In the Path of Sennacherib - The BAS Library
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In the Path of Sennacherib

By Oded Borowski

“I laid waste the large district of Judah and made the overbearing and proud Hezekiah, its king, bow in submission,” boasts Sennacherib, monarch of Assyria, in a preserved cuneiform inscription.1 “I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities: … and conquered (them),” Sennacherib elsewhere claims, obviously hoping to secure his place in history. And indeed he has. The Bible records this campaign in two separate accounts, once in the Book of Kings and again in Chronicles. “King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah and encamped against the fortified towns” (2 Chronicles 32:1). Sennacherib’s hordes attacked Judah, according to 2 […]

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Footnotes

1.

Some of these buildings had actually been constructed in an earlier town (stratum VIC) and continued to be used in the town that was destroyed (stratum VIB).

2.

Other proposals, however, include Sharuhen, Ziklag, Hormah and Goshen.

3.

The spatulas were used in a warp-weighted loom to introduce dyed weft (horizontal) segments to form patterns. Unlike the regular yarn used for the weft, these segments were woven with the help of the spatulas that enabled placing the segments in the proper place.

Endnotes

1.

James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 288.

2.

Excavations at Tel Halif were conducted in three phases starting in 1976 by the Lahav Research Project (LRP), a consortium of American institutions led by a group of American scholars. The objective of Phase I, under the direction of Joe D. Seger, was to establish the stratigraphy of the site; this was carried out in four seasons (1976–1977, 1979–1980). Phase II (1983, 1986–1987, 1989), also under the direction of Seger, was mostly devoted to the study of the remains from Early and Late Bronze Ages. Phase III (1992–1993, 1999), under the co-direction of Paul F. Jacobs and Oded Borowski, concentrated on the remains from Iron Age II (eighth century B.C.E.)

3.

Yohanan Aharoni, The Land of the Bible (revised and enlarged edition, edited by A.F. Rainey) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979), p. 44.

4.

Before its allocation to Judah, it may have been part of the tribe of Simeon. See Joshua 19:7 and 1 Chronicles 4:32. A reference to En-rimmon (En=spring) in Nehemiah 11:29 may also be the same site.

5.

For more information on the Israelite house, see Oded Borowski Daily Life in Biblical Times (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 16–21.