were combined towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century, by the compiler of the Book of Kings, and passed thence into the collection of the prophecies attributed to Isaiah.

The Jewish king was to give up his wives and daughters as hostages, to pledge himself to pay a regular tribute, and disburse immediately a ransom of thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred talents of silver:  he could only make up this large sum by emptying the royal and sacred treasuries, and taking down the plates of gold with which merely a short while before he had adorned the doors and lintels of the temple.  Padi was released from his long captivity, reseated on his throne, and received several Jewish towns as an indemnity:  other portions of territory were bestowed upon Mitinti of Ashdod and Zillibel of Graza as a reward for their loyalty.*

* The sequence of events is not very well observed in the Assyrian text, and the liberation of Padi is inserted in 11. 8-11, before the account of the war with Hezekiah.  It seems very unlikely that the King of Judah would have released his prisoner before his treaty with Sennacherib; the Assyrian scribe, wishing to bring together all the facts relating to Ekron, anticipated this event.  Hebrew tradition fixed the ransom at the lowest figure, 300 talents of silver instead of the 800 given in the Assyrian document (2 Kings xviii. 14), and authorities have tried to reconcile this divergence by speculating on the different values represented by a talent in different countries and epochs.

Hezekiah issued from the struggle with his territory curtailed and his kingdom devastated; the last obstacle which stood in the way of the Assyrians’ victorious advance fell with him, and Sennacherib could now push forward with perfect safety towards the Nile.  He had, indeed, already planned an attack on Egypt, and had reached the isthmus, when a mysterious accident arrested his further progress.  The conflict on the plains of Altaku had been severe; and the army, already seriously diminished by its victory, had been still further weakened during the campaign in Judaea, and possibly the excesses indulged in by the soldiery had developed in them the germs of one of those terrible epidemics which had devastated Western Asia several times in the course of the century:  whatever may have been the cause, half the army was destroyed by pestilence before it reached the frontier of the Delta, and Sennacherib led back the shattered remnants of his force to Nineveh.*

* The Assyrian texts are silent about this catastrophe, and the sacred books of the Hebrews seem to refer it to the camp at Libnah in Palestine (2 Kings xix. 8-35); the Egyptian legend related by Herodotus seems to prove that it took place near the Egyptian frontier.  Josephus takes the king as far as Pelusium, and describes the destruction of the Assyrian army as taking place in the camp before this town.  He may have been misled