A Divided Kingdom

After the death of Solomon, the Israelite presence in Palestine became divided into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the north with Samaria as its capital, and the kingdom of Judah in the south with Jerusalem as its capital. The two kingdoms were ruled by weak kings and plagued not only by wars both among themselves and with neighboring nations but they were also not independent since they had to pay tributes to Egypt and Assyria.[1]

Who are the Assyrians?

The Assyrians originated in the Middle East at the city of Ashur which was located in the same area as current day northern Iraq.  At its peak, the Assyrian empire controlled an area stretching from Libya to Iran.

When Did the Assyrians Attack Israel?

The Assyrian Empire expanded in Syria and Palestine under the Assyrian king Sennacherib.[2] In 722 BC, the Assyrians attacked the kingdom of Israel and destroyed it.[3]

When and Why Did the Assyrians Siege of Jerusalem Occur?

The kingdom of Judah remained under the Assyrian rule and paid tribute to Assyria. Later, nonetheless, Judah stopped paying tax to the Assyrian Empire which led Senncherib to attack Jerusalem and lay siege to the city in 701 BC. The city remained under the leadership of its ruler Hezekiah and did not fall.[4]

How Did Jerusalem Prepare for the Assyrian Siege?

(As recorded in the Hebrew Bible)

The Second Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible narrates this story and speaks about the preparations taken by Hezekiah to protect the city against the Assyrians. The arrangements included an excavation of a tunnel inside the city walls to ensure access to the water springs and prevent the invading armies from reaching it. Hezekiah also built a dam in a valley to the north of the Temple Mount and created the Bethesda pools or Siloam Pools[5] which provided enough water for the inhabitants of Jerusalem during the time of siege.[6]

In 597 BC, Babylonians, under the King Nebuchadnezzar, attacked Judah and destroyed it.[7] Jerusalem was not destroyed until 587 BC[8] after which time it remained under Babylonian rule from 587 BC to 538 BC when it was captured by the Persians.[9]

Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Captivity

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, for the first time in 597 BC.[10]

Nebuchadnezzar then assigned his own rulers to the city . The Torah, particularly in the Second Book of Kings, narrates the stories of the ruler Zedekiah who was appointed by the Babylonian king on Jerusalem 597 BC.[11] The Babylonian Chronicles, contemporaneous texts, now available at the British Museum, records the story of Nebuchadnezzar and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.[12]

In 593 BC, the Israelites under Zedekiah revolted against Babylon. Jerusalem stopped paying tribute to Babylon and aligned himself with the Egyptians against the Babylonians.[13] This prompted a second attack on the city in 587 BC[14] when Nebuchadnezzar Laid siege to the city, and then destroyed its walls, burned the temple,[15] and took most of the Jewish population to Babylon in what was historically known as “the Babylonian Captivity.”[16] Zedekiah fled the city with his sons towards Egypt, however, he was captured and returned to Nebuchadnezzar who killed his sons in front of him and put out his eyes before taking him to Babylon where he ultimately died.[17] This is how the Kingdom of Judah came to an end in 586 BC.[18]

Jerusalem then became a Babylonian colony. It paid tribute to Babylon, used its language in official political and commercial transactions and kept the Canaanite language as a spoken language among the people who remained in the city.[19] Unlike the Assyrians who were only preoccupied with looting the captured nations, the Babylonians helped Jerusalem to thrive and caused it commerce and manufacture to flourish up until the Persian conquest.[20]

Cyrus the Persian

In 539 BC the Babylonian empire came to a fall when the Persian king Cyrus the Great attacked it and defeated its army.[21] Jerusalem was ruled by the Persians for another 200 years.[22] The Persian king, who allegedly got married to a Jewish captive woman named Astir, issued an edict allowing the Jewish captives in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and build the temple again in 593 BC after 50 years of exile.[23] Some Jews returned to the city but the vast majority of them stayed in Babylon.[24] The Persian Some of the jewish inhabitants served as spies for the Persian King, and helped strengthen his rule in the area, as well as facilitate his plan to read both Egypt and Morocco..[25]

Jerusalem remained under the Persian Empire for two centuries until the Greek conquest in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great took over the city.[26]

The Persians invaded Jerusalem two times after that: the first time in 614 AC when the city was under the Rome. The Persians raided Jerusalem, which at that time represented a thriving civilization, destroyed it walls, burned its churches and killed thousands of Christians in the city.[27]However, the city was restored under the Rome in 627 AC when Hercules defeated the Persians. The second Persian attack against Jerusalem was in 1077 AC when the city was under Fatimid rule. This time the Persians merely looted the city and left.[28]

[1] Habib Ghanem, Jerusalem: a History and a Cause (Lebanon: Dar Al-Manhel, 2002), 26

[2] Joseph Millis, Jerusalem: the Illustrated History of the Holy City (London: Andre Deutsch, 2012), 16

[3] Ghanem, Jerusalem, 26 and Riad Yassin and Amjad Al-Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History of Jerusalem (Jordan: Dar Wael, 2012), 17

[4] Millis, Jerusalem, 16 and Teddy Kollek and Moshe Pearlman, Jerusalem: a History of Forty Centuries (New York: Random House, 1968), 64

[5] Kollek and Pearlman, a History of Forty Centuries, 62

[6] Millis, Jerusalem, 16

[7] Ghanem, Jerusalem, 27-28 and Yaseen and Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History, 18

[8] Millis, Jerusalem, 17

[9] Henry Cattan, Jerusalem (London: Saqi Books, 2000), 23

[10] Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 76 and George E Mendenhall, “Jerusalem from 1000-63 BC”, Jerusalem in History (2000): 64-65

[11] Aref Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Al Andalus Library, 1999 fifth edition), 26 and Armstrong, One City, Three Faiths, 77

[12] Millis, Jerusalem, 17

[13] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 27 and Kollek and Pearlman, a History of Forty Centuries, 70

[14] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 27 and Kollek and Pearlman, a History of Forty Centuries, 70

[15] Armstrong, One City, Three Faiths, 77

[16] Ghanem, Jerusalem, 26 and Yaseen and Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History, 18 and Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 27 and Armstrong, One City, Three Faiths, 79

[17] Ghanem, Jerusalem, 27 and aref p27 and Millis, Jerusalem, 19

[18] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 27

[19] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 27

[20] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 26-27

[21] Kollek and Pearlman, a History of Forty Centuries, 73 and Armstrong, One City, Three Faiths, 91-92 and Mendenhall, “Jerusalem from 1000-63 BC”, 66

[22] Yaseen and Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History, 18

[23] Ghanem, Jerusalem, 27 and Yaseen and Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History, 18 and Millis, Jerusalem, 23 and Mendenhall, “Jerusalem from 1000-63 BC”, 67

[24] Cattan, Jerusalem, 23

[25] Yaseen and Fa’ouri, the Political and Cultural History, 18 and Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 28

[26] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 32 and Cattan, Jerusalem, 23

[27] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 32

[28] Al-Aref, History of Jerusalem, 32

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