Isaiah 37

12. Telassar. “Hill of Asshur”—“the Til-Assuri of the inscriptions, on the eastern side of the Tigris” (Schrader).

32 a remnant. The characteristic doctrine of Isaiah: see iv. 3, etc., and the name of his son Shear-jashub. Those who by their abode at Jerusalem had escaped the invader shall “go forth” to occupy and cultivate the ravaged land.

36 the angel of the Lord went forth. See on 2 Kings xix. 35. The account in 2 Chron. xxxii. 20 is simply that “all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders, and the captains” were cut off. Herodotus relates that the disaster to the Assyrian army happened at Pelusium (Sin, Ezek. xxx. 15, 16), on the east frontier of Egypt, and was caused by an immense number of mice that gnawed the bowstrings of the army in the night, and so rendered them ineffective. This was no doubt the too literal reading of a hieroglyphic record, the mouse being an Egyptian emblem of death, and the bow of war. The Egyptian priests attribute the interposition to their own gods, and place the judgement in their own territory.