event · E0484
Sancheriv's Defeat at Yerushalayim מפלת סנחריב
The campaign that swallowed forty-six cities stopped at Jerusalem. Sancheriv's army invested the city where Chizkiyahu and Yeshayahu stood — and in a single night, the pesukim say, the angel of God struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. Sancheriv broke camp, went home to Nineveh, and was cut down by his own sons in the house of his god. Assyria's own records, which never admit a defeat, boast of shutting Chizkiyahu in "like a bird in a cage" — and then fall silent, claiming everything except the city.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מפלת סנחריב
- Also known as
- Mapalat Sancheriv, Deliverance of Jerusalem from Assyria
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3213 AM — the climax of the campaign of Chizkiyahu's fourteenth year
- Civil (computed)
- 3213 AM · 548 BCE (trad.)
- Academic
- 701 BCE — the campaign ended with Jerusalem untaken; Sancheriv never campaigned in the west again
- Date range
- 701 BCE (academic); Chizkiyahu's fourteenth year, c. 3213 AM (traditional)
- Precision
- approximate
III. Where
- Places
- Jerusalem
IV. What
- Events
- Siege of Lachish, Taylor Prism
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "The angel of God went out and struck in the camp of Assyria a hundred and eighty-five thousand... and Sancheriv king of Assyria journeyed and went and returned, and dwelt in Nineveh" — where, as he bowed in the house of Nisroch his god, his sons Adramelech and Sar'etzer struck him down with the sword.
Confidence is for what the biblical text states. |
biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| The Gemara fills in the night of the downfall: how the camp of Sancheriv fell — souls consumed while bodies and garments were left whole — and weaves the deliverance into the night of Pesach and the almost-messianic career of Chizkiyahu.
Aggadic elaboration recorded centuries later; cited for the tradition's memory of the event, not as a chronicle.
|
rabbinic | ★★★★☆ | |
| The corroboration here is an eloquent silence. Sancheriv's own annals — a genre that admits no defeat — describe this very campaign in detail, boast that Chizkiyahu was shut up in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage," and then claim tribute but never the city: alone of the campaign's targets, Jerusalem is never said to fall, and the king went home. Herodotus preserves a parallel tradition of Sennacherib's army destroyed in a single night, and Assyrian records confirm that he was assassinated by his own sons. What the external evidence corroborates is the city's survival and the king's end — the cause of the army's departure it does not record.
The prism is held as an atlas artifact (Taylor Prism); its restraint about Jerusalem is a fact of the text. Why the siege ended — plague, politics, payment — historians reconstruct variously, while Tanakh gives its own account.
|
external | ★★★★☆ |
Referenced by: Siege of Lachish