I have always been intrigued by the Lord Byron poem. The poem recounts the death of the invading Assyrian’s army, as they attempted to attack the Jews. Supposedly, the enmtire assyrian army was wiped out in a single night…is there any independent confirmation of this? Or was the Biblical writer talking about an epidemi, or mass desertion of this invading army?
It seems that god doesn’t fool around when he is mad at you.
What to archaeologists have to say?
More accurately, as they besieged Jerusalem. Sennacherib and his Army of Assyrians are reponsible for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel being lost (through dispersion and integration with the wider Assyrian empire, not through slaughter).
The Assyrians’ own account of the affair (as recorded in clay, called “Sennacherib’s Prism”, discovered in ancient Nineveh) indicates that as far as Sennacherib was concerned, he besieged Jersualem until the king of Judah paid him through the nose to go away, so he did.
The Biblical account is that the Jews forked over the ransom but Sennacherib continued the siege, mocking and blaspheming the God of the Jews. Isaiah proclaims that God will set things right, and soon thereafter, an angel came down one night and destroyed the entire army camped outside before sunrise.
I don’t think there’s any archaeological evidence to back this up, though Wikipedia mentions something I hadn’t known: that the Greek historian Herodotus also refers to a divine wipeout of Sennacherib’s army, but attributes the triumph to an Egyptian Pharaoh, Sethos.