{"id":64341,"date":"2019-10-15T00:11:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T21:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=64341"},"modified":"2023-05-08T18:31:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T15:31:58","slug":"the-non-fall-of-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-non-fall-of-jerusalem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Non-Fall Of Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[555,444,940,635,434],"acf":{"old_id":"64341","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33692,"related_cahpter":"328","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Testimony from Sennecharib\u2019s own war records","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It almost seems too fantastical to imagine a huge army of 185,000 just expiring in their sleep. The biblical account has always aroused skepticism. For centuries, this remarkable miracle seemed unsubstantiated by any external source. The Greek historian Herodotus (485-425 BCE) reported a similar story, although in his account the adversary is Egypt. In his version, field mice invaded the Assyrian camp and gnawed the quivers, bow strings, and leather shield handles, thus disarming the military force. As a consequence, many of the soldiers were killed and others fled. Josephus too reports the miracle of Jerusalem&#8217;s reprieve in the days of Hezekiah, ascribing the death of the Assyrian troops to a devastating plague (Antiquities X, 21-3). These sources notwithstanding, there was little to verify the biblical version of events.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, with the discovery of Sennacherib&#8217;s own records almost two centuries ago, we have greater backing for the veracity of the story described by Kings. Sennacherib&#8217;s war records demonstrate a strange anomaly when it chronicles the siege on Jerusalem. As Prof. Haim Tadmor has observed, Sennacherib uses a standardized formula when describing the conquest of an enemy town: &#8220;Four elements which constitute a fixed structure, without which one cannot speak of a description of battle against a renegade enemy.&#8221; The four elements are: (1) Sennacherib&#8217;s conquest of the kingdom (including the capital city), (2) execution of the king, (3) the appointment of a vassal in place of the former king, and (4) the imposition of heavy taxation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are fixtures in recording each and every conquest \u2014 except one: the war against Jerusalem in 701 BCE. Sennacherib describes the siege and Hezekiah&#8217;s tribute, but fails to record the fall of Jerusalem and the execution or incarceration of its king. This leads Tadmor to assume that Sennacherib abandoned the siege of Jerusalem, having failed to vanquish the city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Sennacherib annals yield other gems which corroborate and enrich our reading of the account in Tanakh. One particular phrase sheds light upon an unusual metaphor in the book of Isaiah. Sennacherib, in his own words, boasts: &#8220;[Hezekiah] himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city.&#8221; This unusual metaphor gives greater poignancy to the metaphor used by Isaiah (31:5): &#8220;Like birds in flight, so will the Lord of Hosts protect Jerusalem. He will protect it and deliver it, He will spare it and rescue it.&#8221; Until this Assyrian document was uncovered we didn&#8217;t appreciate the significance of Isaiah&#8217;s language. Now we realize that Isaiah&#8217;s phraseology was a direct retort to the language of Sennacherib, one of biblical archaeology&#8217;s most famous contributions to our understanding of Tanakh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alex Israel, II Kings: In a Whirlwind, Maggid Books, 2019, Hezekiah Under Seige\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":63310,"id":63310,"title":"Alex Israel - 2_kings_cover","filename":"Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-hairy-prophet\/alex-israel-2_kings_cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"alex-israel-2_kings_cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":63117,"date":"2019-09-23 13:43:41","modified":"2019-09-23 13:53:01","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1711,"height":1821,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-282x300.jpg","medium-width":282,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-768x817.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":817,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-962x1024.jpg","large-width":962,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover.jpg","1536x1536-width":1443,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover.jpg","2048x2048-width":1711,"2048x2048-height":1821,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-1128x1200.jpg","post_full_size-width":1128,"post_full_size-height":1200,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Alex-Israel-2_kings_cover-395x420.jpg","home_baner-width":395,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Excerpts from: II Kings - 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