“Now when Sennacherib was returning from his Egyptian war to Jerusalem, he found his army under Rabshakeh in great danger, for God had sent a pestilential distemper upon his army; and on the very first night of the siege, a hundred and eighty-five thousand, with their captains and generals, were destroyed. So the king was in a great dread, and in a terrible agony at this calamity; and being in great fear for his whole army, he fled with the rest of his forces to his own kingdom, and to his city Nineveh, and when he had abode there a little while, he was treacherously assaulted, and died by the hands of his elder sons, Adramelech and Sarasar, and was slain in his own temple which was called Araske. Now these sons of his were driven away on account of the murder of their father, by the citizens, and went into Armenia, whilst Assarachoddas took the kingdom of Sennacherib.” This would seem to be conclusive, especially as Sennacherib, according to his own records, made no expedition to Egypt before or at the time of that against the land of Ḫatti, which took place in the eponymy of Mitunu, prefect of Isana, _i.e._ 700 B.C., or the year immediately preceding. Now as Sennacherib died in 681 B.C., nearly twenty years elapsed between the campaign of which the account is above translated and his death. Berosus, however, states that, after the siege of Jerusalem, which ended so disastrously for him, he abode at Nineveh only “a little while” before he was murdered. There is then no doubt that there were two campaigns, and the events referred to in 2 Kings xviii. 13-xix. 37, though they seem to follow each other with little or no break, must have extended over a considerable period, the widest gap being in all probability between the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of ch. xviii. It is noteworthy that, at this point, the Hebrew indicates the end of a paragraph, though not a change of subject. Affairs in Babylonia now occupied the attention of Sennacherib for many years, in consequence of the many revolutions there, which were largely fomented, aided and abetted by the Elamites. In 703 B.C., two pretenders, Marduk-zakir-šumi and Marduk-âbla-iddina, held the throne in succession for a few months, but Sennacherib put an end to this rule by setting on the throne a Chaldean named Bêl-ibnî (Belibus).(111) This took place when he defeated Merodach-baladan, before the campaign against the West. Evidently, however, he was not satisfied with the rule of his nominee, who had probably been plotting against him, and therefore entered the country again in 699 B.C., carried away Bêl-ibnî prisoner, and set on the throne his own eldest son, Aššur-nadin-šum. After this seems to have occurred his fifth expedition, which was to the mountainous region where lay the cities Tumurru, Šarum or Šarma, Ezema, Kibšu, Ḫalbuda, Qûa, and Qana, in the neighbourhood of Cilicia, his objective being the city Ukku, which was taken and spoiled.