Siege of Lachish

The Siege of Lachish was the Assyrian assault on Lachish, the principal fortress of the kingdom of Judah after Jerusalem, by Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BC. It took place in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:13), during the wider campaign recorded as Sennacherib's campaign against Judah, and it is the siege for which the Bible, Assyrian royal art and excavation all survive together.

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The Biblical Account

Scripture does not narrate the fighting at Lachish. It records the siege as the setting from which Sennacherib conducted the campaign. While he was "besieging Lachish with all his forces" (2 Chronicles 32:9), Hezekiah sent to him at Lachish, saying "I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear," and paid a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, stripping the gold from the doors and doorposts of the temple to meet it (2 Kings 18:14-16). From Lachish the king then sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris and the Rabshakeh with a great army to demand the surrender of Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:17; Isaiah 36:2).

When the Rabshakeh returned, he found that Sennacherib had left Lachish and was fighting against Libnah (2 Kings 19:8; Isaiah 37:8). The account does not state that Lachish fell, but the Assyrian record and the destruction at the site both show that it did.

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The Assyrian Record

Sennacherib's annals, preserved on Sennacherib's Prism and related texts, claim the capture of forty-six walled cities of Judah without naming Lachish among them. Its fall was commemorated instead in art. A continuous series of carved panels lined a room of the Southwest Palace at Nineveh, showing siege ramps and battering rams against the walls, archers and slingers on both sides, the deportation of families with their possessions, and the execution of defenders. An accompanying caption presents Sennacherib enthroned while the spoil of Lachish passes before him. These Lachish Reliefs are now in the British Museum.

Lachish, which Scripture mentions chiefly as a base of operations, is the only city of the campaign known to have received a full room of palace reliefs, and this is commonly taken to show the weight the Assyrian court placed on its capture.

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Archaeological Evidence

The siege is represented at Tel Lachish by the violent destruction of the city of Level III. Earlier excavators, beginning with James Leslie Starkey in the 1930s, debated whether Level III fell in 701 or 597 BC. The renewed excavations directed by David Ussishkin from 1973 settled the attribution to Sennacherib, in part through the royal storage jars stamped with LMLK seals found crushed in the destruction.

The same excavations exposed the Assyrian siege ramp built against the southwest corner of the city, one of the very few ancient siege ramps ever excavated, together with a counter-ramp raised by the defenders inside the wall. Arrowheads and sling stones were recovered in large numbers along the line of assault. The details of the reliefs and of the excavated remains correspond closely, and the two are commonly studied together. Excavation history and site identification are treated under Tel Lachish.

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Biblical Significance

The prophet Micah, a contemporary of the siege from the lowland town of Moresheth, addressed Lachish directly: "Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish; it was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, for in you were found the transgressions of Israel" (Micah 1:13). The fortress that anchored Judah's defence is named by the prophet as the place where Jerusalem's unfaithfulness began.

The narrative in Kings sets Hezekiah's response to the siege in two stages. At Lachish he submits, confesses wrongdoing to the Assyrian king, and pays tribute from the temple treasury (2 Kings 18:14-16). When the demand for Jerusalem's surrender follows, he takes the Assyrian letter into the house of the LORD and prays, and Isaiah answers with the word that the king of Assyria will not enter the city (2 Kings 19:14-34). Lachish fell; Jerusalem did not.