by the fall of his fortresses and the devastation of his territory, has accepted the position of a vassal once more, paying at the same time a heavy fine, inclusive of 30 talents of gold and 800 of silver.  Such is the Assyrian account.  If we treat the 300 talents mentioned in 2Kings xviii. 14 as Syrian (=800 Babylonian), it completely fills in the vague outlines given in 2Kings xviii. 14-16, and, while confirming in their place immediately after ver. 13 these verses, unrelated as they are to the main connection of the Biblical narrative, corrects them only in one point, by making it probable that the subjection of Hezekiah (which is not equivalent to the surrender of his city) took place while Sennacherib was still before Ekron, and not at later date when he had gone further south towards Libnah.  As regards his further advance towards Egypt, and the reasons of his sudden withdrawal (related by Herodotus also from Egyptian tradition), the great king is silent, having nothing to boast of in it.  The battle of Eltheke, which is to be regarded only as an episode in the siege of Ekron, being merely the repulse of the Egyptian relieving army, was not an event of great historical importance, and ought not to be brought into any connection either with 2Kings xix. 7 or with xix. 35; Sennacherib’s inscription speaks only of the first and prosperous stage of the expedition, not of the decisive one which resulted so disastrously for him, as must be clear from the words themselves to every unprejudiced reader.

8.  THE PROPHETIC REFORMATION.

Isaiah was so completely a prophet that even his wife was called the prophetess after him.  No such title could have been bestowed on the wife of either Amos or Hosea.  But what distinguished him more than anything else from those predecessors was that his position was not, like theirs, apart from the government; he sat close to the helm, and took a very real part in directing the course of the vessel.  He was more positive and practical than they; he wished to make his influence felt, and when for the moment he was unsuccessful in this so far as the great whole of the state was concerned, he busied himself in gathering round him a small circle of like-minded persons on whom his hope for the future rested.  Now that Israel had been destroyed, he wished at all events to save Judah.  The lofty ideality of his faith (ii. 1 seq.) did not hinder him from calling in the aid of practical means for this end.  But the current of his activities was by the circumstances of the case directed into a channel in which after his death they continued to flow towards a goal which had hardly been contemplated by himself.