Sennacherib Before Jerusalem

It was now the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah, king of the two tribes, when the king of the Babylonians, whose name was Sennacherib, marched against him with a great army and took all the cities of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin by force. When he was ready to bring his army against Jerusalem, Hezekiah sent ambassadors to him beforehand, promising to submit and to pay whatever tribute he should set. When Sennacherib heard what the ambassadors offered, he decided not to go on with the war but to accept the proposals made to him. If he could receive about 22,500 pounds of silver and 2,250 pounds of gold, he promised, he would leave on friendly terms; and he gave the ambassadors his oath as security that he would then do Hezekiah no harm but go away as he had come. So Hezekiah submitted. He emptied his treasuries and sent the money, supposing that he would be freed from his enemy and from any further distress over his kingdom. The Assyrian king took it, and yet paid no regard to what he had promised. While he himself went to war against the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, he left his general Rabshakeh and two others of his chief commanders, with large forces, to destroy Jerusalem. The names of the two other commanders were Tartan and Rabsaris. [a]

As soon as they had come before the walls, they pitched their camp and sent messengers to Hezekiah, asking to speak with him. He did not come out to them himself, out of fear, but sent three of his closest friends: Eliakim, who was over the kingdom, Shebna, and Joah the recorder. These men came out and stood facing the commanders of the Assyrian army. When Rabshakeh saw them, he told them to go and speak to Hezekiah in this way. Sennacherib, the great king, wished to know from him on whom he was relying and depending, in running away from his lord and refusing to listen to him or to admit his army into the city. Was it because of the Egyptians, in hope that the Assyrian army would be beaten by them? If this was what he expected, let him know that he was a foolish man, like one who leans on a broken reed; such a man not only falls down but has his hand pierced and hurt by it. He ought to know that Sennacherib was making this expedition against him by the will of God, who had granted him this favor, that he would overthrow the kingdom of Israel, and that in the very same way he would destroy Hezekiah’s subjects as well. Rabshakeh made this speech in the Hebrew language, for he was skilled in it. Eliakim was afraid that the crowd who heard him would be stirred up, so he asked him to speak in the Syrian language. But the general understood what he meant and saw the fear he was in, and he answered in a greater and louder voice, still in Hebrew: “I speak in Hebrew so that all of them may hear the king’s commands and choose what is to their advantage by giving themselves up to us. For it is plain that both you and your king are dissuading the people from submitting by empty hopes, and so leading them to resist. But if you are brave, and think you can drive our forces away, I am ready to hand over to you two thousand of these horses that are with me, for your own use, if you can set as many horsemen on their backs and show your strength. But what you do not have, you cannot produce. Why, then, do you delay to give yourselves up to a superior force that can take you without your consent? It will be safer for you to give yourselves up willingly, while a capture by force, once you are beaten, must prove more dangerous and will bring further calamities on you.” [f]

When the people, as well as the ambassadors, heard what the Assyrian commander said, they reported it to Hezekiah. At this he put off his royal robes, clothed himself in sackcloth, and took on the dress of a mourner; and after the custom of his country he fell on his face and begged God and implored him to help him, since he had no other hope of rescue. He also sent some of his friends and some of the priests to the prophet Isaiah, asking him to pray to God and offer sacrifices for their common deliverance, and so to plead with God to be indignant at the expectations of their enemies and to have mercy on his people. When the prophet had done so, an oracle came to him from God, and he encouraged the king and the friends who were with him, foretelling that their enemies would be beaten without a fight and would go away in disgrace, not with the insolence they now showed, for God would see to it that they were destroyed. He also foretold that Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, would fail in his purpose against Egypt, and that when he came home he would die by the sword.

About the same time the king of Assyria also wrote a letter to Hezekiah. In it he said that Hezekiah was a foolish man to suppose that he would escape being his servant, since he had already subdued many great nations; and he threatened that when he took him he would utterly destroy him, unless he now opened the gates and willingly received his army into Jerusalem. When Hezekiah read this letter, he despised it because of the trust he had in God; but he rolled it up and laid it away inside the temple. And as he went on praying to God for the city and for the safety of all the people, the prophet Isaiah said that God had heard his prayer: he would not be besieged at this time by the king of Assyria; in the future he could be sure of not being troubled by him at all; and the people could go on peacefully and without fear with their farming and their other affairs. [i]

A little while later the king of Assyria, having failed in his treacherous designs against the Egyptians, returned home without success, and this is how it happened. He spent a long time besieging Pelusium. The siege mounds he had raised against the walls were of great height, and he was ready to make an immediate assault, when he heard that Tirhakah, king of the Ethiopians, was coming with great forces to help the Egyptians, and had resolved to march through the desert and fall directly on the Assyrians. King Sennacherib was alarmed at the news and, as I said before, left Pelusium and went back without success. Herodotus also speaks of this Sennacherib in the second book of his histories, and says that “this king came against the Egyptian king, who was the priest of Hephaestus; and that as he was besieging Pelusium, he broke off the siege for this reason: this Egyptian priest prayed to God, and God heard his prayer and sent a judgment on the Arabian king.” But in this Herodotus was mistaken, when he called this king not king of the Assyrians but of the Arabians. For he says that “a multitude of mice gnawed to pieces in one night both the bows and the rest of the armor of the Assyrians, and that it was for this reason that the king, having no bows left, drew his army off from Pelusium.” Herodotus does indeed give us this history. And Berosus, too, who wrote of the affairs of Chaldea, mentions this King Sennacherib, that he ruled over the Assyrians and that he made an expedition against all Asia and Egypt; and he says this:

“Now when Sennacherib was returning from his Egyptian war to Jerusalem, he found his army there under his general Rabshakeh; and God sent a plague on his army, and on the very first night of the siege a hundred and eighty-five thousand were destroyed, with their captains and generals. The king was in great dread and in terrible anguish at this calamity, and in great fear for his whole army he fled with the rest of his forces to his own kingdom and to his city Nineveh. When he had stayed there a little while, he was treacherously attacked and died at the hands of his elder sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, and was laid in his own temple, which was called Araske. These sons of his were driven out by the citizens because of the murder of their father, and went into Armenia, while Esarhaddon took over the kingdom of Sennacherib.” And this proved to be the end of this Assyrian expedition against the people of Jerusalem. [n]