Sennacherib

The Assyrian king from 705-681 BC who is best remembered in the history of Judah as the king who, in 701, invaded Jerusalem in the reign of King Hezekiah but left without success when the biblical witnesses report that "the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp" (2 Ki 19:35").

Sennacherib succeeded to the throne when his father Sargon II was killed in battle in 705 BC. His name, meaning "Sin [the Moon god] has multiplied the brothers" in Akkadian, suggests that he was not the first born of the family. Not of noble birth, his father Sargon had come to the throne, nonetheless, unopposed and, therefore, could not be considered a usurper, as has sometimes been claimed. Though his father had managed to put down almost all the rebellions from the empire's vassals and established a glorious reputation for himself, Sennacherib spent most of his life fighting the same reculcitrants and their successors again. Of particular relevance to the biblical understanding was the refusal by the kings of Ashkelon and Ekron to remit his tribute, with Egypt (as usual) fanning the ambers of resistence behind the scene. More significantly (though not reported in the biblical accounts) Hezekiah had a hand in the regime-change in Ekron. Marching down the coast, Sennacherib put down the revolts, and then dealt the Judean city of Lachish a fatal blow, before besieging Jerusalem in701 and bullying Hezekiah into submission (2 Ki 18:13-19:36; 2 Chron 32:1-22; Isa 36:1-37:37). With his camp devastated by "the angel of the Lord, Sennacherib departed for his home. His annals said nothing about his Jerusalem episode; the battle of Lachish and its destruction, however, found itself engraved on a whole wall of his palace in Nineveh (now in the British Muzeum, London; ☰ for a phototour).

He was assassinated in 681. Assyrian records do not mention the names of the parricides but 2 Ki 19:37 reports that "while he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king."

Resources:

A. R. Millard, A. R. "Sennacherib's Attack on Hezekiah," Tyndale Bulletin 34 (1983): 169-200.☰