Sennacherib's Cage

Three clay prisms of Sennacherib, often named for the cities where copies surfaced, tell his third campaign. He says he came against a western rebellion. Hezekiah of Judah had not submitted. Sennacherib claims forty-six fortified cities of Judah, deportees, and then this: he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird in a cage. He built earthworks so the king could not get out. Hezekiah sent tribute after him to Nineveh: gold, silver, and more, the amounts close to the biblical list. 2 Kings 18:14

What the prism does not say is that he entered Jerusalem or that he took the king. For an Assyrian annal, that silence is loud. These texts exist to record the taking of cities. Lachish, which the Bible says he was besieging, is depicted in detail on the palace reliefs at Nineveh: siege ramps, deportees, the king reviewing the spoil. Jerusalem gets the bird and the tribute. No relief shows the temple burning, because it did not burn. Not in 701.

The biblical account has two movements that readers sometimes split into two campaigns. First Hezekiah pays, and the silver and the gold from the temple doors are named. Then the Rabshakeh comes anyway, the letter is spread before the LORD, and the angel strikes the camp. Sennacherib goes home and is later murdered by his sons. 2 Kings 19:36 2 Kings 19:37 A prism written to glorify the king will include the tribute and the cage and will not include a plague on his own army. The two records are not copies of each other. They are the same war told from the palace and from the city that was not taken.

The year is 701 BC. That is one of the firm dates on this timeline, firmer than David's accession, firmer than the exodus. Hezekiah's reign as a whole, about 715 to 686, still depends on how his years overlap his father's. The campaign does not. Assyria dated it.

A later story in Herodotus says mice gnawed the Assyrian bowstrings in Egypt. That is not this chapter, and it is not needed. The prism and 2 Kings are enough. One says the bird stayed in the cage and paid. The other says why the hunter went home without the bird.