Sennacherib, King of Assyria, who, in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah (B.C. 713), came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them; on which Hezekiah agreed to pay the Assyrian monarch a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. This, however, did not satisfy Sennacherib, who sent an embassy with hostile intentions, charging Hezekiah with trusting on 'this bruised reed Egypt.' The king of Judah in his perplexity had recourse to Isaiah, who counseled confidence and hope, giving a divine promise of miraculous aid. Meanwhile 'Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia,' and of Thebes in Egypt, had come out to fight against the Assyrians, who had threatened Lower Egypt with an invasion. On learning this, Sennacherib sent another deputation to Hezekiah, who thereon applied for aid to Jehovah, who promised to defend the capital. 'And it came to pass that night that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses' (, sq.). On this, Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, and was shortly after murdered by two of his sons as he was praying in the house of Nisroch his god ( sq.; 2 Chronicles 32; Isaiah 37).
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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