AFTER THE SIEGE AND BATTLE

Lachish captives flayed (skinned) alive; Nineveh wall relief, British Museum

THE REFUGEES FLEE

Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have found remains of Israelite houses at bedrock level, dating to around 700BC. They believe that at about that time the population and size of Jerusalem trebled almost overnight, from a city of about 50 acres to one of about 150 acres.

They think this populations explosion can only be explained by sudden waves of refugees, from the northern king of Israel, and then from the cities of Judah as, one by one, they were smashed by the Assyrians.

Some of these people may have been from Lachish - men and women who fled before the city clamped itself shut against the invaders. But most of the people of Lachish would have stayed, hoping against hope they could outface Sennacherib. 

Above: citizens of Lachish led into captivity
Below: Sennacherib in his chariot

ASSYRIAN WALL SCULPTURES

The Assyrian wall reliefs paint a grim picture of the fate of the citizens of Lachish. Many would have died of hunger and disease in the besieged city. Many were killed during the fighting. Many were slaughtered when the Assyrian soldiers poured over the breached walls and swarmed into the city, to loot, burn and kill.

Some lucky survivors, were allowed to take one small sack of belongings, then they were marched under guard out of their city, away into exile in Assyria.

 The city is utterly destroyed, the vanquished citizens flee
Assyrian wall relief

Don McCullin's iconic photo of a traumatized soldier
At Lachish, defeated soldiers were tortured and killed 

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JERUSALEM IS SAVED

After the sack of Lachish, Sennacherib moved on to Jerusalem, to besiege and destroy it as he had Lachish.

For some unrecorded reason he left before he completed this siege, and Jerusalem's deliverance is celebrated in this poem:

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB'S ARMY
LORD BYRON
(describing an incident during the reign of King Hezekiah - 2 Kings 19)

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
     And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
     That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
     And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever were still.

And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
     But through them there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,
     With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.

And the widows of Asshur are loud in their wail;
     And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

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OSTRACON FROM ANCIENT ISRAEL 

Ostracon from Lachish - pottery fragment with messge written on it

Eventually Lachish was rebuilt. It again became the southwest guardian of Judah and about a hundred years later faced a new enemy, the Babylonians.

DESTRUCTION OF LACHISH

The Babylonian attack on Lachish would be the coup de grace. The evidence, though sparse, is chilling and poignant.

Archaeologists found ostraca, fragments of inscribed pottery, in a ruined guardhouse. These painted an increasingly desperate picture, as the commander of the Lachish soldiers begged for help.

One reads "Let my lord know that we are watching over the beacon of Lachish, according to the signals which my lord gave, for Azeka is not to be seen." (Azeka was a neighboring fortress whose beacons had apparently been extinguished by the enemy).

That one simple message says it all: Lachish was isolated and doomed as the Babylonian onslaught approached. 

 The ruins of a once-proud city