Hezekiah of Judah was the king of a country the size of Luxembourg. His realm consisted mainly of rugged hill country, with just enough farmland to feed its people. The fertile plains of the Shephelah and the wealthy Philistine ports lay tantalizingly close, but just out of reach.
By today’s standards Judah seems tiny. But in its own time it was not unusually small. Most of its neighbors – Ammon, Moab, Edom, the Philistine cities, even Israel – were similar in scale. Their armies were modest, their ambitions restrained by geography, and their prospects for expansion slim. None could grow much larger without outside help.
And yet, within these narrow limits, Hezekiah became one of the most memorable figures of his age. For a brief, dramatic moment he strengthened his state, reshaped his people, and tested the patience of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
A crowded neighborhood
Judah was just one of many small kingdoms. Israel stretched across the north. Damascus, capital of Aram, dominated the trade routes to the interior. Across the Jordan lay Edom, Ammon, and Moab. Along the coast flourished the Phoenician ports and the fortified cities of the Philistines.
They clashed often, but their wars were rarely decisive. Armies raided and counter-raided, sometimes even slaughtering entire communities: men, women, children, and livestock. Yet they lacked the resources to maintain long-term control over conquered lands. Borders shifted briefly, only to snap back into place. For centuries, this grim rhythm preserved a fragile balance of weakness.
That balance was about to collapse.
The storm from the north
In the 730s BCE, Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria swept into Syria with an army unlike any the region had seen. His troops were disciplined, professional, and relentless. Where previous kings had been content to impose tribute, Tiglath-Pileser broke with tradition. He toppled dynasties, annexed their lands, and absorbed them directly into his empire.
His motives were clear: these states had sided with Urartu, Assyria’s northern rival, or were suspected of leaning that way. The lesson was brutal but effective: hesitate in loyalty, and your kingdom will be erased. The rules of regional politics had changed forever.
The Syro-Ephraimite war
The shockwaves reached Judah quickly. Israel and Damascus turned their armies south and laid siege to Jerusalem. Some have argued that they acted because King Ahaz of Judah had refused to join their anti-Assyrian coalition and they wanted to install an anti-Assyrian puppet. But this logic seems doubtful. Why would they risk a costly war against a near-equal neighbor, with Assyrian retribution looming on the horizon?
Whatever their true motives, the invasion, also know as the Syro-Ephraimite War, backfired. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-Pileser for help, sending treasure and swearing oaths of loyalty in the names of Yahweh and Assur, the patron gods of Judah and Assyria respectively. In a world where politics and religion were inseparable, such oaths carried the weight of heaven itself.
The Assyrians answered. Under the pretext of protecting a supplicant king, they redrew the map of the Southern Levant. Damascus was annihilated. Israel was gutted, its king Pekah overthrown and replaced by a compliant usurper named Hoshea. Judah survived, but at the price of submission. From Jerusalem’s walls, the people watched in awe and dread as the balance of power tilted beyond recognition.
The fall of Israel
Judah’s fears soon proved justified. After Tiglath-Pileser’s death, Israel’s new king Hoshea stopped paying tribute and sought support from Egypt. It was a fatal miscalculation. The new Assyrian king Shalmaneser V marched west, besieged Samaria, and when the city finally fell in 722 BCE, Israel disappeared from the political map. Its land was annexed and much of its population deported.
For Judah the consequences were immense. Now Assyria stood directly at its border. Refugees poured south, swelling Jerusalem’s population. What had once been a modest hilltop town of a thousand inhabitants ballooned into a city of twenty thousand. New neighborhoods rose west of the Temple Mount, turning Jerusalem into a true capital.
Judah was still small, but it had become more populous, more fortified, and far more exposed.
The reign of Hezekiah
Hezekiah ascended the throne around 715 BCE in this transformed world. He moved quickly. New walls encircled Jerusalem. A tunnel carved through bedrock brought water from the Gihon spring to the Pool of Siloam within the city itself, insurance against a siege.
He also pushed outward. With Israel and Damascus gone, Judah had free rein. Hezekiah seized towns in the Shephelah, which had belonged to the Philistines, and extended his control as far as Gaza. For the first time in history, Judah looked strong.
But it is important to see why he felt free to do so. This was not an open act of defiance. Hezekiah probably believed he was acting with the backing of Assyria, enlarging his power base under the empire’s watchful eye.
One god, one city, one people
At home, Hezekiah pursued a radical vision. Local shrines were dismantled, hilltop altars torn down, and the worship of other gods was outlawed. Yahweh alone was to be honored, and only in Jerusalem.
This was more than piety. By concentrating worship in one temple and one god, Hezekiah was welding his people into a single community. In a kingdom of Judah’s size, survival depended on unity.
The turning point
For as long as the Assyrian king Sargon II lived, Judah remained a loyal vassal. But when news broke in 705 BCE that Sargon had fallen in battle and his body was never recovered, everything changed. Many believed the empire itself was collapsing.
Hezekiah seized the moment. Tribute, he reasoned, had been owed to Sargon, not to his son Sennacherib. He stopped sending it. Instead, he turned toward Egypt, whose Kushite pharaoh Shabaka was extending his reach into the Levant and was far closer than Assyria. At the same time, he welcomed envoys from Babylon, sent by the ambitious Merodach-Baladan.
To ignore such potential allies, with Assyria apparently faltering, would have been folly. This was politics as usual and probably wasn’t done with the explicit intention to conspire against Assyria, although the Assyrians could always spin it that way.
The crisis in Ekron
Meanwhile, turmoil erupted in the Philistine city of Ekron. Its king, Padi, remained loyal to Assyria. But the people turned against him. Did Hezekiah coerce the city into surrendering their ruler? Or was there a popular uprising, with the citizens themselves appealing to Judah for protection? We cannot know. What is certain is that Padi ended up in Hezekiah’s custody.
This act was explosive. Padi was not just another king, he was a loyal Assyrian vassal. His imprisonment was a direct affront to Assyrian authority, more provocative than withholding tribute or flirting with Egypt and Babylon.
Why Hezekiah mattered
By now, Hezekiah had gone too far. For Sennacherib, Judah’s behavior was intolerable. Padi’s captivity provided the perfect pretext for war. It allowed the Assyrian king to frame Hezekiah not merely as a rebel, but as an aggressor against Assyria’s faithful allies.
And the stakes were larger than Judah. If Sennacherib could crush Hezekiah, every ruler in the Levant would take notice. The lesson would be clear: resist, and you will be destroyed.
The wrath of Assyria
And so, in 701 BCE, the Assyrian army began to march. The world’s most powerful empire was about to descend on one of its smallest kingdoms.
What followed – the sieges, the battles, the survival of Jerusalem – would become one of the most dramatic confrontations in the history of the ancient Near East. That story, however, belongs to the next blog.