The invasion
Around 701 BC, the most powerful army in the world marched into Judah. The Bible records it plainly:
"In the fourteenth year of king Ezechias, Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, came up against the fenced cities of Juda, and took them."
4 Kings (2 Kings) 18:13
Ezechias is the Douay-Rheims spelling of Hezekiah. He sent word to Sennacherib, who was at the city of Lachish, and paid him "three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold" (4 Kings 18:14).
God's promise
But Jerusalem itself, God said, would not fall:
"He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow into it, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a trench about it. By the way that he came he shall return: and into this city he shall not come, saith the Lord."
4 Kings (2 Kings) 19:32 to 33
That night, the Bible says, an angel of the Lord struck the Assyrian camp, and Sennacherib went home to Nineveh (4 Kings 19:35 to 36).
His side of the story
Sennacherib had his campaigns carved in tiny wedge-shaped writing on six-sided clay prisms. Three near-complete copies survive. One is in the British Museum, one in Chicago, and one in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. They date from 691 and 689 BC, about ten years after the invasion.
Here is what the king of Assyria says:
"As for the king of Judah, Hezekiah, who had not submitted to my authority, I besieged and captured forty-six of his fortified cities, along with many smaller towns... As for Hezekiah, I shut him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem."
Hezekiah, by name. The fortified cities, taken. Hezekiah trapped in Jerusalem. And then a list of the tribute Hezekiah sent him.
Lachish, on his palace walls
The Bible says Sennacherib was at Lachish. He was so proud of taking that city that he had the whole siege carved in stone across the walls of his palace in Nineveh: the battering rams, the archers, the captives being led away. Those carvings are now in the British Museum.
What he leaves out
Assyrian kings boasted of every victory. They recorded cities burned, kings captured and peoples carried off.
Sennacherib's record doesn't say he captured Jerusalem. It doesn't say he entered it, or that Hezekiah was taken prisoner. The best he can say is that he shut him up inside it, like a bird in a cage.
The Bible says "into this city he shall not come." The enemy's own record agrees. He trapped the king inside and then went home.
How it ended
The Bible gives one more detail:
"And as he was worshipping in the temple of Nesroch, his god, Adramelech and Sarasar, his sons, slew him with the sword... and Asarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead."
4 Kings (2 Kings) 19:37
Babylonian records confirm it. In 681 BC, Sennacherib was murdered by his own son, and Esarhaddon took the throne.
Why this is a big deal
This is the enemy's version, written by the man who led the attack, carved in clay and buried for over 2,000 years. It names Hezekiah. It confirms the invasion, the captured cities, the siege of Lachish and the tribute.
And on the one point God promised, that Sennacherib would not take Jerusalem, his own record is silent.