Tirhakah

Tirhakah was the last king of Egypt from the Ethiopian (twenty-fifth) dynasty, who reigned approximately 690-664 BC. His name may mean inquirer or examiner. He appears in Scripture in connection with Sennacherib's campaign against Judah during Hezekiah's reign: news of Tirhakah's approach against Sennacherib's army prompted the Assyrian king to send a threatening letter to Hezekiah urging surrender (2 Kings 19:9; Isa. 37:9).

Hezekiah's response was to take Sennacherib's letter to the temple and spread it before God in prayer, which occasioned Isaiah's oracle of deliverance and the subsequent destruction of 185,000 Assyrian troops (2 Kings 19:14-35). Tirhakah's historical relationship to Sennacherib's campaign of 701 BC has been debated by scholars, as he may not have been pharaoh at that exact date. Nonetheless, his intervention or threatened intervention shaped one of the most dramatic episodes of the eighth-century prophetic period.