Jerusalem’s Divine Immunity

Nearly 3,000 years ago, the small kingdom of Judah faced an existential threat from the mighty Assyrian Empire, which was an unprecedented military power in its cruelty and efficiency. When Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against the land with his army, he destroyed, plundered and conquered city after city, and Judah trembled before the terrible destruction that awaited it, especially its capital Jerusalem. However, a dramatic and unexpected course of events changed the consciousness and faith of an entire people, and led to a historical battle of narratives: Why didn’t the capital of Judah, Jerusalem, fall? And how did this lead to the perception that it is forever immune from falling?

Within this, a broader question also arises: How did Jerusalem become the eternal capital of the Jewish people? In the new season of BAC’s Hebrew-language video series on archaeology “Israel Unearthed” (Eretz Hefer, as it is called in Hebrew) we’ll discuss the destruction of Lachish, the temples that operated outside of Jerusalem, and the ongoing questions about myth, acceptance and interpretation.

The Destruction of Lachish

The kings of Assyria were careful to document and glorify their military deeds and conquests. They did this through display inscriptions, engravings and monumental stone reliefs that decorated their palaces. The reliefs were not just works of art; they served as brilliant propaganda tools designed to present the king as a crushing, invincible force, and to strike fear in anyone who dared to rebel. They consistently focused on successes only and ignored failures.

The climax of Sennacherib’s campaign in Judah, as reflected in the Assyrian version, was the conquest of the city of Lachish. Lachish was the second most important city in Judah, and the Assyrian siege against it is considered an exceptional military operation. To break through its walls, the Assyrians built a giant siege ramp, a unique structure of its kind known in the ancient world to this day, composed of millions of stones.

The Lachish reliefs, discovered in Sennacherib’s throne room in his palace in Nineveh and displayed today in the British Museum, are an impressive and chilling visual documentation of the event. They show the massive battering rams hitting the walls, the shooting of arrows and stones, and the soldiers of Judah trying to defend their city. The reliefs also show the horrifying results: the captives of Lachish are seen impaled and skinned alive or marching in a long column to exile, as spoil before the victorious Sennacherib. Sennacherib himself boasts in his inscriptions that he restrained King Hezekiah in Jerusalem like ‘a bird in a cage’ and received from him a heavy tribute of gold and silver.

Dramatic divine intervention

The biblical story, on the other hand, presents a different picture. It does mention that Sennacherib conquered all the fortified cities of Judah and that Hezekiah paid heavily, but the main drama focuses on Jerusalem. King Hezekiah, who understood the danger, worked to fortify Jerusalem and prepare it for siege, including building the famous Siloam tunnel to channel water into the city in a protected manner, which is also documented in the Siloam inscription found in the City of David.

However, afterwards, when Sennacherib’s messenger strikes fear in the city’s residents, the great miracle occurs. According to the Bible, Hezekiah turns to the prophet Isaiah, and this is what happened in response to his prayers:

“An angel of God went out and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp, and the following morning they were all dead corpses.” (Isaiah 37:36)

That is, on the morning of the battle, the entire Assyrian camp besieging the city was found dead. Sennacherib was forced to retreat, and later in the biblical story he is murdered by his sons.

This biblical narrative is not a dry historical account, of course; it is a story of dramatic divine intervention. This miracle, which saved Jerusalem while the other cities around it were conquered and damaged, led to the establishment of a myth that saw the salvation of Jerusalem as unequivocal proof that the God of Israel protects his chosen city, and that Jerusalem, unlike every other city that fell to the Assyrians, enjoys special divine immunity.

Thunderous Silence and Postponed Destruction

Sennacherib, in his inscriptions and reliefs, describes in impressive detail the conquest of the cities of Judah and the siege of Jerusalem. However, there is one thing he does not claim – that he conquered Jerusalem itself. He imposed a siege on Jerusalem, received ransom from Hezekiah, but the city itself did not fall into his hands. Apparently, this is not necessarily a miracle – since the campaign did succeed in subjugating Hezekiah – and it’s possible that from Sennacherib’s perspective this was enough, although scholars assume that the original goals were more violent than mere subjugation and tribute.

The echoing Assyrian silence regarding the conquest of Jerusalem, alongside the biblical story of the divine miracle, confirm the salvation of Jerusalem in Sennacherib’s campaign, but precisely this salvation is in many ways the beginning of the end, at least according to the versions of the prophets.

The belief that the city is immune from any enemy and that “the angel of the Lord” protects it became a founding myth. This myth remained alive and kicking for generations and dramatically influenced the Jewish people’s perception of the city and God’s relationship to it, even in later sieges. Thus, when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem about a hundred years later (586 BCE), and the prophet Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of the city, many people still clung to this belief and were sure they were protected from everything (“No trouble shall come upon us, we shall not see sword or famine.” Jeremiah 5:12) and that Jerusalem was invincible, but this time the prophets were right.

They warned again and again that confidence in immunity would end in disaster, and disaster came. The invincible city was destroyed, the people were exiled, and the campaign of destruction that began with Sennacherib was completed by Nebuzaradan, commander of the army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

The Battle of Narratives

Sennacherib’s campaign and its various documentations provide us with a fascinating glimpse into an inter-narrative encounter that shows how different narratives shape the perception of history and the founding myths of collective consciousness. On both sides of the battle of narratives, the primary goal is not historical documentation: the Assyrian version embodied in Sennacherib's inscriptions and the Lachish reliefs, which is silent regarding Jerusalem's situation, was intended to glorify the military power of the king and the empire; the biblical version, which has a religious historiosophical agenda, presents the same events as a divine miracle that saved Jerusalem and guaranteed its status as a chosen and protected city by God.

Thus, from the same historical event, two different national, spiritual and political consciousnesses crystallized, and these were shaped by the choice of what to tell and how to tell it.

For more, see “Israel Unearthed” (Eretz Hefer), in Hebrew.

This article was originally published in Hebrew.

Translation of biblical texts sourced from Sefaria.org
Main Photo: Lachish relief (replica) at Israel museum\ Yair Haklai \ Wikipedia