by Ted Stewart
But the battle didn’t go as everyone would have predicted.
Sometimes history takes a dramatic turn.
Outside the Jerusalem Gates
The line of men stretched for miles, a thousand horsemen riding beside them, their weary feet kicking up a thick cloud of dust that choked their brother soldiers in the last half of the somber column. The men walked with their heads low, shields and swords slung around their shoulders, arms hanging loosely at their sides, their eyes looking only at the ground, all of them considering the frustrating walk ahead of them, the miles and miles they had to go.
Weeks of marching lay before them. And for everything that they had suffered, they had nothing to take back home!
The mighty Assyrian army that had been assembled to take Jerusalem—one of the most fearsome fighting forces the world had ever seen, the army that was able to strike terror in the hearts of every adversary at the mere call of their approach—was marching back to Nineveh with not a thing to show. Not an ounce of treasure. Not a single piece of gold or silver. No old men to haul their satchels. No days of rape and pillage to earn their soldiers’ loyalty. No horses, rams, or cattle. No sheep or calves to eat along the way. No slaves.
An army of young and violent men is like a coiled spring; it can only remain wound tight for so long. At some point the tension built inside it must be allowed to spring. And the Assyrian soldiers were as tight, frustrated, and angry as they had ever been. Tension seethed throughout the columns. Fights broke out at every turn. Their captains had to ride the soldiers hard and close. More than a few angry and disappointed soldiers had already been disciplined, the rebuke of their officers as hard and unbending toward their own men as it would have been toward the captives they would have taken if the battle had been fought.
Atop his mighty horse, General Rabshakeh watched his soldiers as they marched north. Inside, he raged with fury. Any way he looked at it, he was returning with a defeated army. An unknown number of his men lay unburied on the plains of Judah, seemingly forgotten by their gods. Such risks were the cost of raising and maintaining armies, and it was not the first time his ranks had taken ill. But that wasn’t the thing that killed him. It was the fact that King Sennacherib had ordered him to abandon the siege against the arrogant little city of Jerusalem . . . that was the thing that tore at his warrior heart.
He turned and glanced back, seeing the undamaged walls of the Jewish city glinting in the evening sun. Through the dust, the mighty walls seemed to rise above him, as if taunting his retreat.
Forcing himself to swallow the bile inside his throat, he turned his horse toward Nineveh and spurred it hard.
The Sword of an Angel?
Biblical sources assert that after Rabshakeh blasphemed against Jehovah, a horrible plague beset the Assyrian army and 185,000 soldiers died.11 A hundred and eighty-five thousand soldiers killed in a single night! And though this seems like a self-serving account from Judah’s side of history, other reliable histories have also made the same report.12 If true, the Assyrian army could not have sustained such a loss and remained combat effective. Their assault against the highly defended city would certainly have been met with defeat.
The fact that there are no Assyrian records to support the plague story is not surprising, for the Assyrian records were largely propaganda meant to aggrandize the Assyrian king, not to provide an unbiased or accurate historical account. This being the case, it would not be surprising if the Assyrians depicted the battle of Jerusalem in a self-aggrandizing manner, it being critically important for them to defend the reputations and preeminence of their gods.
And though there are conflicting accounts in this history (as there almost always are), this much is clear: For whatever reason, the mightiest and most brutal army in the world did not take Jerusalem. They left the people of the kingdom of Judah, with their religion and culture, intact. To the Jews, this event was proof that Jehovah was mightier than the gods of the Assyrians, for he was responsible for smiting the most powerful army on the earth. To the Assyrians, it must have encouraged their adversaries on both the south and east.
If the plague did happen, modern-day scholars assert that it was likely the result of the Gihon Spring project undertaken by Hezekiah that diverted the local water supply into Jerusalem and deprived the Assyrian army of the clean water that was vital to sustaining such a massive army on the Judean plain. If so, it wouldn’t have been the first time an army had been decimated by the plague.
