Adrammelech

Adrammelech (meaning the glory or grandeur of the king) refers to two distinct entities in the Old Testament. The first is an idol worshipped by the Sepharvites, a people whom the Assyrians settled in Samaria after the deportation of the northern kingdom. Their cult included the abhorrent practice of burning children in the fire as offerings to Adrammelech and Anammelech (2 Kings 17:31), deities identified with solar or astral worship and possibly associated with the Babylonian Anu or Adad.

The second Adrammelech was a son of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Following the miraculous destruction of his army before Jerusalem and Sennacherib's return to Nineveh, Adrammelech and his brother Sharezer assassinated their father in the temple of Nisroch and fled to the land of Ararat. This fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy against Sennacherib (Isaiah 37:7, 38) is confirmed in part by Babylonian and Assyrian annals, which record a succession crisis following Sennacherib's death in 681 B.C.