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Tobit retells how Sennacherib was killed by his sons while worshiping, echoing the narrative of 2 Kings 19. This connects Tobit’s story to the fall of Assyria and places its events in the same historical setting.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Kings 19:37
Hebrew Bible
35 That very night the angel of the Lord went out and killed 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. When they got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses. 36 So King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and went on his way. He went home and stayed in Nineveh. 37 One day, as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. They escaped to the land of Ararat; his son Esarhaddon replaced him as king.
Date: 600–501 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Tobit 1:21
Deuterocanon
19 And a certain one of those of Nineveh went and informed the king concerning me, that it was I who buried them, and that I was hid. And when I perceived that the king knew concerning me and that I was sought for to be put to death, I was afraid and ran away. 20 And all that I possessed was seized, and there was nothing left to me which was not taken to the royal treasury save my wife Anna and my son Tobias. 21 And not forty days passed before two of his sons killed him. And they fled into the mountains of Ararat, and Esarhaddon his son reigned after him. And he appointed over all the accounts of his kingdom Ahikar, my brother Anael’s son, and he had authority over all his affairs.
Date: 225–175 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Tobit 1:21 ... The biblical account in 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38 records the assassination of Sennacherib: 'As he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him with a sword, and they fled to the land of Ararat.' Compare 2 Chronicles 32:21. Sennacherib died in 681 B.C. The names of his sons are not mentioned in Esarhaddon's account of his brothers' revolt recorded in the Prism of Esarhaddon B, but they are given in Neubauer's Aramaic, and in an elaborate paraphrase in HM, In HL the sons are called 'Esarhaddon and Sharezer.' Ararat appears in 4Q196 2:4 as ΕΠΚ, as in Masoretic text of Genesis 8:4, the place where Noah's ark came to settle in the ancient region of Urartu, which would have been the Armenian area between Lake Van and the Black Sea south of the Caucasus Mountains, in what is today Eastern Turkey ..."
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Tobit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 121.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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