Isaiah 37:8

"So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah; for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish. And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come out to fight against thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly: and shalt thou be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them, which my fathers have destroyed, Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden that were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah?"

One of the unresolved questions mentioned in the introduction to Isaiah 36 concerns the Tirhakah mentioned here in Isaiah 37:9. Some say he was too young to have led an expedition against Sennacherib at this time, being only about ten years of age; but there is too much ignorance of the whole political picture of that period of history, and there is too much ignorance about Tirhakah himself (Does this name refer to a dynasty rather than to an individual?) for anyone to be troubled by such speculations. As Hailey said, "Until contrary evidence is provided, we will assume that Tirhakah was of sufficient age to have led an army against Sennacherib."[4]

This message from Sennacherib was little more than a somewhat extended repetition of the message he had already sent to Hezekiah by Rabshakeh. He did mention a few more cities that had fallen to previous Assyrian kings, such as Gozan, one of the towns to which the Assyrians had deported some of the Northern Israelites (2 Kings 17:6). Haran was located on a tributary to the Euphrates river and was prominent in Jewish history; for that was where Abraham settled when he left Ur of the Chaldees; there Terah died; and there the Word of God came the second time to Abraham. There both Isaac and Jacob received their wives. Eden was an important city that had supplied the kings of Damascus, of whom Amos prophesied that, "God would cut off the inhabitants from the valley of Aven, and him that holdeth the scepter from the house of Eden; and the people of Syria shall go into captivity" (Amos 1:5). The Assyrian kings indeed had been God's instrument in the fulfillment of Amos' prophecy.

Kelley noticed that this message was delivered both orally and by letter,[5] that being apparently the principal difference between them.