History Globe
Question
When did Assyria besiege Jerusalem?
In 701 BC, when Sennacherib king of Assyria marched against Hezekiah of Judah, took the fortified cities of the country, besieged Lachish and sent his army against Jerusalem. The city was not taken. The year is fixed by Sennacherib's own annals, which call this his third campaign; the Bible dates it to the fourteenth year of Hezekiah.
"Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them." Hezekiah sent to him at Lachish, about 45 km south-west of Jerusalem, confessing "I have offended", and paid three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold; but the king of Assyria sent Tartan, Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh "from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem", and they stood by the conduit of the upper pool and mocked the city from below its wall. Isaiah promised that the king would not enter the city, and "it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand ... So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh."
Sennacherib tells the same campaign from the other side on his prisms: he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage", set up blockades against him and took tribute, but claims no capture of the city. At Nineveh he lined a room of his palace with reliefs of the siege of Lachish, and at Lachish excavators have found the burned city and the Assyrian siege ramp, the only Assyrian one yet found. Hezekiah also brought the waters of Gihon into the city by a tunnel, usually dated to the years before the siege; its inscription survives. The start of Hezekiah's reign is disputed (about 729 or 715 BC), so how his fourteenth year fits 701 is a known difficulty. Sennacherib was murdered in 681 BC, by two of his sons according to 2 Kings and by “his son” according to the Babylonian Chronicle, and Jerusalem stood for about another 115 years until Babylon took it in 587 or 586 BC.
Scripture: 2 Kgs 18:13–17; 2 Kgs 19:32–37; Isa 36:1–37:38; 2 Chr 32:1–23; 2 Chr 32:9; 2 Kgs 20:20
Sources
- Sennacherib's Annals, Chicago and Taylor prisms (RINAP 3, Sennacherib 22 iii 18-49: Hezekiah shut up in Jerusalem 'like a bird in a cage', blockades set up against him)
- The Lachish reliefs from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh (British Museum)
- The Siloam inscription (Istanbul Archaeology Museums; KAI 189)
- Babylonian Chronicle, ABC 1 iii 34-38 (Sennacherib killed by his son in a rebellion, 681 BC)
- History Globe dated events and battles (Sennacherib's campaign and the sieges of Lachish and Jerusalem 701 BC; the Siloam tunnel c. 700 BC; Sennacherib's murder 681 BC) and the tour “Hezekiah and Isaiah” (the disputed start of Hezekiah's reign)
- History Globe articles on Lachish and Nineveh
- E. R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3rd ed., 1983), on the reign of Hezekiah
- Straight-line distance computed from the map's place coordinates (OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.