r sieges of both the capital cities,
Jerusalem and Samaria; the former mentioned Jeremiah 19:9; Antiq. B. IX.
ch. 4. sect. 4, and the latter, 2 Kings 6:26-29.

BOOK 10 FOOTNOTES

[1] This title of great king, both in our Bibles, 2 Kings 18:19; Isaiah
36:4, and here in Josephus, is the very same that Herodotus gives this
Sennacherib, as Spanheim takes notice on this place.

[2] What Josephus says here, how Isaiah the prophet assured Hezekiah
that "at this time he should not be besieged by the king of Assyria;
that for the future he might be secure of being not at all disturbed by
him; and that [afterward] the people might go on peaceably, and without
fear, with their husbandry and other affairs," is more distinct in our
other copies, both of the Kings and of Isaiah, and deserves very great
consideration. The words are these: "This shall be a sign unto thee, Ye
shall eat this year such as groweth of itself, and the second year that
which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap,
and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof," 2 Kings 19:29; Isaiah
37:30; which seem to me plainly to design a Sabbatic year, a year of
jubilee next after it, and the succeeding usual labors and fruits of
them on the third and following years.

[3] That this terrible calamity of the slaughter of the 185,000
Assyrians is here delivered in the words of Berosus the Chaldean, and
that it was certainly and frequently foretold by the Jewish prophets,
and that it was certainly and undeniably accomplished, see Authent. Rec.
part II. p. 858.

[3] We are here to take notice, that these two sons of Sennacherib, that
ran away into Armenia, became the heads of two famous families there,
the Arzerunii and the Genunii; of which see the particular histories in
Moses Chorenensis, p. 60.

[4] Josephus, and all our copies, place the sickness of Hezekiah after
the destruction of Sennacherib's army, because it appears to have been
after his first assault, as he was going into Arabia and Egypt, where he
pushed his conquests as far as they would go, and in order to despatch
his story altogether; yet does no copy but this of Josephus say it was
after that destruction, but only that it happened in those days,
or about that time of Hezekiah's life. Nor will the fifteen years'
prolongation of his life after his sickness, allow that sickness to
have been later than the former part of the fifteenth year of his reign,
since chronology does n