19:20 Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘I have heard your prayer concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria. 1
19:35 That very night the Lord’s messenger went out and killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. When they 2 got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses. 3 19:36 So King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and went on his way. He went home and stayed in Nineveh. 4 19:37 One day, 5 as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, 6 his sons 7 Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. 8 They escaped to the land of Ararat; his son Esarhaddon replaced him as king.
1 tn Heb “That which you prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.” The verb “I have heard” does not appear in the parallel passage in Isa 37:21, where אֲשֶׁר (’asher) probably has a causal sense, “because.”
2 tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.
3 tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies.”
4 tn Heb “and Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went and returned and lived in Nineveh.”
5 sn The assassination probably took place in 681
6 sn No such Mesopotamian god is presently known. Perhaps the name is a corruption of Nusku.
7 tc Although “his sons” is absent in the Kethib, it is supported by the Qere, along with many medieval Hebrew
8 sn Extra-biblical sources also mention the assassination of Sennacherib, though they refer to only one assassin. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 239-40.