Hebrew word · H5268

נִסְרֹךְ

nisrokh

Nisroch

A proper name for an Assyrian god. It appears only here and in 2 Kings 19:37. No god with exactly this name is attested in Assyrian sources.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated October 21, 2026

What it means

§ Nisroch = "the great eagle"

an idol of Nineveh worshipped by Sennacherib; symbolised by the eagle-headed human figure

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: A proper name for an Assyrian god. It appears only here and in 2 Kings 19:37. No god with exactly this name is attested in Assyrian sources.
Against the English: English versions all transliterate it (Nisroch, Nisrok). None tries to identify the god.
Used elsewhere in the period: The Septuagint has forms such as Nasarach or Esdrach. Josephus has Araskēs. Proposed identifications include Nusku (god of fire and light, attendant of Enlil), Ninurta (a warrior god), Marduk, and Ashur, the chief god of Assyria, whose name could be distorted in transmission. Some suggest a deliberate scribal deformation of a foreign god's name, which is known elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, but it cannot be proven here.

2 Kings · 1

2 Kings 19:37 נִסְרֹ֣ךְ Nisroch

One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. And his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 37:38 נִסְרֹ֣ךְ Nisroch

One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. And his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place.

Here: The name of Sennacherib's god. No Assyrian god by this exact name is known. It is probably a garbled or deliberately altered form of a real name such as Nusku, Ninurta or Ashur (see debates).

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.