Image Details

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Sennacherib decorated his palace at Nineveh with reliefs of his successful siege of Judahite Lachish, recorded in 2 Chronicles 32:9. The relief is accompanied by the text: “Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before (or at the entrance of) the city of Lachish.” In the cuneiform prism, Sennacherib claims to have destroyed 46 Judahite cities, but he does not claim to have taken Jerusalem, only to have besieged it and shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage.”