Recognition of the historical basis upon which most Old Testament prophecies of the "end of the Age" are framed is very necessary to their correct interpretation. It is a truism that history repeats itself; throughout the Bible similar causes produce similar effects; the principles and forces which will eventually lead the world into the final conflict have already, on a smaller scale and in a more limited area, resulted in similar conflicts in the past. Those events, recorded in Biblical history, have been used by the prophets as models on which to base their pen pictures of the things that shall be hereafter. "That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God inquires into that which follows after" said Solomon (Ecc. 3.15). In those words he enshrined this principle. The visions of the prophets are best interpreted by discerning the model, and realising that it is by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the prophet has used a particular historical event as background to his vision. On that basis similar aspects to those contained within that event, but on a greater scale, can be looked for in the fulfilment.

One of the most noteworthy examples of this principle in prophecy is the use made by Daniel and Zechariah of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in the days of Hezekiah. That invasion is famous in Old Testament history on account of its sequel; Hezekiah and his adviser, the statesman-prophet Isaiah, led the people of Jerusalem in reliance upon God for deliverance, and the Assyrian army was miraculously destroyed in the night and the threat lifted. This one prominent feature of the event is analogous to the Divine deliverance of the people of God in the end of this Age. It is when the details of Daniel's and Zechariah's visions are compared with the details of Sennacherib's invasion that the force of their correspondence becomes obvious and clues to the interpretation of the prophecies are offered.

"Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah" says Isaiah (36.1) "that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them". This was the start of the campaign. Isa.36 & 37, 2 Kings 18 and 2 Chron.32 record the details. These narratives are confirmed and amplified by Sennacherib's own account, recorded on clay cylinders which have survived and now repose, one in the British Museum and one in America. Between the Biblical and the Assyrian records the story is fairly complete.

The real quarrel was between Assyria and Egypt, Judah at the time being allied with the latter. Sennacherib set out to subdue Egypt and Judah but first he had to secure his line of march by ensuring the loyalty of the Phoenician cities Tyre and Sidon on the seacoast, and the people of Syria. This he achieved by the simple expedient of siege and conquest. News of the ruthless invader spread rapidly through the land, and the kings of Edom, Moab and Ammon, in the south-east, hastened to the conqueror's camp with protestations of loyalty, in consequence of which these three nations escaped the horrors of warfare.

The Assyrian king next proceeded along the Palestine coast, capturing the cities of the seaside plain, defeating the Egyptian army and laying siege to Lachish, the last important stronghold barring his road to Egypt. Whilst here he demanded tribute from Hezekiah as proof of allegiance, and Hezekiah complied. Sennacherib took a great deal of spoil—gold, silver, valuables of all kinds, and two hundred thousand captives, all of which he sent back to Assyria. Then news came to him of a fresh Egyptian attack and in his fury he sent one detachment against the Egyptians and with the other surrounded Jerusalem, calling upon Hezekiah to surrender the city. It was this second demand that Hezekiah laid before the Lord in the Temple and in consequence of which the Assyrian army investing Jerusalem was destroyed. Sennacherib called off his attack upon Egypt and with what was left of his forces in the country made his way back to Assyria, where his attention was urgently needed to deal with hostile action in Babylonia to the east and Armenia to the north. He came to a violent end, murdered by two of his sons.

Now the remarkable thing about this campaign is that it is almost completely mirrored by the prophetic vision of the latter part of Daniel's 11^th chapter and certainly alluded to by Zechariah in his 14th chapter. It would seem as though the prophets were indicating that the events of the end of the Age are to bear a marked resemblance to the happenings of this memorable campaign. No attempt to suggest an interpretation is to be made here but the correspondence will be noted as an aid to the study and understanding of those chapters.

It is fairly obvious that Daniel 11 and 12 enshrines a synopsis of history, in rather veiled terms, from Daniel's own day to the introduction of the Messianic Kingdom. The latter event as the terminus is demanded by virtue of the fact that the resurrection of the dead is indicated in chapter 12.2. Ignoring differences of thought as to the precise application of much of chapter 11 it is generally agreed that verse 36 introduces the final conflict at the end of the Age under symbol of one usually known as the "wilful king". This part of the chapter, from verse 36 to the end very accurately reflects Sennacherib's campaign but puts the fulfilment of the words into the future. Daniel, of course, wrote some hundred and sixty years after that campaign but he must have been very familiar with its details.