A Second Explanation
Assyrian records indicated that Sennacherib simply negotiated a deal with Hezekiah and, having done that, decided to spare the city. But this seems exceedingly unlikely for several reasons. For one thing, it left their southern border exposed to a vassal state that had already allied itself with other Assyrian enemies. It also demonstrated uncharacteristic timidness against a small and belligerent kingdom that had openly rebelled against them, showing a sign of deadly weakness to the Assyrians’ rivals. Perhaps most puzzling is this question: Having already destroyed so much of the kingdom of Judah, why would Sennacherib leave the capital city unharmed? Such an action was contrary to everything the Assyrians had demonstrated in their history and culture.
But even if it is true that Sennacherib decided of his own accord to leave Jerusalem unharmed, that was no less remarkable. Indeed, it was stunning! As one scholar declared:
Later generations, looking back on the attack on Judah in that year, viewed it as perhaps the most fateful event in the kingdom’s three-hundred-year history to that point. Had Jerusalem fallen, Judah would have gone the way of the northern kingdom of Israel and especially its capital, Samaria—to exile and extinction. That Sennacherib struck a compromise with Hezekiah, given the strategic upper hand held by Assyrian army throughout the land, seemed inconceivable. Sennacherib was not beyond the most ruthless punishment of rebellious cities: a decade or so later he would literally wipe Babylon from the map.13
As noted here, Sennacherib’s ruthless nature was on full display in 690 BC when he undertook a siege of the rebelling city of Babylon. After a siege that lasted fifteen months, his records reveal the destruction of the city, the razing of its temples and houses, looting of its wealth, and deportation of its population.14
Compare this outcome with what happened to Jerusalem, and the question lingers with even greater uncertainty.
But whether it was because of plague or simply an astonishing change of heart, the fact remains that Jerusalem was saved.
The Struggle Goes On
The Assyrian army marched away and the kingdom of Judah was permitted to survive as a vassal state, which it remained until the Assyrian Empire began to lose its hold over the Near East.15 But that was not, by any means, the end of the Jewish struggle for survival.
As Assyria fought to hold on to its expansive empire, the kingdom of Babylon continued rising in the east. By late in the sixth century BC, the reign of Assyria finally came to its end.
Will Durant, one of the preeminent scholars on the era, suggests part of the reason for the fall of the Assyrian Empire:
The qualities of body and character that had helped to make the Assyrian armies invincible were weakened by the very victories that they won; in each victory it was the strongest and bravest who died, while the infirm and cautious survived to multiply their kind; it was a dysgenic [biologically defective] process that perhaps made for civilization by weeding out the more brutal types, but undermined the biological basis upon which Assyria had risen to power.
Durant goes on to provide further explanations for Assyria’s fall:
The extent of her conquests had helped to weaken her; not only had they depopulated her fields to feed insatiate Mars [the god of war], but they had brought into Assyria, as captives, millions of destitute aliens who bred with the fertility of the hopeless, destroyed all national unity of character and blood, and b
ecame by their growing numbers a hostile and disintegrating force in the very midst of the conquerors. More and more the army itself was filled by these men of other lands, while semi-barbarous marauders harassed every border, and exhausted the resources of the country in an endless defense of its unnatural frontiers.16
Sensing Assyria’s weakness, in 612 BC Babylon attacked the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, sacked it, and burned it utterly to the ground.
Assyria was no more.
With the king of Babylon now the power to be feared in the Near East—along with the enduring Egyptian pharaoh in the south—once again Judah found itself in the middle of a great struggle for power. With the Assyrian capital in flames, the Egyptians became intent on taking control of Assyria’s former territories in the region, including Judah. Upon the death of King Josiah about 610 BC, Judah fell under Egyptian domination, becoming a vassal state of the empire along the Nile.
