Sennacherib's Siege of Jerusalem

The event

By 701 BC the Assyrian empire under Sennacherib had crushed nearly every fortified city in Judah — his own annals boast of taking 46 walled towns — and his army encircled Jerusalem itself. His field commander, the Rabshakeh, stood outside the city walls taunting Hezekiah's officials in full hearing of the people on the wall, mocking their trust in Egypt and, most brazenly, mocking their trust in the Lord Himself, comparing Him to the powerless gods of nations Assyria had already conquered.

Hezekiah's response set the pattern for the whole crisis: rather than negotiate or panic, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the Temple, sending word to Isaiah for prayer support. When Sennacherib's threatening letter arrived, Hezekiah spread it out before the Lord in the Temple and prayed for deliverance "so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, LORD, are God." Isaiah answered with a direct oracle: Sennacherib would not even shoot an arrow into the city, and would return home by the way he came.

That very night, Scripture records, the angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp, and Sennacherib withdrew to Nineveh, where he was later assassinated by his own sons — a deliverance so complete it stands among the clearest demonstrations in the Old Testament that the Lord truly is sovereign over the mightiest empires on earth.

Dating

The 701 BC date is unusually well-attested, confirmed independently by Sennacherib's own Assyrian annals (the Taylor Prism), which corroborate the biblical narrative of the campaign even while naturally omitting the catastrophe that ended it.

Scripture references

• 2 Kings 18-19
• 2 Chronicles 32
• Isaiah 36-37