Hezekiah Withstands Sennacherib

Hezekiah of Judah removed the high places, broke up the bronze serpent to which incense was being burned, and rebelled against the king of Assyria (2 Kings 18:4–7). He made Jerusalem ready for a siege. He repaired the walls, stopped the springs outside the city and brought the water of Gihon inside by a conduit (2 Chronicles 32:2–5) (2 Chronicles 32:30) (2 Kings 20:20). A Hebrew inscription cut in the wall of the tunnel that is generally identified with this conduit tells how two gangs of diggers, working towards each other, met; it names no king (Siloam inscription lines 1–6).

In Hezekiah’s fourteenth year Sennacherib invaded and took the fortified towns of Judah. Hezekiah sent word to him at Lachish that he would bear whatever was imposed, and paid three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, stripping the temple doors to do it (2 Kings 18:13–16). Sennacherib still sent officers with an army to Jerusalem. Their spokesman called out in Hebrew, so that the people on the wall could follow, that no god had saved any nation from Assyria and that the Lord would not save Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:17–35).

Hezekiah went to the temple and sent to Isaiah. The prophet answered that the king of Assyria would not enter the city or shoot an arrow there, and would go back the way he came (2 Kings 19:1–7) (2 Kings 19:32–34). That night, Kings says, the angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib went home to Nineveh, where two of his sons later killed him (2 Kings 19:35–37) (Isaiah 37:38). Isaiah and Chronicles tell the same story (Isaiah 37:33–38) (2 Chronicles 32:20–22).

Sennacherib’s annals give his version. He took forty-six walled towns of Hezekiah the Judean, counted 200,150 people as spoil and shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a caged bird. Hezekiah then sent after him to Nineveh thirty talents of gold, eight hundred of silver, other treasure and his own daughters (Sennacherib, Annals (Taylor Prism) iii 18–49). Reliefs from his palace show the siege of Lachish, with a caption naming the city (Lachish reliefs caption, lines 1–4).

The two accounts agree on the invasion, the loss of Judah’s fortified towns, a tribute that included thirty talents of gold, and the outcome for Jerusalem: Sennacherib does not claim to have taken it. They differ on the silver and on the ending. The annals close with the tribute and report no loss. Kings puts the tribute first and ends with the destruction of the army. The Babylonian chronicle confirms that Sennacherib was killed by a son, in 681 BC (Babylonian Chronicle 1 iii.34–38). Herodotus, some 270 years after the campaign, tells an Egyptian story in which field mice gnawed the weapons of Sennacherib’s army in a single night on the border of Egypt (Herodotus, Histories 2.141).

Later generations in Judah remembered the deliverance. Sirach praises Hezekiah for fortifying the city and bringing in water, and recalls the angel who destroyed the Assyrian camp (Sirach 48:17–21).