Verse 13
13. The fourteenth year According to Rawlinson, this date is irreconcilable with the Assyrian inscriptions, and he proposes to read twenty-seventh for fourteenth.
Sennacherib The son and successor of Sargon. “The long notices which we possess of this monarch in the books of the Old Testament, his intimate connexion with the Jews, the fact that he was the object of a preternatural exhibition of the Divine displeasure, and the remarkable circumstance that this miraculous interposition appears under a thin disguise in the records of the Greeks, have always attached an interest to his name which the kings of this remote period and distant region very rarely awaken. It has also happened that the recent Mesopotamian researches have tended to give to Sennacherib a special prominence over other Assyrian monarchs, more particularly in this country, [England,] our great excavator [Layard] having devoted his chief efforts to the disinterment of a palace of this great king’s construction, which has supplied to our National Collection almost one half of its treasures. The result is, that while the other sovereigns who bore sway in Assyria are generally wholly unknown, or float before the mind’s eye as dim and shadowy forms, Sennacherib stands out to our apprehension as a living and breathing man, the impersonation of all that pride and greatness which we assign to the Ninevite kings, the living embodiment of Assyrian haughtiness, Assyrian violence, and Assyrian power.” RAWLINSON, Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii, p. 155.
All the fenced cities The fortified towns, forty-six in number according to the inscriptions. See below.
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