Nadav Na'aman, «New Light on Hezekiah's Second Prophetic Story (2 Kgs 19,9b-35)», Vol. 81 (2000) 393-402
The article re-examines some elements in Account B2 (2 Kgs 19,9b-35) in an effort to shed more light on the date and place in which the story was composed. It is suggested that the list of cities mentioned in vv. 12-13 reflects the conquests of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar in the late seventh century BCE. It is also suggested that vv. 17-18 may reflect the Babylonian practice of destroying cult statues during their conquest of Assyria. The author of Account B2 was probably a descendant of a Judean deportee who lived in eastern Babylonia in the second half of the sixth century BCE. It is further suggested that the Deuteronomist combined chronistic and narrative early texts (Accounts A and B1) and integrated them into his composition of the history of Israel.
contribution to Account B1 is the insertion of 2 Kgs 18,22, which he wrote in order to support and corroborate his description of Hezekiahs cultic reform (18,4)44. The note on Hezekiahs cultic reform is the only place where a clear Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic features appears in the speech. It supports my suggestion that Account B1 is a pre-Deuteronomistic prophetic story and that like many other prophetic stories it was integrated by the Deuteronomist into his work of the history of Israel.
The Deuteronomist attached Account B1 after Account A, and omitted any reference to the subjugation of Judah to Assyria from 701 BCE to the Assyrian retreat from Palestine, thereby depicting Hezekiahs revolt against Assyria as an unqualified success. Anyone reading the Hezekiah-Josiah pericope in the Book of Kings would have to conclude that Judah was subjugated in the reign of Ahaz and was freed during the reign of Hezekiah. This is an exemplary case of the decisive role of the Deuteronomist in shaping the history of Judah according to his ideological and theological considerations, although he cited his two sources almost verbatim and added very little to the early texts.
Account B2 was written in Babylonia, either in the late years of the Babylonian Empire or the early Persian period, and in many ways is a revised theological version of the first account. The prophetic story of the miraculous deliverance" of Jerusalem had a prominent place in the theology of the Deuteronomistic history, and the author of Account B2 found it necessary to update it and fit its messages to the new experience of the Jewish community in Babylonia in the second half of the sixth century BCE45.