The description in verse 36 "the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods" is well suited to Sennacherib, who was one of the most boastful and arrogant kings of antiquity. His commander-in-chief's scornful words to the defenders of Jerusalem "Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria… that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?" (Isa. 36.18) well illustrate his character. "Let not your God in whom you trust, deceive you saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria" (Isa. 37.10) was his last arrogant ultimatum before disaster came upon him. "But in his place" says Daniel in verse 38 "shall he honour the god of fortresses". Says one historian of Sennacherib "Renowned over the earth in his days as the great destroyer, he knew no higher policy than force . . . lust of power, cruelty, pride and arrogance were developed in excess in his case". Daniel goes on in verse 39 "He shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain". This is a true reflection of the Assyrian king's policy. Each country or city he conquered was placed under the control of a puppet ruler selected for his loyalty and under pledge of exacting and sending an annual tribute of goods and slaves to Nineveh. Sennacherib's destruction of Sidon at this time had the effect of diverting Phoenician commerce to Assyria; he controlled trade with Cyprus, and his victories in Media and Babylonia brought the commercial activity of the east and the south into his hands. This "god of fortresses" of verse 38 was truly "honoured with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and desirable things".

Verse 40 introduces action. "At the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him". The campaign which ended in disaster was undertaken in consequence of the Egyptian threat to Assyrian expansion, and Sennacherib marched south to render Egypt powerless. "The king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and horsemen, and with many ships: and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over". This well describes the Assyrian advance into Syria and Phoenicia; his progress was marked by complete and utter conquest and devastation. The one item not mentioned either in the Bible or the conqueror's own inscriptions is the use of ships. Assyria was an inland country and not accustomed to naval warfare. Sennacherib and his father Sargon, however, did make use of ships in their wars. Sargon had at his disposal sixty Phoenician galleys and eight thousand oarsmen for the siege of Tyre some twenty years earlier, and Sennacherib built a fleet for use in the Persian Gulf in his wars with the Elamites. It is quite likely therefore that part of his plan of attack upon Egypt involved the use of Phoenician ships.

"He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many shall be overthrown, but these shall escape out of his hand, Edom and Moab and... Ammon" (verse 41). Here is well depicted the invader's onward progress into the land of Israel and Judah proper, and its neighbour state, the confederacy of Philistine cities on the coast, Gaza, Askelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Joppa. Sennacherib himself says of this entry into Judah' "/besieged Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke and I captured forty-six of his fenced cities and innumerable villages. . . I drove into captivity two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty people, young and old, male and female, and horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen and sheep, counted as spoil. Hezekiah himself, like a bird in a cage, I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city, and I took vengeance upon any man who came forth from the city . . . He. . . sent tribute and to make submission with . . . gold . . silver, precious stones . . . ivory couches, ivory chairs . . . ebony wood, boxwood and all kinds of valuable treasures, together with his daughters, his wives and male and female musicians". He says nothing of his defeat and the destruction of his army; only of the spoil which by then was well on its way to Nineveh.

During these happenings and whilst Sennacherib was still dealing with the people of Sidon and Syria, three kings, Melech-ram of Edom, Chemosh-nadab of Moab, and Pedael of Ammon, hastened to him with tribute and protestations of loyalty, in consequence of which their lands were saved from invasion. This is a remarkable parallel to verse 41 in Daniel 11, for these were the only three to escape devastation and plunder.

This same boastful account of the spoil Sennacherib took just before his signal defeat seems to find an echo in the words of Zechariah. This prophet's 14^th chapter commences by describing the gathering of all nations to besiege Jerusalem at the end of the Age, and says that the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished, and half the city go into exile. The Lord does not deliver until these things have taken place. The likeness of this to Sennacherib's experience is significant. "The city shall be taken" says Zechariah. 'Taken' here does not mean 'captured' but rather 'surrounded'. It is a word meaning to enclose as in a net, derived from the snare or net used by fowlers. This is the very simile used by the Assyrian himself. "Like a bird in a cage" he says "I shut him up in Jerusalem his royal city". He never opened the cage. "The houses rifled", goes on Zechariah. The list of spoil, largely consisting of treasures from the Temple, according to 2 Kings 32, and obviously also from the houses of the well-to-do citizens, is a clear parallel to that. "The women ravished"; Sennacherib declares gloatingly that he took the daughters and wives of Hezekiah and sent them to Nineveh, evidently, as was the custom, to become inmates of his own harem, and the female musicians to be his slaves. For the rest of their lives these unfortunates were at the mercy of the Assyrians. "And half of the city shall go forth into captivity". This does not necessarily mean that exactly fifty per cent of the citizens are to suffer this fate; the word rendered 'half' means primarily a portion separated, from the root word meaning 'to divide'. Whereas in the main a division into two portions is implied, quite a few instances in the Old Testament require three, four or more portions; all that need be stressed here is that part of the city will thus go forth. Since the background of Zech.13 and 14 is the faith of the people in God and salvation in consequence, it is a logical conclusion that those who "go forth into captivity" are destitute of that saving faith. This at any rate was the case in the days of Hezekiah. Although most of the people shared Hezekiah's and Isaiah's faith and obeyed the injunction to ignore the Assyrian threats (Isa.36.21), there was an element that did not have that faith. They endeavoured to escape from the besieged city and trust for mercy to the besiegers ‑ a trust that was sadly misplaced. A terse sentence in Sennacherib's account of the siege is eloquent enough; "all who came outside the great gate of the city were captured and led off'." They shared the fate of the other captives who had already been sent to Nineveh. Then Zechariah comes to the climax. "The residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations" . This is the climax which Sennacherib did not record in his account. The clay cylinders record Sennacherib's heavy defeat of Jerusalem, and how the Jewish king was shut up like a bird in a cage. They do not say anything about the outcome, which was an unusual thing for Sennacherib ‑ but then defeat, utter and overwhelming defeat, was also an unusual thing for him.

