The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Kings — Section 343

Vera. 85----S7.-DE.STRuCTioN OF SENNA• etonn with thunder and lightning, whioh OBBRJB'B HOS'r, AND ms OWN VIOLEN'r. DEATH have never been known to aooomplish such ,.T NINEVEH. The sequel is told in a few a destruction. Pestilence is no doubt words. That night destruction came down possible, but a pestilence of a etrango and miraculous chcnacter, to whioh men euc. on the host of Senne.cherib, as it lay en- cumbed without awaking or disturbing camped e.t rome distance from Jerusalem, others. But the n11rrative rather points to silently and swiftly. Without noise, with- sudden and silent de11th during eloep, such out disturbance, the sleeping men slept the as ofteu happens to men in the course of sleep of death, and in the morning, when nature singly, and here on this occasion was made to happen in one night to a the survivors awoke, it was fonnd that a hundred and eighty-five thousand men by hundred and eighty-five thonsand were the Divine omnipotence o.cting abnormally. sin.in. Upon this, with the remnant of his In the camp of the Aasyria.ne. The de- army, Sennacherib hastily returned to struction was not only at one time, but in Nineveh. There, some time after-a.bout one place. " The oamp of the Assyrinns" cannot mean half a dozen camps situated in seventeen years according to our reckoning half a dozen difforent plo.ces, a.a Keil sup- -a conspiracy was formed against him by poses. Scnne.cherib wo.s somewhere with two of his sons, who murdered him e.s he his me.in army, encamped for the night, and was worshipping iu a temple, and :fled into there, wherever it WI\S, the blow fell. But Armeni:.. Another son, Esarhaddon, suc- the exact locality is uncertain. All that the narre.ti ve makes clear is that it was not ceeded. in the immediate vicinity of Jel"lll!alem. Herodotus places the catastrophe at Pelu. Ver. 35.-.A.nd it oame to pll.88 that night. sium (ii. 141). Dii.hr thinks it was probably '!'he important expression, "that night," is before Libnah. I should incline to ple.ce it omitted from the narrative of Isnie.h between Libnah and the Egyptian frontier, (xnvii. 36), but is nndoubtedly an original Senne.cherib, when he heard that Tirhakah portion of the present history. It can have was coming age.inst him -(ver. 9), having no other meaning-as Keil and Bii.hr have naturally marched forward to meet and seen-ihe.n "the night following the day engage hie army. An hunr\red tour soore on which I.sn.i.a.h had foretold to Hezekiah and five thousand. These figures do not the deliverance of Jerusalem." God's word pretend to exactness, and can scarcely have "runneth very swiftly." No sooner was the been more than II rough estimate. They promise given than the destroying angel are probably the Assyrians' own estimate recci vcd his orders, and "that night" the of their loss, which the Jews would leorn terrible stroke fell. That the angel of the from such of the fugitives as fell into Lord went out ; or, an angel. (ltyy,Aos Kvplov, their hands. And when they--i.e. tbe LX.X.). We cannot ray, with. Bii.hr, that it suxvivorR-arose early in the morning, they was "the same one who smote the fuetborn -i.e. the hundred and eighty-five thousand in Egypt, and inflicted the pestilence after -were all dead corpses-absolutely dead, the census under David." Revelation does that is; not merely sick or dying. The faot not tell us that there is de.finitely one makes against the theory of a pestilence. destroying angel. " The angel of death " Ver. 36.-So Sennacherib King of Assyria is o. mbbinice.l invention. It accords departed, and went and returned. The rather with the analogy of God's dealings original is more lively, and more expressive tho.t he should UBe e.t one time the services of haste. Senne.cherib, it is so.id, " de- of one minister, at another time those of camped, and departed, and returned "-the another. And smote. Imagination has been heaping np of the verbs expressing the over-busy in conjecturing the exact manner hurry of the rne.rch home (Keil); comp. of the smiting. Some critics have suggested 1 Kings xix. 3. And dwelt at Nineveh. pestilence, or more definitely " the plague" Nineveh wo.s Sennacherib's favourite resi- (Gesenius, Dathe, Maurer, Ewald, Winer, dence, He he.d built himself a palace Theniue, Keil, etc.); others a te1Tible storm there, rne.rked by the modern mound of (Vitringa, Stanley); others the simoom Koyunjik. Sargon, hie father, he.d dwelt (Prideaux, Milman); others a nocturnal mainly at Dur-Sargino or Khorsabad, attack by Tirhakah (Uesher, Preiss, Mi- Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneeer at Calah chaelis). Some of these the text altogether or Nimrud. Senno.cherib's palace and hia precludes, as the attack of Tirhukah, which other buildings at Nineveh are described must have aroused the whole host, and not in hie anu&Js at some length (see 'Records left the disll8ter to be discovered by those of the Past,' voL i. pp. 50-52). The who" awoke early in the morning." Othera expression, "dwelt at Ninoveh," does not are improbable, ae the simoom, or a terrible mean that he never quitted it, but merely en. XIX. 1-87.] THE SECOND BOOK OF TBE KINGS. 391