In 701 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded Judah, took its forty-six fortified cities, and surrounded Jerusalem. His commander, the Rabshakeh, delivered an insulting demand for surrender in Hebrew so the people on the walls could hear: 'Where are the gods of Hamath, of Arpad, of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands has delivered his land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem?'
Hezekiah went to the Temple and spread Sennacherib's letter before the Lord. Isaiah brought him the divine reply: 'I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.' That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck the camp of the Assyrians; in the morning, 185,000 men were dead. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh in disgrace. There he was assassinated by his own sons Adrammelech and Sharezer while worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch (2 Kings 19:35–37). The episode was confirmed in the 19th century by the discovery of Sennacherib's own Taylor Prism — a clay tablet at Nineveh that records his other conquests in detail but is conspicuously silent about the result of his Jerusalem campaign.