Josiah’s successor, Jehoiakim, was installed by the Egyptian pharaoh, Neco. For the next decade, Judah shifted to and fro in its loyalty to Egypt and the new guy on the block, Babylon. However, when Egypt was delivered a decisive defeat in 605 at the hands of the rising prince of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar (sometimes referred to in the Bible as Nebuchadnezzar), and was forced to retreat to defend its homeland, Judah and its neighbors were surrendered up to the Babylonian juggernaut.
In 601, Nebuchadrezzar failed in his attempt to invade Egypt and was forced to retreat and expend time and treasure to recover. This failed campaign resulted in Judah aligning with Egypt once again. The Babylonians were not amused. In 598, a siege of Jerusalem was undertaken. After a year of desperate struggle, the city and her citizens were forced to capitulate. As punishment, the king of Judah was sent into exile and a puppet king, Zedekiah, who was only twenty-one years old at the time but willing to swear allegiance to Nebuchadrezzar, was put in his place. Joining the defeated Jewish king on the long road to Babylonian captivity were other members of his household, military officers, elite fighting units, and skilled workmen and craftsmen, all to be utilized by the Babylonian Empire where their talents were most needed. Loot from the city, including from King Solomon’s Temple, accompanied these royal survivors on their sad journey into the heart of Babylon.
Though he owed his position to the king of Babylon, the puppet-king Zedekiah was not particularly loyal to the liege who had installed him on the throne. Over the next ten years, his rebellious nature evidenced itself in various acts of defiance. Then, when Nebuchadrezzar was distracted with serious challenges elsewhere in his empire, Zedekiah decided it was time to act. He sought to unite his neighbors in a rebellion, but nothing came from the effort—primarily because Egypt was busy securing its southern border and refused to support the effort.
In 592, however, Egypt reappeared and made a surge into Judah and its environs. Believing that Egypt was the more powerful of the two, Zedekiah broke with Babylon, a decision that proved deadly. Within a very short time, Judah was invaded and conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem was again laid to siege. This time, the Egyptians did not come to Judah’s aid. Nor was the king of Babylon satisfied with only replacing the Jewish king and making prisoners of his palace elites. In 586, Jerusalem was taken, the city burned, nearly every building torn to the ground, a great number of its inhabitants killed or enslaved. King Zedekiah tried to escape the city. Though he was able to slip through the gates, he was later captured on the Jericho plains. As punishment for his rebellion, he was forced to watch as his sons were murdered; then his own eyes were gouged out.
The Babylonians, however, did not follow the tradition of the Assyrians in depopulating Judah and scattering the exiled slaves. A Judean from a prominent, if not royal, family was even appointed as governor of Judah. Most important, many of the rural citizens were allowed to remain in the outlying parts of the kingdom, farming the land and tending to their vineyards. So it was that a substantial Jewish population remained in Judah. These were the survivors who rose up to greet the first group of exiles when they were allowed to return to their homeland from Babylon.
Of great importance was the nature of the Jewish exile under the Babylonians. Unlike with the Assyrians, those Jews who were taken captive by King Nebuchadrezzar were settled in a single geographic area inside the Babylonian Empire. While in exile, they were allowed the autonomy of largely ruling themselves, including the freedom to practice their religion. As Babylon began to fail, to be replaced by yet another rising power (this time the Persians), hope ran high among the Jews that they might be allowed to return to the kingdom of Judah. The biblical record states that after a period of about fifty years, the exiles began to return.17
Did the Battle for Jerusalem Change the World?
Even with the end of the reign of Babylon and the Israelites’ return to their homeland, the travails of the Jewish kingdom did not abate, for they were subsequently conquered by the Greeks and then the Romans. Yet through all this, the kingdom of Judah remained a viable community of Jews (as well as other assorted members of the Hebrew tribes), its identity as a nation and religion remaining largely intact, until shortly after the death of Christ.
