"The Destruction of Sennacherib" is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1815 in his Hebrew Melodies (in which it was titled The Destruction of Semnacherib). The poem is based on the biblical account of the historical Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC by Assyrian king Sennacherib, as described in 2 Kings 18–19, Isaiah 36–37. The rhythm of the poem has a feel of the beat of a galloping horse's hooves (an anapestic tetrameter) as the Assyrian rides into battle.

Biblical story

The poem relates to the Biblical account of Sennacherib's attempted siege of Jerusalem. According to the Bible record in 2 Kings 18:13, the Assyrian army came "against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them." When the Assyrians were besieging Jerusalem, Hezekiah prayed to Jehovah in the Temple, and Isaiah sent the reply from Jehovah to Hezekiah: "I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake" (2 Kings 19:34), and during the following night the Angel of the Lord (מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה) "smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand" (i.e. 185,000), so by morning most of the Assyrian army was found "as dead corpses" (2 Kings 19:35), and Sennacherib went back to Nineveh. The Assyrian annals do mention tribute paid by Hezekiah to Sennacherib (as recorded in 2 Kings 18), and the Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem (dated 701 BC), but omits any mention of its failure or the loss of the army.

Reception

The poem was popular in Victorian England and, when the first Australian cricket team to tour England defeated a strong MCC team, including W. G. Grace, at Lord's on 27 May 1878, the satirical magazine Punch celebrated by publishing a parody of the poem including a wry commentary on Grace's contribution: Mark Twain has references to this poem throughout his works, from his early newspaper sketches to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and it is mentioned often in biographies of him, making it clear that it was important to him. Ogden Nash's "Very Like a Whale", a humorous complaint about poetical metaphors, uses this poem for its inspiration:

In popular culture

Sources

Ashton, Thomas L. (1972). Byron's Hebrew Melodies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710071736