Daniel 11 is not so concerned with the activities around Jerusalem as with those on the larger country scene. Verses 42-43 say of the 'King of the North' that he will prevail over the Egyptians, the Libyans and the Ethiopians and take great spoil of gold and silver and valuable treasures. This is true of Sennacherib. Egypt at the time was ruled by a powerful Ethiopian dynasty and the forces facing the Assyrian were from combined Egyptian and Ethiopian sources. (The Libyans were descended from the Egyptians and in active alliance which still exists for anyone to see). His own account lists the spoil he took after the capture and destruction of the city of Lachish, which left Egypt open and defenceless before him.

A strange and rather obscure word in verse 45 is illuminated by one of Sennacherib's boastful assertions. "He shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain" says Daniel. "Palatial tents" is the RSV rendering. The word means the king's royal pavilion erected in the midst of his camp. The "glorious holy mountain" is obviously in reference to the kingdom of Judah in the Promised Land and "between the seas" can only mean between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. Now

Sennacherib's own account says that he did set his pavilion at Lachish where his main army was gathered, and Lachish was geographically between the two seas. He did, in fact, boast that he would set that pavilion inside Jerusalem and profane its palace gardens but that boast was unfulfilled. He planted his pavilion at Lachish in the arrogant belief that Hezekiah would be brought before him there as captive, to be dealt with as he dealt with all his defeated enemies; "yet" says Daniel "he shall come to his end, and none shall help him". His ornate pavilion was hurriedly taken down and packed for retreat; he himself, bereft of his army and perhaps with only a handful of personal attendants left to him, travelled the seven hundred miles back to Nineveh with the bitter knowledge of defeat in his heart, defeat at the hands of the God he had defied.

So far as Jerusalem and Judah was concerned, that was his end, for Sennacherib never returned. Whilst engaged on this campaign, tidings reached him of renewed rebellion in other parts of his far-flung empire, Babylon in the east and Armenia in the north. That is what Daniel said too. "Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy." Immediately following his retreat from Jerusalem he fought a campaign in Babylonia which left the countryside devastated. For two years after that he warred in Armenia, reducing the hardy mountain tribes of that land to subjection, and then again another year against Babylon and Elam. Thirty thousand Babylonians and untold numbers of Armenian mountaineers were carried off into slavery, their towns burned and their lands devastated. Daniel's words fitly mirror what the Assyrian king had done.

Sennacherib lived nineteen years after his defeat at Jerusalem, of which ten were spent in unremitting warfare against Babylon, Media, Elam, Armenia and Cicilia, but never again against Judah. In that time he more than earned his title of "the Destroyer". After his conquest of Cicilia he founded a city in that land which was to become famous in after years ‑ Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul. Then came the end; he was assassinated by two of his own sons, and a third son reigned in his stead. The might and the magnificence of Sennacherib, the fear and terror his name inspired amongst countless multitudes, vanished in an instant. Truly, as Daniel predicts of the greater oppressor whom he prefigured "he shall come to his end, and none shall help him".

Whatever be the interpretation of Daniel 11 and Zechariah 14 it would seem that the remarkable correspondence between those prophecies and this historical record of the seventh century BC is intended to provide a guide to the detailed nature of the events which will terminate this Age and lead on to the time when "Michael shall stand up" to use Daniel's phrase, or Zechariah's "then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations". Sennacherib's campaign in Judah and his crushing defeat at Jerusalem by Divine intervention is a preview, in miniature, of "things which must shortly come to pass".

AOH