ekiah deliver his people out of mine
hand."[533]

Hezekiah sent his servants to Isaiah, who was in Jerusalem at the
time, and the prophet said to them:

Thus shall ye say to your master. Thus saith the Lord, Be not
afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants
of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a
blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to
his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own
land.[534]

According to Berosus, the Babylonian priestly historian, the camp of
Sennacherib was visited in the night by swarms of field mice which ate
up the quivers and bows and the (leather) handles of shields. Next
morning the army fled.

The Biblical account of the disaster is as follows:

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went
out, and smote the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score
and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning,
behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria
departed, and went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh.[535]

A pestilence may have broken out in the camp, the infection, perhaps,
having been carried by field mice. Byron's imagination was stirred by
the vision of the broken army of Assyria.

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars of the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed on the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved--and forever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent--the banners alone--
Thelances uplifted--the trumpet unblown.

And the widows