[579] Heb., _ruach_; LXX., [Greek: didômi en autô pneuma]. Theodoret calls this "spirit" _cowardice_ ([Greek: tên deilian oimai dêloun]).
[580] Libnah means "whiteness." Dean Stanley (_S. and P._, 207, 258) identifies it with a white-faced hill, the Blanchegarde of the Crusaders.
[581] The dates usually given are Sabaco, B.C. 725-712; Shabatok, 712-698; Tirhakah, 698-672. Manetho, [Greek: Tarachos]; Strabo, [Greek: Terakôn, ho Aithiôps]. He was third king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, and the greatest of the Egyptian sovereigns who came from Ethiopia. He reigned gloriously for many years. We see his figure at Medinet Abou, smiting ten captive princes with an iron mace; but he was finally defeated by Esarhaddon, and in 668 by Assurbanipal at Karbanit (Canopus). He is called by his conqueror "Tar-ku-u, King of Egypt and Cush" (Schrader, _K. A. T._, 336 ff.).
[582] Heb., _Sepharîm_; Vulg., _litteræ_; 2 Chron. xxxii. 17. The more ordinary term for a letter is _iggereth_.
[583] 2 Kings xix. 12 (Heb.); Ezek. xxvii. 23. On these places see Schrader, ii. 11, 12. It had been indeed Sennacherib's work "to reduce fenced cities to ruinous heaps." He boasts on the Bellino Cylinder, "Their smaller towns without number I overthrew, and reduced them to heaps of rubbish" (_Records of the Past_, i. 27).
[584] "It is a prayer without words, a prayer in action, which then passes into a spoken prayer" (Delitzsch).
[585] The Assyrians are sometimes represented in their monuments as hewing idols to pieces in honour of their god Assur (Botta, _Monum._, pl. 140).
[586] LXX., [Greek: kinein tên kephalên], "a gesture of scorn" (Psalm xxii. 7, cix. 25; Lam. ii. 15). With the vaunts of Sennacherib compare Claudian, _De bell. Geth._, 526-532.
"Cum cesserit omnis Obsequiis natura meis? Subsidere nostris Sub pedibus montes, _arescere vidimus amnes_ ... Fregi Alpes, _galeis Padum victricibus hausi_." KEIL, _ad loc._
[587] Comp. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 (Heb.); Psalm xxxix. 1; Isa. xxx. 28; Ezek. xxxviii. 4, xxix. 4. The Assyrians drove a ring through the lower lip, the Babylonians through the nose. See Rawlinson, _Ancient Monarchies_, ii. 314, iii. 436.
[588] 2 Kings xix. 33. "The river of Egypt" (_Nachal-ha-Mizraim_) is the Wady-el-Arish.