by Ted Stewart
Sitting high above the fertile plain, surrounded by thick rock walls and manned by some of Judah’s bravest and most skilled warriors, the city looked to be impenetrable.
But the general had seen and conquered many of the great cities in his world, including many that were much greater than this insolent Jewish collection of stone walls and rock homes. Lachish was formidable, that was obvious, and ten thousand of his men might be killed in the attack, but it would be foolish to doubt the outcome. With the gods walking before him, his warriors fighting beside him, and the Great King commanding from behind, he knew he would prevail, sweeping aside the people of Lachish as dry reeds before a flame.
In the moment of reflection, he turned and looked north, thinking of his home—Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The greatest city in the world. His wife and children lived there. His concubines, slaves, friends, and cousins lived there too. His master, the Great King Sennacherib, lived there in the greatest palace of them all. He thought of the capital with its massive walls, beautiful gardens, and irrigation canals; its snow-white temples, granite palaces, and government buildings; its terraced olive gardens and swan-filled lakes. How he longed to be there. To smell the mountain air and coming rains. To feel the warmth of his woman’s embrace and the coolness of the granite temple floors beneath his feet.
Nineveh. City of his fathers. Cradle of the gods.
That was a city worth dying for.
But Lachish, this . . . this city, if he called it that, was hardly worthy of his men.
The second greatest city in all of the kingdom of Judah would shortly be defeated. The arrogance of the people of Judah simply had to be contained. Contained and destroyed. A proper example set. If not, other impertinent kingdoms might try to follow suit.
The general was a large man: tall, straight, strong as the ironwood trees in Mesopotamia, with a tightly curled beard and hair that hung below his shoulders, also tightly braided. He had a broad face and strong arms, with metal bands around his enormous biceps that were designed to show them off. His people worshiped many things. Power. Blood. Gold. The sword. Beauty was certainly among the things they worshipped, and the general was as handsome as he was cruel. And he had not become captain of the army by being stupid, weak, or kind.
He glanced once more to the north, muttered a quick prayer to Qingu, then turned to his lieutenant and gave the signal.
Seconds later, the battle for Lachish began.
• • •
The general watched from atop his mighty warhorse, a black mount with flanks high as the shoulders of a man.
The campaign against Lachish followed a fairly simple plan, one that had proven successful a dozen times before. Heavy infantry carried the brunt of the attack, moving up the earthen ramp they had spent the last five weeks constructing in backbreaking work. A wooden bridge to span the final gap between the ramp and the city walls was ready to be hauled into place. Opposite the ramp, the narrow stairs that led up to the city were already flooded with his men. Forty thousand infantry were ready to die in this battle, with another hundred thousand held in immediate reserve.
Hundreds of his men went down in the first ten minutes of the attack, some of their bodies pierced with a dozen arrows, their blood pouring on the smooth stones like water from a spring, turning the moss-covered steps slippery as ice. Their bodies were quickly pushed aside as other Assyrian warriors moved in to take their places. The general watched and listened to the sound of battle from two hundred yards away, near enough to hear the cries of pain, near enough to feel the thumping of the wheels of the enormous battery rams as they were lugged toward the city walls, the aroma of battle filling the air and swirling with the gritty dust against his teeth.
He watched and smelled and looked and listened, counting in his mind the number of his soldiers as they fell. He watched the battle plan play out, slowly at first, the initial steps more deliberate to develop, then falling more quickly into place. It was strategy. It was fortune. It was the will of the god of war. Watching his men die, he felt a rush of rage and pride that brought tears to his eyes. Battle was beautiful and stark and horrible and lovely. He fiercely spurred his horse and rode closer, watching the battle mature as his strategy took hold.
The main thrust of infantry was beginning to make its way toward the city walls. The eastern and southern flanks were holding steady as infantry units leapfrogged each other to create fighting space. Two thousand archers covered their approach, arrows falling upon the Jewish defenses like deadly raindrops from the skies. He spurred his horse again and moved closer, feeling his mount’s hot breath upon his bare knees. He had to pull the reins, for she was anxious to run toward the battle, and his heart swelled with affection for the animal. If he turned his head and concentrated, he could hear the cries of Jewish soldiers from behind the city walls. They were dying by the score there, and he smiled in satisfaction. The number of rocks and arrows coming at his own men had noticeably lessened now. Turning, he could see that his slingers were moving forward, pounding the Jewish defenses with sharpened stones. The leather-covered battering rams were almost to the gate now and he spurred his horse even closer.
The battle raged. The sun moved. The afternoon grew long. As night fell, reinforcements were moved into position, the Assyrian army able to throw a seemingly unending number of men into the fray. The exhausted men of the first assault pulled back and he estimated their casualties as they formed up in line, the commanders leading their bleeding and depleted soldiers to the valley floor for food and rest. He had lost many men, he could see that, and his black heart turned cold.
