2 Kings 19 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

19:9 Tirhakah, the king of Cush. At some point during Sennacherib’s 701 BC campaign, as the Biblical and Assyrian records agree, an Egyptian army marched into Palestine to aid the rebels. The Egyptian forces were led by Taharqa (Hebrew “Tirhakah”), who would not become pharaoh for another 11 years (690–664 BC), but is referred to here under his later title. He was in fact a Cushite and the third king of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, founded by Shabako (716–702 BC), who was then followed by Shebitku (702–690 BC). These kings were descendants of the Nubian/Cushite rulers who had pushed north toward Egypt (and had eventually annexed Egypt to Cush) in the same period that the Assyrians were pushing south toward the same destination. Tirhakah’s entire life was marked by conflict with the Assyrians, from his leadership as a young man of the Egyptian forces helping Hezekiah through the period of his own rule, which ended in defeat at the hands of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. The battle in 701 BC took place at Eltekeh, probably Khirbet el-Mukennah, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) east of the Mediterranean on the eastern border of the coastal plain. Sennacherib claims to have defeated the Egyptian force at Eltekeh, and we have no reason to disbelieve him. It may be that it was after this Assyrian victory that Hezekiah, in an attempt to buy more time, released Padi of Ekron, whom Sennacherib claims to have “made” come from Jerusalem and to have reestablished on his throne (see the article “Hezekiah and Assyria”).

19:15 enthroned between the cherubim. The OT envisions the God of Israel as dwelling in a special way (though not an exclusive way, cf. 1Ki 8:27–30) in the Jerusalem temple, and as being invisibly enthroned in the Most Holy Place on two enormous cherubim, overlaid with gold, which functioned as a covering for the ark of the covenant (1Ki 8:6–7; see note on Ex 25:16). The cherubim served as guardians to both royal and divine thrones in the ancient world (see note on Ex 25:18). Yahweh, however, was not visibly depicted on this throne.

19:23–24 I have ascended the heights of the mountains . . . I have dried up all the streams of Egypt. Sennacherib never literally conquered Egypt, nor did he ever literally ascend the heights of the mountains with his chariots and cut down Lebanon’s tallest trees, although he may have taken some cedar back to Assyria with him as his predecessor, Ashurnasirpal II, claims to have done. The point of the text is that Sennacherib thinks of himself as a god. These words reflect the exaggerated view that Sennacherib and other Assyrian kings often had of their own persons and their accomplishments.

19:28 put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth. This metaphor may reflect actual Assyrian practice. After his second campaign against Egypt in 671 BC, King Esarhaddon erected several victory steles, the most famous of which depicts Esarhaddon as leading two prisoners, apparently Baal I of Tyre and Taharqa/Tirhakah of Egypt, by ropes tied to a ring that pierced their lips. Ashurbanipal, his successor, further records an act of humiliation against Uate, king of Arabia, in which he “pierced his cheeks with the sharp-edged spear . . . put the ring to his jaw, placed a dog collar around his neck and made him guard the bar of the east gate of Nineveh.”

19:29 what grows by itself . . . what springs from that. The sign that Judah will recover from the Assyrian assault is to be found in the way that the survivors will be provided for in the short term. Initially the people will only be able to survive because of the crops that spring up from what is already in the ground; but in the third year it will be possible to resume normal agricultural practice. The initial fragility of both human and economic conditions should not be a reason for despair.

19:32 He will not . . . build a siege ramp against it. According to Isaiah’s message here to Hezekiah, Sennacherib will return home before the army encamped outside the city of Jerusalem can take military action against it—before an arrow is fired, a shield raised or a siege ramp is built against its walls. See the article “Siege Warfare.”

19:35 the angel of the Lord . . . put to death. One of Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions claims that the plague-god Erra wiped out an Arabian king and his army in response to a treaty violation.

19:36 Sennacherib king of Assyria . . . returned to Nineveh and stayed there. Nowhere in his own account of his campaign does Sennacherib claim to have taken Jerusalem, nor even to have received tribute from Hezekiah in the immediate aftermath of the siege. He tells us only that after his return to Nineveh (the occasion of which he does not describe), Hezekiah sent tribute. His silence on the way in which the siege ended when compared to what he says in this same account about other kings in the region requires some explanation. Our Biblical sources give us some hints in the direction of this when they tell of a mysterious reversal suffered by the Assyrians while Jerusalem lay at their mercy (v. 35).

19:37 his god Nisrok. The identity of this deity is unknown, though it may be a variant form of the name Marduk, Nusku or Ninurta. Esarhaddon. Ruled Assyria 681–669 BC. Unlike his father, Sennacherib, who took a harsh stance in relation to Babylonian unrest led by Marduk-Baladan and others (see notes on 17:24; 20:12) and ultimately destroyed Babylon itself in 689 BC, Esarhaddon pursued a conciliatory policy, which gave him peace in the south and enabled him to give his full attention to the west. As far as we can tell, Judah was in tributary relationship with him throughout his reign and was even compelled at some point to receive deportees from other parts of the Assyrian Empire (Ezr 4:2).