Isaiah 37:37 - Exposition

So Sennacherib … departed ; rather, broke up his camp. The word used for all the removals of the children of Israel in the wilderness ( Numbers 33:3-48 ). The loss of even an entire corps d ' armeee would not have caused an Assyrian king, at the head of an intact main army, to break up his camp and abandon his enterprise. And dwelt at Nineveh . Sennacherib lived some eighteen or twenty years from the probable date of his discomfiture, dying in b.c. 681. His ordinary residence was at Nineveh, which he greatly adorned and beautified. His father, Sargon, on the contrary, dwelt commonly at Khorsabad (Dur-Sargina), and his son, Esarhaddon, dwelt, during the latter part of his reign, at Babylon. We must not suppose, however, that Sennacherib was shut up in Nineveh during the remainder of his life. On the contrary, he made frequent expeditions towards the south, the east, and the north. But he made no farther expedition to the south-west, no further attack on Jerusalem, or attempt on Egypt. The Jews had peace, so far as the Assyrians were concerned, from the event related in Isaiah 37:36 to a late date in the reign of Esarhaddon.