The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (40 page)

Hezekiah is deeply shaken but the prophet Isaiah reassures him with a divine oracle:

“Thus says the L
ORD
: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. . . . Therefore thus says the L
ORD
concerning the king of Assyria. He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return. . . . For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” (
2
K
INGS
19
:
6
–
7
,
32
–
34
)

And indeed, a miraculous deliverance comes that very night:

And that night the angel of the L
ORD
went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went home, and dwelt at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword. (
2
K
INGS
19
:
35
–
37
)

The independence of Judah—and its fervent belief in the saving power of YHWH against all enemies—was thus miraculously preserved.

But soon afterward, the story takes a bizarre turn with the assumption of Hezekiah’s son Manasseh to the Davidic throne. At a time when the power of YHWH should have been evident to the people of Judah, the new king Manasseh makes a sharp theological about-face:

And he did what was evil in the sight of the L
ORD
, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the L
ORD
drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he erected altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them. And he built altars in the house of the L
ORD
, of which the L
ORD
had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the L
ORD
. And he burned his son as an offering, and practiced soothsaying and augury, and dealt with mediums and with wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the L
ORD
, provoking him to anger. (
2
K
INGS
21
:
2
–
6
)

Despite the belief that a sanctified Jerusalem now was—and had always implicitly been—YHWH’s seat on earth and that its purity guaranteed the well-being of the people of Israel, Manasseh reportedly seduced his subjects “to do more evil than the nations had done whom the L
ORD
destroyed before the people of Israel” (
2
Kings
21
:
9
).

What was going on here? What caused these dramatic reversals? Was Hezekiah really so righteous and Manasseh so bad?

The books of Kings offer only the briefest background to the rebellion of Hezekiah, reporting that he “rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him” (
2
Kings
18
:
7
). The books of Chronicles, written several centuries later and generally considered to be a less reliable historical source than the books of Kings, nevertheless offer more detailed information on the preparations that Hezekiah ordered in the months and weeks before the Assyrian attack. In this case, as we will see later, archaeology suggests that Chronicles may preserve reliable historical information that was not included in the books of Kings. In addition to creating storehouses for grain, oil, and wine, and stalls for flocks and cattle throughout the kingdom (
2
Chronicles
32
:
27
–
29
), Hezekiah expended great effort to ensure Jerusalem’s water supply during a time of siege:

When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and intended to fight against Jerusalem, he planned with his officers and his mighty men to stop the water of the springs that were outside the city; and they helped him. A great many people were gathered, and they stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the land, saying, “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?” He set to work resolutely and built up all the wall that was broken down, and raised towers upon it, and outside it he built another wall; and he strengthened the Millo in the city of David. He also made weapons and shields in abundance. And he set combat commanders over the people, and gathered them together to him in the square at the gate of the city and spoke encouragingly to them, saying, “Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him; for there is one greater with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the L
ORD
our God, to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people took confidence from the words of Hezekiah king of Judah. (
2
C
HRONICLES
32
:
2
–
8
)

While there are only meager and disputed archaeological indications for Hezekiah’s religious reforms throughout his kingdom, there is abundant evidence for both the planning and the ghastly outcome of his revolt against Assyria. Jerusalem was naturally a focus of operations. Defensive preparations are most clearly seen in excavations in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, where a fortification wall, more than twenty feet thick, was built
to protect the recently established neighborhoods on the western hill. This defensive wall was apparently built at a time of national emergency; the western hill was already thickly settled and the private houses that lay along the planned course of the city fortifications had to be razed. The construction of this wall is apparently mentioned in the Bible, in Isaiah’s remonstrance to the king that he coldheartedly “broke down the houses to fortify the wall” (Isaiah
22
:
10
).

Another important mission was to provide the city with a secure supply of water in the case of a siege. The only perennial spring in Jerusalem—the Gihon—was located at the bottom of the Kidron valley, apparently outside the line of the city wall (
Figure
26,
p.
244
). This was an old problem in Jerusalem, and there were earlier attempts to solve it by cutting a tunnel in the rock to give access to the spring from within the fortified town. Hezekiah had a much more ambitious idea: instead of providing means to go down to the water, he planned to bring the water inside. Indeed, we have a precious contemporary description of this extraordinary engineering project—originally hewn on the walls of the water tunnel itself. First discovered in the late nineteenth century near the southern end of the tunnel, this unique monumental inscription in Hebrew relates how a long subterranean tunnel was cut through bedrock to bring water from the Gihon spring to a protected pool within the city walls.

