew.
Under Sennacherib's rule, Yatnana figures (as in Isaiah) as the refuge of a disloyal Sidonian in 702; but in 668 ten kings of Cypriote cities joined Assur-bani-pal's expedition to Egypt; most of them bear recognizable Greek names, e.g.
It was first applied to the extreme southern district, whose ancient capital was the city of Bit Yakin, the chief seat of the renowned Chaldaean rebel Merodach-baladan, who harassed the Assyrian kings Sargon and Sennacherib.
That they differed from the Arabs and Aramaeans is also seen from the distinction made by Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) between the Chaldaeans and these races.
Sennacherib took it in 701 B.C. The conquest of Alexander hellenized its civilization, and after his time it became tributary alternately to Syria and Egypt.
Sennacherib alone seems to have failed in securing the support of the Babylonian priesthood; at all events he never underwent the ceremony, and Babylonia throughout his reign was in a constant state of revolt which was finally suppressed only by the complete destruction of the capital.
The act shocked the religious conscience of western Asia; the subsequent murder of Sennacherib was held to be an expiation of it, and his successor Esarhaddon hastened to rebuild the old city, to receive there his crown, and make it his residence during part of the year.
The topography is necessarily that of the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar; the older Babylon which was destroyed by Sennacherib having left few, if any, traces behind.
As a vassal of Assyria he was contemporary with Sennacherib, Esar-haddon (681-668 B.C.) and Assur-bani-pal (668-626 B.C.), and his name (Me-na-si-e) appears among the tributaries of the two latter.
Even the statement that the bodies of Sennacherib's soldiers were burned while their garments and armour remained unconsumed has its parallel in Sanh.
Then Sennacherib marched against the Kassi in the northern mountains of Elam and ravaged the kingdom of Ellip where Ecbatana afterwards stood.
Jerusalem was saved eventually by a plague, which decimated the Assyrian army and obliged Sennacherib to return to Nineveh.
Both sides claimed the victory, but the advantage remained with Sennacherib, and in 689 B.C. he captured Babylon and razed it to the ground, a deed which excited the horror of all western Asia.
Sennacherib was vainglorious and a bad administrator; he built the palace of Kuyunjik at Nineveh, 1500 ft.
See George Smith, History of Sennacherib (1878).
Archeologists have found Sennacherib's royal annals of the campaign.
The radar installation near the palace of Sennacherib was probably put there on purpose.
But with the death of Sargon in 705 there was another great outburst; practically the whole of Palestine and Syria was in arms, and the integrity of Sennacherib's empire was threatened.
These events are related in Sennacherib's inscription; the biblical records preserve their own traditions (see Hezekiah).
Nabonidus (Nabunaid) king of Babylonia (556 B.C.) saw in the disaster the vengeance of the gods for the sacrilege of Sennacherib; the Hebrew prophets, for their part, exulted over Yahweh's far-reaching judgment.
The account in the Book of Kings is so phrased that one might naturally infer from it that Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons immediately after his return from the disastrous campaign in Palestine; but in point of fact, as it now appears, the Assyrian king survived that campaign by twenty years.
Esarhaddon 's predecessor, Sennacherib, erected many stelae giving details of his campaigns, many of which were against the allies.
The fall of Samaria, Sennacherib's devastation of Judah, and the growth of Jerusalem as the capital, had tended to raise the position of the Temple, although Israel itself, as also Judah, had famous sanctuaries of its own.