But the Jews would pay the price. For every soldier that he lost, two Jewish soldiers would be skinned alive, their legs nailed spread-eagle upon a board and long strips of flesh peeled from their chests and faces and backs until they finally bled out or died of shock.
Through the night the battle raged. The twang of bow strings. The thiiirrr of arrows. The THUMP of the battery rams upon the city gates, the sound vibrating along the rocky walls. The moon was near full, the stars bright—at one point the soldiers had enough light to continue fighting without the use of torches. And fight they did, never letting up or slowing down. It was an integral part of their battle strategy. Wear the enemy down. Exhaust them. Demoralize them from heart-wrenching fatigue.
For three days and two nights, the general didn’t sleep, by which time the battle was winding down, the outcome then assured. Exhausted, he handed command to his primary lieutenant and fell upon the downy bed inside the inner chamber of his massive leather tent.
Four days later, the Assyrian army led the Jewish captives along the blood-drenched road that wound down from the city. At the foot of the road, dozens of civilian, religious, and military leaders sat tied together, their backs bent in a long, unbroken row of defeated men. Some looked around in terror, but most of them stared blankly at the mud. They knew what was going to happen to them. Stories of the brutality of the Assyrian army had been broadcast for many years, their brothers to the north having tasted its bitter fruit when the kingdom of Israel had been destroyed some eighteen years before. General Rabshakeh watched as his soldiers moved down the line of men, slitting each of their throats, their gurgled breath filling the remaining Jews with greater terror than they had ever felt before. As the leaders were assassinated, their families were forced to watch. Even the youngest of the children were too terrified to cry.
When the work of death was finished, the blood was so thick it gathered in small pools that were already drawing flies. The surviving inhabitants of the city were then marched past the trail of slit-throated men. At the end of the line, the bodies of the Jewish soldiers killed in battle were stacked in piles, the survivors forced to walk among the rotting bodies of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. The religious leaders of the Jews were treated with particular scorn, having their stomachs split open, their bowels left to
spill upon the ground.
The general stared at the mutilated corpses and smiled with satisfaction.
Was there any doubt whose god held the greater power now?
The reserve Assyrian soldiers, those who had not been tasked to join in the front line of the battle, were commanded to herd the remaining inhabitants of Lachish north into the heart of the Assyrian kingdom, where they would be turned into slaves and scattered among the far regions of the Assyrian Empire. The fortunate old ones, the general knew, would live a short time. The unfortunate children would live far too long.
Watching the survivors, General Rabshakeh pushed his feet against his stirrups and looked east.
Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish kingdom, was out there, little more than a two-day ride away. Once he had taken that last city, the entire kingdom would be subjected once again to the Assyrians’ control.
Turning to one of his lesser lieutenants, he commanded in a dry voice, “Identify the highest leaders among the dead. Take off their heads, cut off their lips, gouge out their eyes. I want at least a hundred heads. Pack them up and send them with my emissary to Jerusalem. I want those fools in Jerusalem to understand what fate awaits them!”
Death Comes to Lachish
For people living in the Near East seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the cry, “The Assyrians are coming!” would have caused hearts to tremble and blood to rise in fear.
From the beginning of the first millennium BC through late in the seventh century BC, the Assyrians dominated the Near East. Though the extent of their empire would expand and retract through the normal give and take of empire building and maintaining, at its zenith the Assyrian domain extended from western Iran to the Mediterranean, from modern-day Turkey to the Nile. Within this kingdom were areas that included not only Assyria but Babylonia, Armenia, Media, Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Sumeria, Elam, and Egypt.
To describe the Assyrians as “militaristic” would be a grave understatement. Brutality and power were at the heart of everything they did. For one thing, their kings were required to go warring every year. Their gods expected it. Their noblemen and people did as well. They had a long history of nearly brilliant and very strong-willed kings, all of whom eagerly certified their aggressiveness by recording stories of their campaigns in stone.
But the Assyrians didn’t set out to rule the world just to appease their gods. Some of their motives were far less pure. Like most empires before and after them, the Assyrians conquered for land, wealth, slaves, and power. In order to sustain their military campaigns, all Assyrian men were subject to conscription. The people they conquered were expected to supply men and supplies to facilitate their campaigns. And when it came to army building, the Assyrians were extremely effective. It is estimated that even a small Assyrian army would put forward fifty thousand men, their larger armies having more than two hundred thousand soldiers.
