Quick questions on Judah under Assyria, Hezekiah and Sennacherib 701 BC - The Levant c. 869-586 BC: HSC Ancient History

Judah entered the Assyrian orbit before Hezekiah. During the Syro-Ephraimite war, King Ahaz (c. 735-715 BC) appealed to Tiglath-pileser III and became a tribute-paying vassal, roughly 734 BC (2 Kings 16). When Samaria fell in 722 BC and the northern kingdom of Israel was deported, Judah was left as the last Hebrew kingdom, pressed directly against Assyrian power and swollen with northern refugees who, on the archaeological reading of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, helped Jerusalem grow rapidly in this period.

2 Kings 18:4 credits Hezekiah with sweeping cultic reform: removing the "high places," smashing sacred pillars and even the bronze serpent, and centralising the worship of Yahweh on the Jerusalem Temple. Whether this was primarily piety, a bid to concentrate royal and priestly power in the capital, or a nationalist gesture against Assyrian cultural pressure is debated, but it fits a reign that made Jerusalem the religious and political heart of a Judah bracing for confrontation.

Hezekiah's practical preparations are exceptionally well evidenced, because here the biblical text and the archaeology meet.

Sennacherib made Judah's second city, Lachish, his base and the showpiece of his campaign. The siege is uniquely documented from both sides. In his "Palace Without Rival" at Nineveh he devoted a whole room to carved stone reliefs of the assault (excavated by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s, now in the British Museum), showing the siege ramp, archers, storming parties and the deportation of captives.

Sennacherib then blockaded Jerusalem. His annals boast that he shut Hezekiah up "like a bird in a cage" and extracted a heavy tribute, but they never claim to have captured the city. 2 Kings 18-19 (with Isaiah 36-37) tells it as a deliverance: the Assyrian field commander (the Rabshakeh) taunts the defenders, Hezekiah turns to the prophet Isaiah, and the angel of the Lord strikes 185,000 Assyrians in a night, after which Sennacherib withdraws to Nineveh, where he is assassinated by his sons in 681 BC.