Isaiah 36:1

Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah,.... The following piece of history is inserted from the books of Kings and Chronicles, as an illustration of some preceding prophecies, and as a confirmation of them; see 2 Kings 18:13

that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah; who in the Apocrypha:

"And if the king Sennacherib had slain any, when he was come, and fled from Judea, I buried them privily; for in his wrath he killed many; but the bodies were not found, when they were sought for of the king.'' (Tobit 1:18)

is said to be the son of Shalmaneser, as he certainly was his successor, who in the sixth year of Hezekiah, eight years before this, took Samaria, and carried the ten tribes captive, 2 Kings 18:10 he is called Sennacherib by Herodotus c, who says he was king of the Arabians, and the Assyrians; who yet is blamed by Josephus d, for not calling him the king of the Assyrians only of the Arabians, whereas he styles him both; and the same Josephus observes, that Berosus, a Chaldean writer, makes mention of this Sennacherib as king of Assyria; the same came up in a military way against the fortified cities of Judah, which were the frontier towns, and barriers of their country:

and took them; that is, some of them, not all of them; see

Isaiah 37:8, he thought indeed to have took them to himself, this was his intent, 2 Chronicles 32:1, but was prevailed upon to desist, by a payment of three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold to him, by the king of Judah, 2 Kings 18:14.

c In Euterpe c. 141. d Antiqu. Jud. l. 10. c. 1. sect. 4.