One of the leading authorities on the period describes the Assyrians this way:
Their circumstances, however, forbade them to indulge in the effeminate ease of Babylon; from beginning to end they were a race of warriors, mighty in muscle and courage, abounding in proud hair and beard, standing straight, stern and solid on their monuments, and bestriding with tremendous feet the east-Mediterranean world. Their history is one of kings and slaves, wars and conquests, bloody victories and sudden defeat.2
If the term terrorism could apply to any regime, it certainly could apply to the Assyrian method of conquest, for they were as savage as any regime known in the history of man. Their policy, described with a bit of understated passiveness as “calculated frightfulness,” had proven very effective. Yet it was fairly straightforward. In order to weaken a nation’s major cities or capitals, its smaller towns and lesser cities were assaulted. (Note the Assyrian record quoted at the beginning of this chapter describing the “forty-six of [Hezekiah’s] strong, walled cities, as well as the small towns in their area” that were destroyed before their army fell upon Jerusalem.) Brutality then reigned:
A captured city was usually plundered and burnt to the ground, and its site was deliberately denuded by killing its trees. The loyalty of the troops was secured by dividing a large part of the spoils among them; their bravery was ensured by the general rule of the Near East that all captives in war might be enslaved or slain. Soldiers were rewarded for every severed head they brought in from the field, so that the aftermath of a victory generally witnessed the wholesale decapitation of fallen foes. Most often the prisoners, who would have consumed much food in a long campaign, and would have constituted a danger and nuisance in the rear, were dispatched after the battle; they knelt with their backs to their captors, who beat their heads in with clubs, or cut them off with cutlasses. Scribes stood by to count the number of prisoners taken and killed by each soldier, and apportioned the booty accordingly; the king, if time permitted, presided at the slaughter. The nobles among the defeated were given more special treatment: their ears, noses, hands and feet were sliced off, or they were thrown from high towers, or they and their children were beheaded, or flayed alive, or roasted over a slow fire. . . .
Ashurbanipal boasts that “I burned three thousand captives with fire, I left not a single one among them alive to serve as a hostage.” Another of his inscriptions reads: “These warriors who had sinned against Ashur and had plotted evil against me . . . from their hostile mouths have I torn their tongues, and I have compassed their destruction. As for the others who remained alive, I offered them as a funerary sacrifice; . . . their lacerated members have I given unto the dogs, the swine, the wolves. . . . By accomplishing these deeds I have rejoiced the heart of the great gods.” Another monarch instructs his artisans to engrave upon the bricks these claims on the admiration of posterity: “My war chariots crush men and beasts. . . . The monuments which I erect are made of human corpses from which I have cut the head and limbs. I cut off the hands of all those whom I capture alive.” Reliefs at Nineveh show men being impaled or flayed, or having their tongues torn out; one shows a king gouging out the eyes of prisoners with a lance while he holds their heads conveniently in place with a cord passed through their lips.3
With this carnage on full display, an emissary would then be sent to the targeted capital or other major city with the Assyrian king’s demands for capitulation and the terms of homage demanded. While making their demands, these emissaries were known to stand upon the city walls and speak in the native tongue so that the local populations would be certain to hear of the savagery the Assyrian army was about to wreak upon them. The besieged people were often reminded that no gods had been able to protect their people from the Assyrian attacks, the list of kingdoms they had destroyed being long and impressive. Finally, the emissaries would remind their targets that those who capitulated at least had the hope of further life, while those who had the arrogance to refute them only doomed themselves to destruction.
Often (and understandably, with the terror such images would convey) this was all that was necessary for the surrender of the larger cities. If a city was foolish enough to reject the terms of surrender, the Assyrian army would attack.
And what of the people of the conquered cities and lands? As already stated, many times the entire population was killed. When not killed, in order for the victims to be rendered totally impotent they were removed en masse from their native home and relocated throughout the Assyrian kingdom. Under this policy, literally millions of victims were scattered throughout the Assyrian Empire. The reasons for this mass deportation were several. Foremost was the fact that deported peoples were extremely valuable assets, working as slaves to fulfill the never-ending demands of empire building: laborers, agricultural workers, household servants, warrior-slaves—whatever and wherever manpower for the kingdom was needed. Also, the transplanting of potentially rebellious peoples away from the borders of the Assyrian kingdom resulted in less need for military occup
ation or policing, saving the Assyrian leaders from having to guard so closely their captive kingdoms. Finally, once the defeated populations had been separated from their own people and relocated to strange lands, scattered, weakened, and disoriented by defeat and the brutality they had suffered, they found themselves entirely dependent upon the Assyrian king for protection from their new and often hostile neighbors. This left them with little chance of escaping from the distant, unfriendly, and unknown territories, their desperate circumstances making effective prisons.4
Such were the prospects that King Sennacherib’s emissaries were about to present to the terrified people at Jerusalem.
Nineveh, Assyria About 701 BC
General Rabshakeh sat atop his powerful warhorse and looked across the river at the exceeding great city, as it had become known. After a thousand years of existence yet a hundred years of neglect, Nineveh had been reclaimed by his master, the Great King Sennacherib, who had rebuilt it to become one of the greatest cities in the world. It was magnificent now, and he praised the gods for bringing him home.