Chapter 5: The Assyrian Flood

For years, the Lord was with Hezekiah, and he prospered in everything he undertook. The tunnel was completed. The walls stood strong. The people gave so generously that tithes of grain, wine, and oil piled up in heaps at the Temple from the third month to the seventh. In every work he began in the service of God, Hezekiah did it with all his heart, and he prospered.

Then, in his fourteenth year, everything changed.

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded Judah. He led the most powerful military force the ancient world had ever seen. Siege ramps, battering rams, archers by the thousands. City after city fell before him. All the fortified cities of Judah were captured. Lachish, the second most important city in the kingdom, was besieged and destroyed with terrifying brutality.

Hezekiah watched his kingdom shrink. The man who had opened the Temple doors, restored the Passover, and rallied the people at the city gate now faced a moment of crisis. He sent a message to Sennacherib at Lachish.

HEZEKIAH“I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand.”— 2 Kings 18:14

Sennacherib demanded three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To pay it, Hezekiah gave all the silver found in the Temple and the royal treasury. He stripped the gold from the Temple doors and from the doorposts he himself had overlaid. The very doors he had opened as his first act as king, he now tore apart to buy time from an enemy.

The tribute was paid. But Sennacherib did not withdraw. He took the gold, took the silver, and sent his army to Jerusalem anyway.