Assyria Invades Judah

¹³ In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign,^[a] King Sennacherib of Assyria came to attack the fortified towns of Judah and conquered them. ¹⁴ King Hezekiah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. I will pay whatever tribute money you demand if you will only withdraw.” The king of Assyria then demanded a settlement of more than eleven tons of silver and one ton of gold.^{[b] 15} To gather this amount, King Hezekiah used all the silver stored in the Temple of the Lord and in the palace treasury. ¹⁶ Hezekiah even stripped the gold from the doors of the Lord’s Temple and from the doorposts he had overlaid with gold, and he gave it all to the Assyrian king.

¹⁷ Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent his commander in chief, his field commander, and his chief of staff^[c] from Lachish with a huge army to confront King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. The Assyrians took up a position beside the aqueduct that feeds water into the upper pool, near the road leading to the field where cloth is washed.^{[d] 18} They summoned King Hezekiah, but the king sent these officials to meet with them: Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator; Shebna the court secretary; and Joah son of Asaph, the royal historian.