Beth-zur

Bible map of Sennacherib's attack on Judah

Assyria's invasion of Judah

Before Sennacherib's attack on Judah, Assyrians invaded Israel in the 700s BC. There, they gave top priority to capturing and pillaging Israel’s elite: rulers, judges, wealthy businesspeople. They followed the money and often butchered the cash cow. Assyria erased this northern Jewish nation and deported the survivors who became known as the Lost Tribes of Israel. Assyrian King Sennacherib’s turn on the only surviving Israelite nation about 20 years layer, in 701 BC.  Judah, in the south, was the only surviving Jewish nation.

Judah's cities decimated

Sennacherib destroyed most cities during that campaign. And he defeated Egyptians who came to their rescue. Then he lay siege to Jerusalem when Hezekiah was king. But he left suddenly.

Assyria fled from Jerusalem

A Bible writer said an angel killed 185,000 of his soldiers (2 Kings 19:35). A Greek writer 250 years later, Herodotus, wrote that the army got stopped by a rat infestation that killed some of the soldiers. Some scholars speculate that the rats carried diseases—plagues such as bubonic, septicemic, pneumonic. Those three diseases—all from the same bacterium (yersinia pestis)—affect the immune system, blood, and lungs. (See Isaiah 10.)