HEZEKIAH CONTINUED

Of these sources the account in 2 Kings is most purely historianic, originating at a time when religious and political values, in the Hebrew mind, were inseparable. In 2 Ch the religious point and coloring, especially in its later developed ritual and legal aspects, has the decided predominance. Sirach, with the mind of a man of letters, is concerned mainly with eulogizing Hezekiah. in his “praise of famous men” (*compare Sirach 44 through 50), of course from the devout Hebrew point of view. In the vision of Isaiah (Isa 1 through 39), we have the reflection of the moral and spiritual situation in Jerusalem, as realized in the fervid prophetic consciousness; and in the prophecy of his younger contemporary Micah, the state of things in the outlying country districts nearest the path of invasion, where both the iniquities of the ruling classes and the horrors of war were felt most keenly. Doubtless also many devotional echoes of these times of stress are deducible from the Psalms, so far as we can fairly identify them.
3. Side-Lights
It is in Hezekiah's times especially that the Assyrian inscriptions become illuminating for the history of Israel; for one important thing they furnish certain fixed dates to which the chronology of the times can be adjusted. Of Sennacherib's campaign of 701, for instance, no fewer than six accounts are at present known (see G.A. Smith, Jerusalem, II, 154, note), the most detailed being the “Taylor Cylinder,” now in the British Museum, which in the main agrees, or at least is not inconsistent, with the Scripture history.

*to find Sirach chapters go to  http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=KjvSira.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=41&division=div1