An ANGEL Killed 185,000 Soldiers in ONE Night — and the Assyrian King Never Wrote He Lost | Hezekiah

One night, an army of one hundred eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers surrounded Jerusalem. By morning, no one in that camp was left alive. The most powerful king in the ancient world, Sennacherib of Assyria, had his own account of the campaign carved into a clay prism — and it is exactly what he left out that tells the real story.

Before the siege ever began, King Hezekiah had used every year of peace to prepare Jerusalem for the worst: a tunnel cut straight through solid rock, a reinforced wall, storehouses filled to capacity. When the letter of threat finally arrived, he did not hide his fear — he carried it to the Temple, spread it open before God, and waited for an answer.

In this episode, we tell the complete story of Hezekiah: the religious reform that reopened the Temple after years of closed doors, the fall of Samaria and the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, the Rabshakeh's speech of intimidation beneath the wall, Hezekiah's prayer over the letter of threat, the prophet Isaiah's response and the night the angel of the LORD struck the Assyrian camp, the king's illness and the fifteen extra years of life he was granted, the visit of the Babylonian ambassadors and the prophecy of exile, and the legacy that ended in the disastrous reign of his son Manasseh.

This episode draws on documented archaeological findings: the Sennacherib Prism (also known as the Taylor Prism), today in the British Museum, where the Assyrian king describes the siege of Jerusalem but never writes that he took it; the Lachish siege reliefs, also in the British Museum; the Assyrian siege ramp preserved at Tel Lachish; Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription, today in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum; the Broad Wall excavated by Nahman Avigad; jar handles stamped with the "LMLK" seal; the account of the Greek historian Herodotus, in Book Two of his Histories, about mice gnawing the Assyrian bowstrings; the Babylonian chronicles recording Sennacherib's murder at the hands of his own sons; and the clay seal bearing Hezekiah's name, found by archaeologist Eilat Mazar at the Ophel in Jerusalem in 2015.

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PHOTO CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons): Photo: Capture of Lachish - booty and exiles — Zunkir, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: The fall of Lachish, King Sennacherib reviews Judaean prisoners — Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Siloam Inscription from Hezekiah's Tunnel, Istanbul Archaeology Museums — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Conduit of water in Hezekiah's tunnel — Davidbena, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Jerusalem Jewish Quarter, Broad Wall — Fallaner, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: LMLK seal (Hebron), Israel Museum, Jerusalem — Chamberi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Taylor Prism — David Castor, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Capture of Lachish - ramps and battle engines — Zunkir, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Tel Lachish siege ramp — DaringDonna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Six-sided clay prism of Sennacherib, Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago — Daderot, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Bulla of Yehozarah, son of Hilkiah, servant of Hezekiah — SalemOptix, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Babylonian Chronicle tablet (conquest of Jerusalem, 597 BCE) — Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: Gihon Spring — Deror avi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: City of David / Ophel excavations, Jerusalem — Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Photo: View of the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives — Askii, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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