Hezekiah, king of Judea, having decided to no longer pay tribute to the Assyrian empire as his father Ahaz had done, enjoyed a relative calm during a few years of succession crises within that empire. But a powerful leader, Sennacherib, was able to strengthen his position on the throne and then decided to campaign against Judea.
In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, marched against all the fortified cities of Judea and captured them. (II Kings 18:13)
Let us look at the continuation of the historical and biblical chronologies (for earlier dates, refer to the previous articles since Adam):
year 3006 (754 BCE): vision of the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos
year 3033 (727 BCE): Tiglath-Pileser III conquers the north of the kingdom of Israel
year 3035 (725 BCE): death of Ahaz king of Judea; his son Hezekiah succeeds him
year 3038 (722 BCE): campaign of Shalmaneser V against the kingdom of Israel
year 3042 (718 BCE): Sargon II ends the kingdom of Israel by taking Samaria, its capital
year 3049 (711 BCE): Sennacherib's campaign against Judea; siege of Lachish
The siege of Lachish is considered by historians to have taken place in 701 BCE, based on the Assyrian chronicles. But, in those remote times, universal time did not exist and each count of years was done in a kingdom according to the years of reign of a given monarch. In addition, the length of a year was obviously not the same everywhere because it depended on the number of days counted in a year. It is therefore normal to note differences, within a few years, in the year of an event according to the chronology of reigns viewed from different local chronicles. Even today, a celebration like Christmas does not fall on the same day in all regions of the world!
Sennacherib's military campaign against Judea is one of the most important events where Bible, History and Archaeology all meet. Because we have 4 different sources of information, all in correlation with each other:
the biblical narrative in Kings and Chronicles
the annals of King Sennacherib, found in the excavations of his capital, Nineveh
the bas-reliefs of Sennacherib's palace, visually describing the siege of Lachish
the archaeological findings from Lachish since the mid-1930's and up to the present
One of the historical elements that illustrates well the above sources is the throne of Sennacherib during the siege of Lachish. To learn more, continue reading on this site by clicking here.
For more details about the site of Tel Lachish, read my article by clicking here.
To return to the home page of articles on this theme of "the Bible is true", click here.
Albert Benhamou
Private tour guide in Israel
March 2025
