Topic 12 of 33 - Your Place in the Learning Journey
Sennacherib and Jerusalem
The Assyrian campaign of 701 BCE under Sennacherib is one of the best-documented events in the entire Old Testament - attested in the biblical account (2 Kings 18-19, Isaiah 36-37, and 2 Chronicles 32), in Sennacherib's own annals, and in the spectacular Lachish reliefs carved on his palace walls in Nineveh. The convergence of these sources around the same events makes 701 BCE one of the clearest points of intersection between the biblical narrative and the recoverable historical record.
The campaign arose from Judah's refusal to pay tribute under King Hezekiah. Sennacherib's response was swift and devastating: he swept through Judah, capturing 46 fortified cities including Lachish, and then besieged Jerusalem. His annals describe how he shut Hezekiah up "like a bird in a cage" - confirming the biblical account of the siege while notably not claiming to have captured the city. The Bible describes a miraculous deliverance: an angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a single night, and Sennacherib withdrew (2 Kings 19:35-36). Herodotus, the Greek historian, preserves a parallel account involving a plague of mice that destroyed Sennacherib's army - possibly a distant reflection of the same events.
How this deliverance happened historically is a matter scholars debate. Some propose that disease swept through the Assyrian camp. Others suggest that political developments in Mesopotamia forced Sennacherib to withdraw. Others take the biblical account at face value. What the sources agree on is the outcome: Sennacherib did not capture Jerusalem, he did withdraw, and he was later assassinated by his own sons (2 Kings 19:37, confirmed by Babylonian sources). For the biblical authors, Jerusalem's deliverance was decisive confirmation of Isaiah's prophecy that God would protect the city and defeat Assyria - a theological conviction that influenced Judah's subsequent behavior in dangerous ways, contributing to the overconfidence that preceded Babylon's conquest a century later.
Isaiah's response to the Assyrian crisis is among the most theologically significant passages in the Old Testament. His oracles insist that Assyria is merely an instrument in God's hand - a rod of divine anger, as Isaiah 10:5 puts it - being used to punish Israel but destined itself for destruction when its role is complete. This vision of God as the sovereign director of international history, using even pagan empires to accomplish divine purposes, was a radical theological claim that reframed the entire meaning of the political crisis. It is a vision that runs through the prophets and resurfaces throughout the New Testament.