(2) Military Ventures. This great work hav ing been accomplished and consolidated (2 Kings xvii :7, etc.) Hezekiah applied himself to repair the calamities, as lie had repaired the crimes, of his father's government. He took arms and re covered the cities of Judah which the Philistines had seized. Encouraged by this success, he ven tured to withhold the tribute which his father had paid to the Assyrian king; and this act, which the result shows to have been imprudent, drew upon the country the greatest calamities of his reign. Only a few years before, namely, in the fourth of his reign, the Assyrians had put an end to the kingdom of Israel and sent the ten tribes into exile. but had abstained from molesting Hezekiah, as he was already their tributary..
(3) Assyrian Invasion. Seeing his country invaded on all sides by the Assyrian forces under Sennacherib, and Lachish, a strong place which covered Jerusalem. on the point of falling into their hands, Hezekiah, not daring to meet them in the field, occupied himself in all necessary prep arations for a protracted defense of Jerusalem, in hope of assistance from Egypt, with which coun try he had contracted an alliance (Is. xxx :1-7). (See LArtitsu.) Stich alliances were not favored by the divine sovereign of Israel and his prophets, and no good ever came of them. But this alliance did not render the good king unmindful of his true source of strength, for in quieting the alarms of the people he directed their attention to the con sideration that they in fact had more of power and strength in the divine protection than the Assyrian king possessed in all his host. 'There is more with us than with him ; with him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and fight our battles.' Nevertheless, Heze kiah was himself distrustful of the course he had taken, and at length, to avert the calamities of war, sent to the Assyrian king offers of submis sion. Sennacherib, who was anxious to proceed against Egypt, consented to withdraw his forces on the payment of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold (see SENNACHER1B), which the king was not able to raise without ex hausting both his own treasury and that of the Temple, and stripping off the gold with which the doors and pillars of the Lord's house were over laid (2 Kings xviii :7-16).
But after he had received the silver and gold the Assyrian king broke faith with Hezekiah and continued to prosecute his warlike operations. While he employed himself in taking the fortresses of Judxa, which it was important to secure be fore he marched against Egypt. he sent three of his generals—Rabshakeh and Rabsaris, besides the Tartan, or commander-in-chief—with part of his forces to threaten Jerusalem with a siege un less it were surrendered, and the inhabitants sub mitted to be sent into Assyria ; and this summons was delivered in language highly insulting not only to the king and people, but to the God they worshiped.
(4) Assyrian Defeat. When the terms of the summons were made known to Hezekiah he gath ered courage from the conviction that God would not fail to vindicate the honor of his insulted name. In this conviction he was confirmed by the prophet Isaiah, who, in the Lord's name, promised the utter discomfiture and overthrow of the blas phemous Assyrian : `Lo, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to die by the sword in his own land' (2 Kings xix :7). The rumor which Sennacherib heard was of the ad vance of Tirhakah the Ethiopian to the aid of the Egyptians, with a force which the Assyrians did not deem it prudent to meet ; but, before with drawing to his own country, Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah, designed to check the gladness which his retirement was likely to produce. But that very night the predicted blast —probably the hot pestilential south wind—smote 18o,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians, and re leased the men of Judah from all their fears (2 Kings xviii :17-37; xix :1-34; 2 Chron. xxxii :1-23; Is. xxxvi :37).
(5) Illness of Hezekiah. It was in the same year, and while Jerusalem was still threatened by the Assyrians, that Hezekiah fell sick of the plague , and the aspect which the plague-boil as sumed assured him that he must die. In this he was confirmed by Isaiah, who warned him that his end approached. The love of life, the condition of the country—the Assyrians being present in it. and the throne of David without an heir—caused him to grieve at his doom, and to pray earnestly that he might be spared.
(6) Prayer Answered. And his prayer was heard in heaven. The prophet returned with the assurance that in three days he should recover, and that fifteen additional years of life should be given to him. This communication was altogether so extraordinary that the king required some token by which his belief might be justified; and accordingly the 'sign' which he required was granted to him. The shadow of the sun went back upon the dial of Ahaz, the ten degrees it had gone down. (See DIAL) This was a marvel greater than that of the cure which the king dis trusted, for there is no known principle of as tronomy or natural philosophy by which such a result could be produced. A cataplasm of figs was then applied to the plague-boil, under the direction of the prophet, and on the third day, as foretold, the king recovered (2 Kings xx :1-11; 2 Chr011. XXXii :24-26; IS. XXXViii). (See PLAGUE.) The destruction of the Assyrians drew the at tention of foreign courts for a time towards Judxa, and caused the facts connected with Heze kiah's recovery, and the retrogression of the shadow on the dial, to be widely known.