It is an old truism that history was written by the victors. But in the case of Sennecherib's siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC, there was no clear winner, and thus we see a number of variant accounts of that event by both interested parties and bystanders. So let's first take these sources one at a time before deciding if any consensus can be achieved as to the actual facts by considering all of them together.
Micah 1-3
The least specific of the writings concerning the time period of the Assyrian invasion are found in these verses, perhaps prophetically written before the attack on Jerusalem. Mobley says, “Micah offered a theological interpretation of the dizzying events near the end of the eighth century: the fall of Samaria, the expansion of Jerusalem fueled by emigrants from the north, and the international situation made unstable by an aggressive superpower, Assyria.”
Regarding the actual invasion, he notes that the towns listed in verses 1:10-16 “in southwestern Judah lay along the path of the Assyrian king Sennacherib's campaign in 701...although the specific locations of several are unknown.”
II Kings 18:13-19:37
Here we have the most complete account of the events during Sennacherib's campaign against Judah. I will summarize this extended passage before comparing the next two versions below against it.
18:13-16 Sennacherib of Assyria takes some of the major cities of Judah before coming to Jerusalem. King Hezekiah sues for peace by giving all the gold and silver tribute that Sennacherib demands. At this point there is the decidedly minor view of Millard that Hezekiah only promised payment to Assyria but had not yet delivered it. And that is the reason for the siege being continued.
18:17-37 However, Sennacherib instead sends for some of his chief officers, one of whom, the Rabshakeh, proceeds to intimidate and demoralize Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem with his speeches.
One challenge to the Israelites that is made by the Rabshakeh in v. 32 I find especially interesting: “Chose life and not death!” This is practically a parody of Joshua 24:15 – “...choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
It is especially ironic in that the Rabshakeh follows his challenge by trying to point out the superiority of his gods to the God of Israel, the reverse of Joshua's comparison of the people's previous deities with the Almighty God.
19:1-7 Hezekiah turns to Isaiah, who tells him: “Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”
This is somewhat a difficult passage. Cogan and Tadmor state: “The content of the report is not stated, but whatever it might have been, Sennacherib is pictured as behaving differently than expected, and it is this divinely contrived rumor which will be his undoing. In 1 Kgs 22:20-23, [to cite a parallel example] a 'lying spirit' in the mouths of 400 prophets leads Ahab to his death at Ramoth-gilead.”
19:8-19 More intimidation proceeds from Sennacherib via a letter, but Hezekiah takes the letter with him to the temple and prays to God for help.
19:20-34 God, through Isaiah, responds first with an extended poem followed by a sign indicating that a remnant will survive this crisis. More specifically, He states that the Assyrian forces will not enter the city at all, but will return to where they came from.
19:35-37 Finally, we learn that the angel of the Lord slew most or all of the Assyrian army camped around Jerusalem while Sennacherib returned to Assyria where he was murdered by two of his sons while praying to his god Nisroch.
II Chronicles 32:1-22
Here we are given a mostly parallel account to the narrative in II Kings except for the following points:
Omitted from Chronicles is the initial tribute given to Sennacherib from the temple and treasury.
Included in Chronicles but not found in Kings are the preparations made by Hezekiah for the siege.
The two accounts of the Rabshakeh's psychological warfare are quite different in each version, but both cover basically the same territory. However, whereas there is no reply given to the blasphemous words of the Rabshakeh in the Kings narrative, the Chronicler feels compelled to add a theological defense of God in verse 19: “And they spoke of the God of Jerusalem, as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the work of men's hands.”
Of the two accounts, only Kings tells of the heavy involvement of Isaiah and his prophecy of what will eventually happen to Sennacherib.
Both versions record Sennacherib's death using basically the same language.
So the main difference from the Kings narrative is the Chronicler's slightly greater emphasis on the sanctity of the temple and defense of the only God and a concomitant de-emphasis on the role of the prophets. Both of these tendencies are seen elsewhere in comparison of these two sources.
Isaiah 36:1-37:38
This large passage in Isaiah is duplicated identically in II Kings 18-19, with one minor exception. Isaiah has omitted the fact, recorded in II Kings 18:14-18, that Hezekiah stripped nearly all the valuables from the temple and gave them to Sennacherib in an attempt to appease him. This is the same omission found in the II Chronicles version.
Assyrian prisms
Nogalski explains that this story appears on three different prisms that have been discovered – all reading practically the same. These were actually written soon after the events themselves (700-691 BC) and thus one might feel that they would contain the most accurate record. However, we must also weigh in the fact that most ancient cultures tended to gloss over their military failures or ignore them altogether. In Egypt, for example, all monuments of the period of Hyksos rule over their land were destroyed or defaced after that alien group was conquered.