One of the reasons the Jews were able to remain an enduring community was their unbending faith in their God, Jehovah, who they believed had saved them from the Assyrians. Much of their later self-perception pivoted on this event. Having lived through this terrifying and yet comforting experience, they had come to the conclusion that their God was powerful. More, this incident, along with the foundation of their monotheistic religion, gave them the confidence to argue that their God had power over the entire world. Everything that happened was in accordance with His will. Looking back on the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, Jewish religious leaders exhorted their followers that if their brothers had not abandoned the true religion, they would not have been destroyed and lost.
Their ancestors had been warned, they were constantly reminded, for had not Jehovah’s prophets foretold just such an outcome?
Yet the fact that a large number of the citizens of Judah survived their exile into Babylon and were eventually allowed to return to their homeland was evidence of God’s desire that the Jewish nation should survive.
One historian described the powerful and positive resurgence the Jews experienced while in exile:
As we all know, this was not the end of Jewish history, for the exiled people of Judah did not pine away. Instead they flourished by the waters of Babylon, and reorganized their scriptures to create an unambiguously monotheistic, congregational religion, independent of place and emancipated from the rites of Solomon’s destroyed temple in Jerusalem. Moreover, the revised Jewish faith, tempered in exile, subsequently gave birth to Christianity and Islam, the two most powerful religions of our age, and of course also retains its own, distinctive following around the world and especially in the contemporary state of Israel.18
This historian also declares that if Jerusalem had met the same fate as the nation of Israel, “Judaism would have disappeared from the face of the earth and the two daughter religions of Christianity and Islam could not possibly have come into existence. In short, our world would be profoundly different in ways we cannot really imagine.”19
One eminent American scholar of the Near and Middle East, Bernard Lewis, reached this same conclusion:
The advent and triumph of Islam in the seventh century was preceded and in a sense made possible by the rise and spread of Christianity, which itself was deeply indebted to its religious and philosophic predecessors. Both Christian and Islamic civilization have common roots in the encounter and interaction in the ancient Middle East of three universalist traditions—those of the Jews, the Persians, and the Greeks.20
In short, the survival of Jerusalem and Judaism was essential for the ultimate birth of Christianity into the world.
Regarding the importance of the Assyrian battle for Jerusalem and its subs
equent impact upon world history, the Quarterly Journal of Military History asked thirty-seven historians to identify the single most important military battle in history. Many critical battles were mentioned: the Greek navy’s victory over Persia in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and many others. But one preeminent scholar, William H. McNeill, author of Rise of the West (for which he was awarded the National Book Award for History), believes the Assyrian battle for Jerusalem exceeds them all in importance. Believing that the nation of Judah was saved by an unexplained plague, and while writing for the journal and representing the historians’ collective view, Mr. McNeill states:
Had the Assyrian army remained healthy in 701 [BC], Jerusalem would probably have been captured and its people dispersed, as had happened to Samaria only 20 years before. Think of what that would mean! For without Judaism, both Christianity and Islam become inconceivable. And without these faiths, the world as we know it becomes unrecognizable: profoundly, utterly different.21
Why Jerusalem and the culture of Judaism survived was because of either a mysterious plague or the softened heart of a brutal Assyrian king. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Both were miraculous and unexplainable events. Further, the fact that the Jewish religion survived clearly paved the way for the birth of Christianity. And as we will explain in subsequent chapters, without the foundation of Christianity, the freedom and democracy that we enjoy in this golden age would not have been possible.
Little did the people living in the days of the Assyrians comprehend the critical role that Sennacherib, Hezekiah, and the retreat of the Assyrian army back to Nineveh would play in the development of freedom and democracy during the centuries yet to come.
Notes
^1. The use of this name is based upon the Biblical account in Isaiah and the works of Josephus. It is not certain from either the biblical account or the historians whether this was a proper name or a title. For ease of use, we will use it as a proper name. There is also dispute among historians as to whether Sennacherib himself was involved in the siege of Judah and Jerusalem or whether he remained in Nineveh or was engaged in a campaign against the Egyptians. For purposes of this account, we have accepted the version that has the king remain in his capital city.