Hezekiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib

Hezekiah came to the throne as the northern kingdom was dying. He purged the land — removed the high places, broke the pillars, and smashed the copper serpent Moses had made, because people had begun to burn incense to it. And he did something greater: he turned Judah into a nation of students. The Sages say that in his days you could not find a child who did not know the laws of purity.

In his fourteenth year Sennacherib of Assyria took forty-six fortified towns of Judah and came up to Jerusalem. His officer Rabshakeh stood at the wall and deliberately spoke Hebrew so the defenders would hear: do not trust Hezekiah, do not trust your God — where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Hezekiah tore his clothes, went to the Temple and spread Sennacherib's letter before God. Isaiah sent the answer: "He shall not come into this city nor shoot an arrow there… by the way he came, he shall return."

That night an angel struck 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. "They rose early in the morning, and behold, they were all dead corpses." Sennacherib withdrew to Nineveh and was killed there by his own sons. Jerusalem lived another hundred and twenty-five years.