From this point the historian has only Judah to deal with. The reign of Hezekiah is narrated at some length in 2 Kings 18-20. A considerable part of these chapters (xviii. 13-XX. 19) is found also in the Book of Isaiah (Isa. 36-39), with variations which are of much interest for the history of the text. The psalm, Isa. xxxviii. 9-20, for instance, is not found in Kings; 2 Kings xviii. 14-16 is not in Isaiah, and minor differences occur in almost every verse. The introduction to the reign of Hezekiah by the author of Kings is somewhat longer than usual, and attributes to him not only the destruction of the serpent idol in the temple which Moses was believed to have made (cf. Num. xxi. 8 f.), and of other apparatus of heathenism, but the removal of the high places, making him thus anticipate the reforms of Josiah a century later (2 Kings xviii. 4). This probably exaggerates Hezekiah's good works, but for the bronze serpent to which sacrificial worship had been paid from time immemorial, as well as for vs. 7 f. (Hezekiah's rebellion), which is the antecedent of vs. 13 ff., he may have had the authority of the annals.
From the annals probably come also 2 Kings xviii. 13-16, with their brief record of the penalty Hezekiah paid for his revolt. Of this we have also Sennacherib's account in his inscriptions, where he tells how he took the cities of Judah and shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage," and gives the figures of the heavy indemnity he imposed upon him. There follow two longer accounts of Sennacherib's operations, 2 Kings xviii. 17-xix. 8 and xix. 9-37, which are commonly regarded as parallel and somewhat discrepant relations of the same campaign, but by some are thought to refer to two different occasions, at an interval of ten years or more. 2 Kings xx. 1-11 (cf. Isa. 38) is perhaps from a life of Isaiah, who is the chief figure in it; vs. 12-19 (Isa. 39), the embassy of the chronic Babylonia rebel, Merodach Baladan, presumably to undermine Hezekiah's shaky loyalty to his Assyrian lord, seems to belong at an earlier point in the story; in it also Isaiah is the central person. In the closing paragraph the author of Kings has preserved an interesting annalistic notice of an aqueduct and reservoir which Hezekiah constructed, not improbably the Siloam tunnel and the reservoir it feeds.