Telassar

Telassar is a place — city or district — held by the "sons of Eden" and named in the Assyrian taunt against Hezekiah as one of the conquests of earlier Assyrian kings. It appears in two parallel passages, in Kings and in Isaiah.

In the Assyrian Taunt

Sennacherib's messenger lists Telassar among the prior conquests whose gods could not deliver them, pressing the conclusion that Yahweh likewise will not deliver Jerusalem: "Have the gods of the nations delivered them, which my fathers have destroyed, Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?" (2Ki 19:12).

The same speech is preserved verbatim in Isaiah's narrative: "Have the gods of the nations delivered them, which my fathers have destroyed, Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?" (Isa 37:12). Telassar thus stands as a witness, on Assyrian lips, to the geographic reach of Assyrian arms.