Main Message

• The poem recounts a story from the Bible, where Sennacherib, King of Assyria, lays siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah, King of Jerusalem, prays, and in the morning 185,000 Assyrians are found dead in their camp
• This is an unusual Romantic poem. This is an oddity of Byrons as he was a free thinker! Byron was a political radical thinker and the government of Britain was at the time quite tyrannical and oppressive, so the significance could be attack at this system.