Nisroch

Biblical Text

Nisroch appears in parallel accounts in 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38. After besieging Jerusalem, the Assyrian king Sennacherib withdrew and returned to Nineveh. Later, while he was worshiping "in the house of Nisroch his god," his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. The two sons fled to the land of Ararat (the region of Mount Ararat), and another son, Esarhaddon, succeeded him as king. 2 Chronicles 32:21 also records the event but does not name the god, referring only to "the house of his god."

Background

The Hebrew form of the name is Nisroch. However, no god by this name has yet been identified in Assyrian or Babylonian texts, and several views have therefore been proposed regarding the deity's identity:

• That it refers to Ashur (Assur), the national god of Assyria
• That it is a form of the name of another deity, such as Nusku, the god of fire, or Ninurta, the god of war, that was altered in the course of transmission

The manuscripts of the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) also spell the name in differing ways, suggesting that its form was unstable from an early date. Scholars date Sennacherib's death to around 681 BC. The Babylonian Chronicles and the inscriptions of Esarhaddon also report a revolt by a prince and the murder of the king, and these sources are generally regarded as broadly consistent with the biblical record.

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

The account is presented as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah in 2 Kings 19:7, namely that Sennacherib would return to his own land and fall by the sword. The contrast with the preceding narrative is also striking. In 2 Kings 18–19, Sennacherib taunted that the gods of the nations had not delivered their peoples out of his hand, while Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and prayed. Yet Sennacherib himself is slain inside the temple of his own god. This arrangement is read as showing that a pagan god cannot protect those who serve it.

The New Testament does not mention Nisroch directly. However, the account is often read alongside New Testament passages that speak of the powerlessness of idolatry, such as 1 Corinthians 8:4–6, which teaches that an idol is nothing.

Interpretation and Issues

• Time interval: The text places the account of the assassination directly after the withdrawal from Jerusalem. However, an interval of about twenty years is thought to separate the withdrawal (c. 701 BC) from the assassination. The text links the two events only with the phrase "as he was worshipping" and does not state that the killing happened immediately.
• Later accretions: Since the nineteenth century, some Bible dictionaries and illustrations have identified Nisroch with the eagle-headed genie depicted on Assyrian reliefs, and some explanations have linked the name to a Semitic word meaning "eagle." This identification, however, has not been established. Likewise, the portrayal of Nisroch as a fallen angel or demon in John Milton's Paradise Lost and in Western demonological literature is a product of literary imagination and has no connection to the biblical text.