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In 2 Kings 18-20 we read an account of an Assyrian threat in the days of Hezekiah, King of Judah.
Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. (2 Kings 18:13)
At first Hezekiah tried to appease Sennacherib. But when the Assyrians came up against Jerusalem itself, Hezekiah turned to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah gave encouragement to Hezekiah, but the Assyrians continued to openly flout the God of Israel, and sent a letter to Hezekiah which said, in essence, "Your God can't save you from us" (2 Kings 19:1-13). The text describes Hezekiah's response:
Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD... (2 Kings 19:14f)
In response to Hezekiah's prayer, the Lord said, by way of Isaiah, the prophet, "I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake.'" The text continues:
Then it happened that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men rose early in the morning, behold all of them were dead. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home, and lived at Nineveh.
Oriental kings often left detailed accounts of their military exploits, but were not wont to elaborate on their defeats. Pictured above is the cuneiform inscribed clay prism containing the annals of Sennacherib, including Sennacherib's account of the confrontation described in 2 Kings 18-20. Dated approximately 689 B.C., the prism includes the following:
As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to forty-six of his strong cities, walled forts, and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered them....I drove out of them 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered [them] booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I put watch- posts closely round the city, and turned back to his fate anyone who came out of the city gate.
While Sennacherib's account was certainly self-serving, it corresponds remarkably well to the Biblical account. Sennacherib did indeed shut Hezekiah up "as a bird in a cage." But why did he not complete the conquest of Jerusalem? That he did not is implicitly clear from his own annals. But Sennacherib did not see fit to describe what must have been a humiliating experience, the overnight destruction of his army.