(13-37) THE INVASION OF SENNACHERIB.
(13) In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah. — The fall of Samaria is dated 722-721 B.C., both by the Bible and by the Assyrian inscriptions. That year was the sixth of Hezekiah, according to 2 Kings 18:10. His fourteenth year, therefore, would be 714-713 B.C. Sennacherib’s own monuments, however, fix the date of the expedition against Judah and Egypt at 701 B.C. (See the careful discussion in Schrader’s Keilinschriften, pp. 313-317.) This divergence is remarkable, and must not be explained away. It must be borne in mind that the Assyrian documents are strictly contemporary, whereas the Books of Kings were compiled long after the events they record, and have only reached us after innumerable transcriptions; while the former, so far as they are unbroken, are in exactly the same state now as when they first left the hands of the Assyrian scribes.
Sennacherib. — Called in his own annals Sin-ahî-erib, or Sin-ahî-erba, i.e., “Sin (the moon-god) multiplied brothers.” He was son and successor of Sargon, and reigned from 705-681 B.C. He invaded Judah in his third campaign.
All the fenced cities... took them. — See Sennacherib’s own words, quoted in the Note on 2 Chronicles 32:1.