The Destruction of the Army of Sennacherib
What exactly is
a "miracle"? When we look at the long line of history we begin to see
moments when complete disaster or ruin or destruction is narrowly avoided.
Sure, this might be relative to the perspective of those saved: salvation of
one culture might mean destruction of another, after all. But those saved,
having recourse to a vision that the Divine Powers work in providential mercy,
look upon such moments as miraculous. Certainly this seems to be the case for
twentieth century figures such as Winston
Churchill & survivors
of the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami, and for colonial Americans such as Abraham
Lincoln & George
Washington.
Such a vision
extends back even to the Israelites in the 8th century BC who were spared
initial destruction at the hands of the Akkadians during the Levantine War in
701BC.
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| Wine country of the Levant |
Human
civilization first emerged from protected forts designed to guard agricultural
settlements. These forts, known as city-states, normally sprang up around water
sources such as the city of Uruk, which is located where the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers merge into one and flow into the Persian Gulf. Given the
abundance of food available to farmers, people had time to sit, discuss,
invent, and create artwork. (Josef Pieper writes about this in his great book "Leisure,
the basis of culture") These creations are what constitute civilization.
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|
Ancient
cuneiform clay tablet. NB the geometric figure on the left. |
But independent city-states needed
governance and this led to power structures within the city. Eventually, rulers
of these cities saw an opportunity to increase their own wealth & power
by welding together, through a combination of force & politics, the other
cities in their area. And thus emerged the first empires.
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|
Sargon the
Great |
Sargon I (Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great) created the first empire of western culture by conquering and welding various city-states into a single controlled unit called The Assyrian Empire.
Many years
later, Sargon II, king of the neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC–609 BC) from 722 BC
to his death in battle in 705 BC, took his name from Sargon the Great.
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| Sargon II |
The son of Sargon II, Sennacherib, during the The Levantine War of 701 BC, tried to extend the empire into the Levant area of the Middle East, a land which was already occupied by the Hebrews (Israelites, Jews). The army, however, caught a disease and became so depleted it could not maintain the campaign in the Levant and retreated back to Mesopotamia.
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| Sennacherib |
This devastating event is
described in the Bible's book
of II Kings as "the angel of the LORD".
or shoot an
arrow here.
He will not
come before it with shield
or build a
siege ramp against it.
By the way that
he came he will return;
he will not
enter this city,
declares the Lord.
I will
defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant.’”
That night the
angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five
thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there
were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and
withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
In the 19th
century, the poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron, wrote a poem about this called
"TheDestruction of Sennacherib".
The Destruction
of Sennacherib
The Assyrian
came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts
were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen
of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue
wave rolls 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 grew still!
And
there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it
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 trumpet unblown.
And
the widows of Ashur 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!
So what exactly
is "a miracle"? Did the army of Sennacherib retreat because of
a disease? was it the angel of the LORD? was it perhaps
both? was it perhaps simply gratitude on the part of the Israelites that they had been spared this horror?
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| Assyrian soldiers impaling prisoners after the siege of Lachish, from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, 701 BC. |
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| Prisoners being flayed during the siege of Lachish, from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, 701 BC. |
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