The Jews, by contrast, for the most part had no problem whatsoever airing their dirty linen before the world in their holy writings, as is quite obvious to anyone reading the Old Testament historical books. The reason was that they put no ultimate trust in their military or political leaders, believing that only God Himself deserved that sort of devotion.
In any case, Cogan and Tadmor say, “It has been noted that source A [i.e. II Kings 18:13b-16] agrees in great measure with Sennacherib's own account of his Judean campaign.”
Nogalski states, “Sennacherib's account adds historical context, but it does not mention massive casualties to Assyrian troops. Sennacherib's account attributes his decision to attack Judah to Hezekiah's rebellion...Sennacherib claims to have withdrawn from Jerusalem only after Hezekiah paid him a large tribute.”
Herodotus
As a Greek historian who could be considered a fairly disinterested party to any conflicts between Israel and Assyria, his account is of special interest to us. But we need to also keep in mind that his writings on the siege came almost 200 years after the events themselves and may have relied on faulty information.
Wiseman quotes this historian as writing of a plague “of field mice which by night devoured all the quivers and bows of the enemy, and all the straps by which they held their shields...next morning they commenced their fight and great numbers fell as they had no arms with which to defend themselves.” That account may sound ludicrous in that such a insignificant event could have had such disastrous effect on the final outcome of a battle. But remember Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Serious historians have proposed that the deciding factor causing the French army to retreat was the fact that the metal buttons on the soldiers' uniforms were made of an alloy which became extremely brittle in cold weather, causing the buttons to break. Thus, the French troops found themselves fully occupied in just trying to keep their pants from falling down and their winter jackets from gaping open.
It appears that Herodotus got his information from an Egyptian tradition of an invasion of rats causing both the flight and death of the Assyrians. And as Ellul says, “Now we know that antiquity was already aware of the relation between rats and plague.”
Sirach 48:18-21 and Josephus, Antiquities x. ch. 1
Here are two more extrabiblical sources to consider, although they come from much more recent dates than the OT accounts:
“In his days Sennacherib came up and sent the Rabshakeh; he lifted up his hand against Zion...Then their hearts were shaken and their hands trembled, and they were in anguish, like women in travail. But they called upon the Lord is who is merciful...and the Holy One quickly heard them from heaven, and delivered them by the hand of Isaiah. The Lord smote the camp of the Assyrians, and his angel wiped them out.” (Sirach 48:18-21) This basically follows the biblical account.
Josephus gives us a much longer narrative which I won't bother to quote. But he specifically adds that Sennacherib double-crossed Hezekiah after the latter gave him the large tribute by rescinding his promise to remove his troops from around Jerusalem. There are a number of other emendations to the biblical narrative that Josephus adds to flesh out the story.
Cogan and Tadmor call both of the above versions “later theological rationalizations of the miraculous deliverance.”
Conclusions
Nogalski states that “The three biblical examples [other than Micah] share a common source, but each account has been altered for its literary position.” Two controversial issues in these passages are discussed below.
Cause of Death for the Assyrian Troops
Considering the various versions above, the most likely scenario is that rats invaded their camp, spreading a plague which caused the army's retreat. In the Bible, plagues are always attributed to the direct act of judgment of God on disobedient people.
Timing of Sennacherib's Death
He adds that “the biblical accounts imply that Sennacherib was killed immediately after he returned from his campaign against Jerusalem. In reality, while Sennacherib was eventually assassinated by two of his sons, he continued to rule for another twenty years after the siege of Jerusalem ended.” Thus, Nogalski appears to pose a major challenge for those expecting a literal fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy.
Since Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah all record Sennacherib's death using basically the same language, I will quote the slightly fuller II Kings account so that you can decide for yourself if Nogalski's assertion is correct:
“So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisrock his god, Adram-melech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat.” (II Kings 19:36-37a)
Ellul notes the irony in that the king's god could not even protect him as he was worshiping in its very temple.
As to the so-called contradiction here with historical sources which had him dying 20 years after the failed siege, most commentators don't even bother mentioning it since (a) there is no indication in the biblical texts as to how many years intervened between the king's return and his eventual death and (b) such telescoping together of events separated widely chronologically is a standard fixture of both biblical narratives and prophecies.
House, for example, states: “In other words, Isaiah's predictions are not just short-term in nature, they also cover long-term events. Thus, God is in control of all occurrences.” (House)
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