Did the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib as described in 2 Kings 18:17-19:37 truly happen or was it just a Hebrew myth? Many world experts think it was a myth. These people think that it’s a story recorded in the Bible to raise the level of Jewish pride in who they were as a people. These critics claim the things written in the Bible have no factual basis and could not ever have occurred. They claim there is no record outside of the Bible which verifies the account recorded in the Bible. Sennacherib and Hezekiah never met they say – there is no proof outside of the Bible. Beside which, if Assyria and Israel had met in war could such a story ever be conceived to be factual. Assyria was the world power of the day and had swept aside all nations that opposed it. All nations lived in fear of Assyria. How are we to believe that Hezekiah, king of Israel, could possibly resist the might of Assyria and not be vanquished? The Jewish account is that God did something which caused Sennacherib to leave after losing 185,000 of his fighting force. How could that have happened? When the Bible is the only existing account of such details how can we believe it to be a true account?
In 1830 Colonel Taylor discovered Sennacherib’s Prism in Nineveh. It was later shipped to England by Taylor and was purchased from Taylor’s widow by the British Museum in 1855. On the prism are recorded the details of the encounter between Sennacherib and Hezekiah in the Assyrian’s own words. This is an Assyrian document which sheds light on the biblical account.
Sanherib had recorded: , “But as for Hezekiah the Jew who did not bow in submission to my yoke . . . I beseiged and conquered by stamping down earth ramps and then bringing up battering rams . . . Hezekiah himself I shut up like a caged bird within Jerusalem his royal city.”
This discovery gave credence to the biblical account proving that Hezekiah and Sennacherib had indeed met in war. The facts bear out the Jewish account. Jerusalem was not conquered until the Babylonians enter the city in 586/7. The Assryian conquest took place when their forces levelled the northern city of Lachish also recorded in the Bible (2 Chron 32:9 ff). Nowhere in the Assyrian records is there any evidence of a vassal list related to the seige of Jerusalem. After any conquest in the Ancient Near East (ANE) there was normally a vassal list drawn up listing the gold, the silver, the bronze items taken as spoils and the number of men, woman and children killed and the number of the same taken captive. There is no Assyrian vassal list following the seige of Jerusalem, but there are extensive records in the Lachish Reliefs (also in the British Museum) whch depict what the Assyrian did to the city of Lachish.
It was the practice in the annuls of the Ancient Near East not to record your defeats but only your victories. It is notable that it is only the Bible which is honest enough to include accounts of Israel’s defeats as well as their victories. It is clear that Sennacherib didn’t enter Jerusalem but claimed that he had. It is clear that he returned to Assyria without having conquered Jerusalem. Just how the 185,000 troops Assyrian troops died we can only speculate but it is likely to have been because of disease rather than being slain in battle. The Lachish Reliefs seem to indicate that Sennacherib captured the king there in Lachish which was not in fact true. The Bible account of what happened between Sennacherib and Hezekiah is entirely consistent with the facts.
This will be the first of a series of Nuggets related to archaeological artefacts which lend credibility to the biblical account. I wrote a number of these when I first began Nuggets back in mid 2006. I will repost those Nuggets again under the category Evidence to Believe. Watch for them via the website; I will no longer be posting such Nuggets via email. Any emails sent out you will have to sign up for on the site.