Texts in Conversation
In 2 Kings 19 the angel of God strikes down the army of Sennacherib, the Assyrian king who had mocked Jerusalem. A prayer in 3 Maccabees recalls how God broke that boastful king during one of his past rescues of Israel.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Kings 19:35
Hebrew Bible
34 “‘I will shield this city and rescue it for the sake of my reputation and because of my promise to David my servant.’” 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.
Date: 600–501 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
3 Maccabees 6:5
Deuterocanon
4 You destroyed Pharaoh with his army of chariots when that lord of this same Egypt was uplifted with lawless daring and loud-sounding tongue. Shedding the beams of your mercy upon the race of Israel, you overwhelmed him and his proud army. 5 When Sennacherib, the grievous king of the Assyrians, exulting in his countless army, had subdued the whole land with his spear and was lifting himself against your holy city with boastings grievous to be endured, you, O Lord, demolished him and displayed your might to many nations. 6 When the three friends in the land of Babylon of their own will exposed their lives to the fire rather than serve vain things, you sent a moist coolness through the fiery furnace, and brought the fire on all their adversaries.
Date: 100 BCE – 70 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Search:
Notes and References
... Sennacherib (verse 5) was the king of Assyria (705-681 BCE) who invaded Judah during King Hezekiah's reign and laid siege to Jerusalem in 701 (see 2 Kings 18-19; 2 Chronicles 32; Isaiah 36-37). Sennacherib's possession of 'the entire earth' was in large part due to the vastness of the empire he inherited from his father, Sargon II, but he also conquered Babylon and rebuilt Nineveh, making it his capital. Despite such impressive gains, God shattered him in a display of divine power. A significant difference between the story in 3 Maccabees and that of 2 Kings is the critical role of a supernatural intermediary in the latter: an angel of the Lord slays 185,000 Assyrians in the middle of the night, a development that rather effectively ended the Assyrian threat (2 Kings 19:35; compare 2 Chronicles 32:21). ...
N. Clayton Croy, 3 Maccabees (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 99.
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,