Almost a third of a mile in length, and wide and high enough for a person to walk through, it was cut in such a precise way that the difference in elevation between the spring and the pool is just over one foot in height. Indeed, the ancient text commemorating the work, now known as the Siloam inscription, captures the drama of the project as it neared completion, describing how the tunnel was cut by two teams hewing their way toward each other from opposite ends of the tunnel:

. . . when the tunnel was driven through. And this was the way in which it was cut through: While [ . . . ] were still [ . . . ] axe[s], each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, [there was heard] the voice of a man calling to his fellow, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right [and on the left]. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed [the rock], each man toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the
water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for
1
,
200
cubits, and the height of the rock above the head[s] of the quarrymen was
100
cubits.

How they managed to meet despite the fact that the tunnel is curved is a matter of debate. It was probably a combination of technical skills and intimate knowledge of the geology of the hill. Such an extraordinary achievement did not escape the attention of the biblical historians and represents one of the rare instances when a specific project of a Hebrew king can safely be identified archaeologically: “The rest of the deeds of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?” (
2
Kings
20
:
20
).

Outside Jerusalem, Hezekiah apparently took full advantage of the institutions of the state to make sure that his entire kingdom was prepared for war (
Figure
27
). The city of Lachish in the Shephelah was surrounded by a formidable fortification system consisting of a sloping stone revetment halfway down the slope of the mound and a massive brick wall at its crest. A huge bastion protected a six-chambered gate to the city and a large elevated podium inside the walls probably supported a palace, or a residency, for the royal commander of the city. In addition, a complex of buildings, similar to the Megiddo stables, was built near the palace to serve as stables or storehouses. A large shaft cut in the rock may have served as the upper part of a water system. Though some of these elements may have been built before Hezekiah, they were all there and reinforced by his time, ready to face the army of Sennacherib.

Never before had a Judahite king devoted so much energy and expertise and so many resources in preparations for war.
1
Archaeological finds suggest that the organization of provisions in Judah was centralized for the first time. The clearest evidence of this is a well-known class of large store jars found throughout the territory of Hezekiah’s kingdom, mass produced in similar shape and size. Their most important and unique feature is the seal impressions stamped into the still wet clay of their handles before they were fired. The impressions bear an emblem in the shape of a winged sun disc or scarab beetle, which is believed to be a royal Judahite insignia, and a short Hebrew inscription reading
lmlk
(“belonging to the king”). The royal reference is combined with the name of one of four cities: Hebron, Socoh, Ziph, and a still unidentified place designated by the letters
MMST
. The first three are known from other sources, while the last, enigmatic site may have been a title for Jerusalem or an unknown Judahite town.

Scholars have suggested several alternative explanations for the function of these jars: that they contained the products of royal estates; that they were used as official containers for tax collection and distribution of commodities; or that the seal impressions were merely the identifying marks of pottery workshops where official royal storage jars were manufactured. In any event, it is quite clear that they were associated with the organization of Judah before the rebellion against Assyria.

We cannot be sure of the geographical extent of Hezekiah’s preparations for rebellion. The second book of Chronicles notes that he sent emissaries to Ephraim and Manasseh, that is, to the highland territory of the vanquished northern kingdom, to call the Israelites there to join him in Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover (
2
Chronicles
30
:
1
,
10
,
18
). Most of this account is hardly historical; it was written from the point of view of an anonymous fifth or fourth century
BCE
writer, who presented Hezekiah as a second Solomon, uniting all Israel around the Temple in Jerusalem. But the hint of Hezekiah’s interest in the territories of the former kingdom of Israel may not be a total invention, for Judah could now claim its leadership over the entire land of Israel. Even if so, however, claims are one thing and achievable goals are quite another. In the event, Hezekiah’s revolt against Assyria proved to be a disastrous decision. Though untested, Sennacherib, at the head of a massive Assyrian invasion force, more than adequately proved his battlefield talents. King Hezekiah of Judah was no match for him.