proceeded to invade Judaea,
Then it was--in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, according to the
present Hebrew text--that "Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against
all the fenced cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah, king of
Judah, sent to the king of Assyria to Lshish, saying, I have offended;
return from me; that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king
of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents
of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the
silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of
the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off [the gold from] the
doors of the house of the Lord, and [from] the pillars which Hezekiah,
king of Judah, had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria."

Such is the brief account of this expedition and its consequences which
is given us by the author of the Second Book of Kings, who writes from a
religious point of view, and is chiefly concerned at the desecration of
holy things to which the imminent peril of his city and people forced
the Jewish monarch to submit. It is interesting to compare with this
account the narrative of Sennacherib himself, who records the features
of the expedition most important in his eyes, the number of the towns
taken and of the prisoners carried into captivity, the measures employed
to compel submission, and the nature and amount of the spoil which he
took with him to Nineveh.

"Because Hezekiah, king of Judah," says the Assyrian monarch, "would not
submit to my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms and by
the might of my power I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and
of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a
countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as
spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with
horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless
multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital
city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him
in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent
escape.... Then upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power of
my arms and he sent out to me the chiefs and the elders of Jerusalem
with thirty talents of gold and eight hundred talents of silver, and
divers treasures, a rich and immense booty.... All these things were
brought to me at Nine