2 Kings 19:24

I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places.

I have digged and drunk strange waters. Here is another instance of boasting that he had overcome the greatest difficulties and disadvantages of nature. Though passing through foreign countries, parts of which extended in inhospitable deserts, where it might have been anticipated that his army would have perished of thirst, he had with skillful and well-applied labour digged into the arid soil, and found a sufficient supply of the necessary fluid.

And with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places. The metaphor was probably derived from the familiar fact of a gardener opening rills of water by his foot. Assuming that there is some reality, or basis of fact, under this grandiloquent figure, it may be supposed to mean, that the strongest fortresses had been taken by his forces, and that cities defended by the encircling course of broad rivers were successfully stormed, by diverting the currents, so that the assailants, crossing dry-shod the old channels of those streams, had, contrary to human anticipations, effected an easy entrance into the "besieged places." [But maatsowr (H4693), rendered "besieged places," is considered by Gesenius (sub voce) and Bochart ('Hierezoicon,' part 2:, lib. 5:, cap. 15) to be here the proper name of Egypt, and apparently of Lower Egypt (so called, probably, from being well fortified. Bochart, 'Phaleg.,' 4:, 34).] In this sense the word occurs in Isaiah 19:6; Micah 7:12.

If Sennacherib made an actual invasion into Lower Egypt, it must have been with the army of his father Sargon. For the Assyrian monuments afford no evidence that he himself proceeded further against the Egyptians than Lachish, which was at that time under their jurisdiction. The language seems to point to the energetic and politic measures which Hezekiah had taken for stopping up the wells, fountains, and reservoirs about Jerusalem (cf. 2 Chronicles 32:3; Isaiah 22:9; Isaiah 22:11; Josephus, 'Antiquities,' b. 6:, ch. 14:, sec. 5); notwithstanding which the proud Assyrian boasted that he was under no apprehension of wanting a supply of that essential liquid, or being compelled to fetch it from distant sources, since he had previously overcome the greatest difficulties in that respect. (See Rawlinson's 'Ancient Monarchies,' 2:, p. 437, where that writer states it as his opinion that the blocking up of the fountains at Jerusalem took place on the first expedition of Sennacherib. And, on the nature and extent of the changes made at that time in the water supply, Williams' 'Holy City,' 2:, pp. 472-482; Robinson's 'Biblical Researches,' 1:, p. 513; Stewart's 'Tent and Khan,' p. 271; Barclay's 'City of the Groat King,' ch. 10:, especially p. 307; Wilson's 'Lands of the Bible,' 1:, p. 493; Porter's 'Handbook,' p. 135, sec. 47.)