ADRAMMELECH

(A·dramʹme·lech).

1. A son of King Sennacherib of Assyria. Adrammelech and his brother Sharezer killed their father while he was bowing down at the house of his god Nisroch at Nineveh. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, apparently in the location of ancient Armenia in the mountainous region to the W of what is now known as the Caspian Sea. (2Ki 19:35-37; Isa 37:36-38) An inscription of Esar-haddon, another son of Sennacherib, relates that as his father’s successor he engaged and defeated the armies of his father’s murderers at Hanigalbat in that region.

2. A god worshiped by the Sepharvites, one of the subjugated peoples the king of Assyria brought into the territory of Samaria after his taking the Israelites of the ten-tribe kingdom into exile. It was to Adrammelech and Anammelech that the Sepharvites sacrificed their sons in the fire.​—2Ki 17:22-24, 31, 33.