2 Kings 19:9

9. Tirhakah king of Ethiopia According to Manetho he was the third and last king of the twenty-fifth Egyptian dynasty. His successful resistance of the Assyrian invasion is chronicled on the walls of a temple at Thebes, and his monuments still exist in Egypt and Ethiopia. Rawlinson treats of the events connected with this verse as follows: “The Apis stelae show that Tirhakah did not ascend the throne of E g ypt till B.C. 690, eight years after this; but he may have been already, as he is called in Scripture, king of Ethiopia. It is probable that Sennacherib, having received the submission of Libnah, had advanced upon Egypt. It was important to crush an Egyptian army which had been collected against him by a certain Sethos, one of the many native princes who at this time ruled in the lower country, before the great Ethiopian monarch Tehrak, or Tirhakah, who was known to be on his march, should effect a junction with the troops of this minor potentate. Sethos, with his army, was at Pelusium, ( Herodotus, 2:141,) and Sennacherib, advancing to attack him, had arrived within sight of the Egyptian host, and pitched his camp over against the camp of the enemy, just at the time when Hezekiah received his letter and made the prayer to which Isaiah was instructed to respond. The two hosts lay down at night in their respective stations, the Egyptians and their king full of anxious alarm, Sennacherib and his Assyrians proudly confident, intending on the morrow to advance to the combat and repeat the lesson taught at Raphia and Attaku.” Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii, p. 167.

Sent messengers again For with the Ethiopian forces before him he did not wish to have Jerusalem fall upon his rear, and he apparently hoped to awe Hezekiah into a surrender.