Assyrians

Assyria enters Israel's story as the rod of judgment and stays as its terror. Tiglath-pileser comes first: Menahem of Israel buys him off with a thousand talents of silver (2 Kings 15:19–20), and later he carries away Galilee and Naphtali into exile (2 Kings 15:29). Shalmaneser follows, taking Hoshea as a vassal and then besieging Samaria three years until the northern kingdom falls and its people are deported (2 Kings 17:3–6).

The next generation reaches Judah. Sennacherib "came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them" (2 Kings 18:13), then sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris and the Rabshakeh to Jerusalem with a great army. It is the Rabshakeh who does the speaking, shouting in Hebrew over the wall so the people on it will hear, taunting Hezekiah's trust and mocking the God of Israel (2 Kings 18:17–35). Eliakim, Shebna and Joah come out to hear him, and Hezekiah takes the letter into the house of the LORD and spreads it out before God (2 Kings 19:14).

The end of that campaign is told in a sentence. The angel of the LORD struck the camp, Sennacherib withdrew to Nineveh, and while he worshiped in the house of Nisroch his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped, "and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place" (2 Kings 19:35–37). Osnappar remembered in Ezra 4:10 as "the great and noble," is the king who resettled foreign peoples in Samaria, and the letters of that resettled population later stall the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Assyria is also the place where mercy is shown. Jonah is sent to Nineveh, and the king of Nineveh rises from his throne, covers himself with sackcloth and sits in ashes, ordering a fast (Jonah 3:6–9). God relents. Nahum later declares the fall of the city, and Isaiah puts the whole empire in perspective: "Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger" — a tool in the hand of God that will itself be judged (Isaiah 10:5–12).