SENNACHERIB, the great king of Assyria, had ravaged many countries, according to the custom of his fathers, and to use his own words, he had destroyed “towns without number and reduced them to heaps of rubbish.” He had “cut down woods,” “sown cornfields with thistles,” and had swept countries “like a mighty whirlwind.” This terrible destroyer, “in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah,” came “up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them.” The woes of the captives were more sore than those of the devastated land: men were flayed alive, impaled, crucified; and women and children were led to a captivity worse even than death.
The monuments, discovered comparatively recently, offer the most horrible pictures of the cruelties of the Assyrian kings, one form of which is given in the accompanying illustration. Great warriors and kings were held in leash by hooks driven through nose or lip, and thus were dragged before the ruthless king. Here we have three of such unfortunates, whose crime we may well imagine to be a heroic defense of their country!
One of the three kneels in vain before the unimpassioned monster, who brings down the uplifted spear into the beseeching eye of the hapless man.
Hezekiah was appalled by the horrors of the war, the fate of his fortified cities, and the doom of his captains. He tried to come to terms with the Assyrian. “I have offended,” he said “return from me: that which thou puttest on me I will bear.” Three hundred talents of silver and thirty; talents of gold was the tribute demanded, and “Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the king’s house.” He actually cut off the gold from the doors of Jehovah’s temple in his terror.
Sennacherib took the ransom, and broke his pledge. He sent Rabshakeh, his general, against Jerusalem, and he also sent Hezekiah a letter: “Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered 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?” And the letter ends with a list of towns and cities hopelessly destroyed.
Hezekiah, at the end of his resources, did what he ought to have done before, he looked to Jehovah for help―to Jehovah, from whose temple he had taken the gold and silver to buy off the Assyrian! He took the blasphemous letter and laid it before God.
“O Jehovah,” he pleaded, “the God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubim, Thou art the God, even Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; Thou hast made heaven and earth. Incline Thine ear, O Jehovah, and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, wherewith he hath sent him to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were no gods, but the work of man’s hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them. Now, therefore, O Jehovah, our God, save Thou us, I beseech Thee, out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou art the Lord God, even Thou only.”
God in heaven read the enemy’s letter, and heard his servant’s prayer. He sent an answer forthwith to His servant, and an answer at midnight to the enemy. “I have heard thee,” said He to Hezekiah. “This is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him: The virgin daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.”
After recounting the reproach and the blasphemy, Jehovah addressed these words to Sennacherib, “I know thy sitting down, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy raging against Me. Because of thy raging against Me, and for that thine arrogancy is come up unto Mine ears, therefore will I put My hook in thy nose, and My bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou tamest.”
We can fully understand the strange words now that the monuments afford us ability to read them literally. The hook in the nose, the bridle in the lips, were familiar indeed to Sennacherib.
That night the angel of Jehovah brought the answer from the Most High to the Assyrian camp. One hundred and eighty-five thousand men were slain. Proud Sennacherib retreated with the remainder of his army, and he “dwelt at Nineveh,” nor did he invade Judah anymore.