2 Kings 18:13 - Exposition

Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah did Sennacherib King of Assyria come up. It is impossible to accept this note of time as genuine without rejecting altogether the authority of the Assyrian inscriptions. Sargon took Samaria in his first year, B.C. 722, and then had a reign of between seventeen and eighteen years, for fifteen of which we have his annals. He certainly did not associate Sennacherib with him on the throne, nor did the latter exercise any authority at all until B.C. 705, when, "on the 12th of Ab, he the throne ascended". Sennacherib places his first expedition against Hezekiah in his fourth year, B.C. 701. Thus, according to the Assyrian records, which are very ample, and of which we have the actual originals, twenty years intervened between the capture of Samaria and the attack of Sennacherib on Hezekiah; according to the present passage, compared with 2 Kings 18:9 , 2 Kings 18:10 , eight years only intervened. No contradiction can be more absolute. It has been proposed to alter the date from "the fourteenth year" to "the twenty-sixth year; ' but it seems most probable that the original writer inserted no date, but simply said, "And Sennacherib, King of Assyria, came up," etc; just as he had said, without a date, "Pul the King of Assyria came up against the land" ( 2 Kings 15:19 ); and "against him (Hoshea) came up Shalmaneser" ( 2 Kings 17:3 ); and, with a very vague date, if it may be called a date, "In the days of Pekah King of Israel came Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria" ( 2 Kings 15:29 . Comp. also 2 Kings 24:1 , 2 Kings 24:11 ). Later on, a redactor—perhaps the same who inserted the whole series of synchronisms—introduced the words, "In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah," having obtained the number from 2 Kings 20:6 , which he assumed to belong to the time of Sennacherib's attack. Against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. Sennacherib himself says, "And of Hezekiah of Judah, who did not submit to my yoke, forty-six strong cities, fortresses, and smaller cities round about them without number, by the march of my troops … by the force of battering-rams, mining, and missiles, I besieged, I captured".