This light is manifold. The very language of the inscriptions has helped to explain difficult passages in the Hebrew Bible. Assyrian turns out to be very closely related to Hebrew, as closely related, in fact, as two strongly marked English dialects are to one another. There is no other Semitic language (except, of course, Phœnician, which is practically the same as Hebrew) which is so nearly allied to it. And thanks to the library of Nineveh, and its lexicons and lists of synonymous words, we have a larger literature, and a larger vocabulary, to draw upon in the case of Assyrian than we have in the case of Hebrew. The consequence is that Assyrian may sometimes settle the meaning of a word which occurs only once or very rarely in the Old Testament. Thus the word _z'bhûl_, which Hebrew scholars had supposed to mean 'a dwelling,' is shown by the Assyrian texts to signify a 'height,' so that in 1 Kings viii. 13, Solomon does not declare to God that he had built Him 'an house to dwell in,' as the Authorised Version renders the passage, but 'a lofty temple.' Naturally words of Assyrian origin, like Rab-shakeh and Tartan, have first received their explanation from the decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions. They are not proper names, but titles, the Rab-shakeh being 'the chief of the princes,' or Vizier, and the Tartan, the commander-in-chief. But not only do we find parallels to Hebrew in the individual words of Assyrian, we also find parallel expressions which illustrate and explain those of the Hebrew text. We all remember the statement that the 'Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.' The same phrase occurs in an unpublished Accadian hymn addressed to a deity whose name is lost, but who was probably Rimmon the Air-god. The Accadian original describes him as 'raining fire and stones upon the enemy,' which the Assyrian translation changes into 'raining stones and fire upon the foe' in exact conformity with the Hebrew phrase. The familiar expression 'the Lord of Hosts,' similarly finds its analogue and illustration in the common Assyrian title of the supreme god Assur: 'lord of the legions of heaven and earth,' these legions being the multitudinous spirits and angels whose home was in 'the heaven above and the earth below.' We can hardly speak here of the accounts of the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel, to which Mr. George Smith gave the name of 'the Chaldean Genesis,' and which agree so closely with the corresponding accounts in the Hebrew Book of Genesis. Though found in the library of Nineveh, they are really copies of older Babylonian works, and therefore belong rather to Babylonian than to Assyrian history. It is only the account of the Creation in six days which may perhaps be of purely Assyrian origin. What a resemblance it offers to the first chapter of Genesis will be seen from the extracts from it in the chapter on Assyrian Religion.