Assyria threatens Jerusalem; Hezekiah seeks the LORD
Divided Kingdom · Draft · BSB
Content revision: 4d7de64e342074ae · No editorial review date recorded
Date: Judah · Hezekiah · Assyrian campaign, commonly dated 701 BC
Sennacherib attacks Judah’s fortified cities. Hezekiah first pays tribute, but Assyrian envoys still threaten Jerusalem. Hezekiah seeks Isaiah and prays over the threat; Isaiah announces deliverance. The narrative reports the destruction of the Assyrian force and Sennacherib’s return to Nineveh.
The long speeches challenge Judah’s trust by comparing the LORD with the gods of conquered peoples. Hezekiah’s tribute and later prayer both belong in the account. The final notice of Sennacherib’s assassination is a later epilogue, not an event that must have happened immediately after the retreat. The campaign is commonly dated to 701 BC.
Primary Scripture
18:13 In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah.
18:14 So Hezekiah king of Judah sent word to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand from me.” And the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
18:15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the royal palace.
18:16 At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold with which he had plated the doors and doorposts of the temple of the LORD, and he gave it to the king of Assyria.
18:17 Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced up to Jerusalem and stationed themselves by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.
18:18 Then they called for the king. And Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebnah the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder, went out to them.
18:19 The Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah that this is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is the basis of this confidence of yours?
18:20 You claim to have a strategy and strength for war, but these are empty words. In whom are you now trusting, that you have rebelled against me?
18:21 Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
18:22 But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is He not the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem: ‘You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem’?
18:23 Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!
18:24 For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
18:25 So now, was it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The LORD Himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”
18:26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, along with Shebnah and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak with us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”
18:27 But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”
18:28 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!
18:29 This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you; he cannot deliver you from my hand.
18:30 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
18:31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,
18:32 until I come and take you away to a land like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey—so that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, for he misleads you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’
18:33 Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
18:34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand?
18:35 Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”
18:36 But the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, “Do not answer him.”
18:37 Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and Asaph’s son Joah the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they relayed to him the words of the Rabshakeh.
19:1 On hearing this report, King Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and entered the house of the LORD.
19:2 And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz
19:3 to tell him, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace; for children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to deliver them.
19:4 Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to defy the living God, and He will rebuke him for the words that the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives.”
19:5 So the servants of King Hezekiah went to Isaiah,
19:6 who replied, “Tell your master that this is what the LORD says: ‘Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.
19:7 Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, where I will cause him to fall by the sword.’”
19:8 When the Rabshakeh heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libnah.
19:9 Now Sennacherib had been warned about Tirhakah king of Cush: “Look, he has set out to fight against you.” So Sennacherib again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
19:10 “Give this message to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.
19:11 Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other countries, devoting them to destruction. Will you then be spared?
19:12 Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my fathers rescue those nations—the gods of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph, and of the people of Eden in Telassar?
19:13 Where are the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?’”
19:14 So Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, read it, and went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.
19:15 And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD: “O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.
19:16 Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see. Listen to the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God.
19:17 Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste these nations and their lands.
19:18 They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods, but only wood and stone—the work of human hands.
19:19 And now, O LORD our God, please save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God.”
19:20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.
19:21 This is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: ‘The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you.
19:22 Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!
19:23 Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest outposts, the densest of its forests.
19:24 I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.”
19:25 Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble.
19:26 Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown.
19:27 But I know your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against Me.
19:28 Because your rage and arrogance against Me have reached My ears, I will put My hook in your nose and My bit in your mouth; I will send you back the way you came.’
19:29 And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap; you will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
19:30 And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above.
19:31 For a remnant will go forth from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts will accomplish this.
19:32 So this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: ‘He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow into it. He will not come before it with a shield or build up a siege ramp against it.
19:33 He will go back the way he came, and he will not enter this city, declares the LORD.
19:34 I will defend this city and save it for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.’”
19:35 And that very night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!
19:36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
19:37 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. And his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place.
Related Scripture
Isaiah gives a parallel account of the threats, prayer and deliverance.
Location evidence
Jerusalem and Lachish are identified; Lachish is the Assyrian command setting in this account. Surviving Assyrian reliefs document the conquest of Lachish, not the precise location of every scene at Jerusalem.
Event map marker: Identified site; [longitude, latitude] = [35.234167, 31.776667]. This is a teaching marker, not an exact event venue.
Jerusalem: Identified site. Coordinates [longitude, latitude]: [35.234167, 31.776667]. Classification source: editorial.
OpenBible.info: Jerusalem (CC BY 4.0)
Lachish: Identified site. Coordinates [longitude, latitude]: [34.849167, 31.565278]. Classification source: editorial.
OpenBible.info: Lachish (CC BY 4.0)
British Museum: Assyrian gallery and the 701 BC conquest of Lachish
For the class
How does Hezekiah’s prayer answer the assumptions behind the Assyrian threat?
Interpretation and reuse
Narrative order is a reading arrangement, not a proven chronology. Dates retain their stated uncertainty. An identified locality does not establish the exact venue or prove an event. Region extents and routes are illustrative, not surveyed boundaries or ancient roads. Draft material has not completed editorial review.
Record source: editorial (content/authored/divided-kingdom.json)
Place coordinates from OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data, CC BY 4.0.
Teaching stops, summaries and regional extents are original editorial content of this atlas.
Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. https://berean.bible/licensing.htm