A More Equivocal Response to Two Further Challenges: The background of these two further events is, again, Judah’s rebellion against Assyrian sovereignty. Yahweh’s promise of healing for Hezekiah also includes deliverance from Assyria (38:6), and an alternative chronology to the one presupposed in the Introduction does have Hezekiah living on for fifteen years after the Assyrian invasion, until 687/686 B.C. But a number of considerations suggest that the events in chapters 38–39 took place before those in chapters 36–37. This promise of deliverance belongs more plausibly before the dénouement in 37:36–38 than after it. The embassy from Merodach-Baladan, which followed Hezekiah’s illness and recovery (39:1), must have taken place before Sennacherib’s invasion. He was king of Babylon from 72…