Another discrepancy has been found in the date assigned by the Biblical narrative to the Assyrian invasion. The year B.C. 701 was the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah, not the fourteenth, which fell in B.C. 711, the year of Sargon’s campaign. But this very fact supplies an explanation of the difficulty. In the retrospective record of the prophetical annalist, the two campaigns of Sargon and Sennacherib have been brought into association, though the history dwells only upon that one which illustrated God’s way of dealing with His faithful servants. Hence it is that reminiscences of the earlier invasion are allowed to enter here and there into the narrative. It was Sargon, and not Sennacherib, who was the conqueror of Hamath and Arpad, of Sepharvaim and Samaria (2 Kings xviii. 34-36). It was Sargon, and not Sennacherib, who invaded Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign. There is a bas-relief in the British Museum which represents Sennacherib seated on his throne in front of Lachish, and receiving the spoil of the city as it passed before him. It was while he was encamped before this city that Hezekiah despatched the embassy with gifts and tribute and prayers for pardon. Sennacherib accepted the gifts, but refused the pardon; nothing would content him but the absolute surrender of Jerusalem and its king. Hezekiah then prepared for his defence. We gather from Isaiah’s writings that there were at that period three parties in the State, each of which at different times gained an influence over the king and his councillors. There was first the party headed by Shebna—whose name proves him to have been of Syrian parentage—which advocated alliance with Egypt and hostility to Assyria. This was the party with which Isaiah had mainly to contend, but its power was not finally extinguished until after the retreat of Tirhakah from the battle of Eltekeh, and this visible proof that Egypt was but a bruised reed to lean upon. The second party inherited the policy of Ahaz, and urged that Judah’s only chance of safety lay in submission to the mighty Empire of Assyria. Isaiah was the representative of the third party. He announced God’s own declaration, that He would defend His city and temple if only its inhabitants would trust and fear Him, and reject all alliances with the heathen nations that surrounded them. “In quietness and in confidence” should be their strength. It was not until events had demonstrated the truth of Isaiah’s message that the rulers of Jerusalem reluctantly accepted it, and recognised at last that the true policy of Judah was to abstain from mixing in the wars and intrigues of the foreign idolater.