Jerusalem 701 BCE: Sennacherib's Siege and the City That Survived

In 701 BCE, the Assyrian king Sennacherib marched on Jerusalem with the most formidable army the ancient Near East had ever seen. He had already crushed the northern kingdom of Israel and reduced dozens of Judahite fortresses to rubble. Jerusalem itself seemed doomed. But something extraordinary happened: the city survived. This episode of The History of Jerusalem digs into the dramatic siege of 701 BCE — the Assyrian perspective from Sennacherib's own prism inscriptions, the biblical account in 2 Kings and Isaiah, and the archaeological evidence from the siege ramp at Lachish and Hezekiah's tunnel. We explore King Hezekiah's desperate preparations, the role of the prophet Isaiah, the mysterious plague that supposedly struck the Assyrian camp, and what actually might have saved the city. We also consider how this near-miss shaped Jerusalem's identity as a divinely protected city — a idea that would echo through centuries. No previous episode of this show has focused on the Assyrian crisis, making this a fresh angle on an ancient event.

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