Hezekiah, or Ezekias, was the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.
The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands of Judea, the landlocked kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it.
Lachish was an ancient Canaanite and Israelite city in the Shephelah region of Israel, on the south bank of the Lakhish River, mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. The current tell (ruin) by that name, known as Tel Lachish or Tell ed-Duweir, has been identified with the biblical Lachish. Today, it is an Israeli national park operated and maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. It lies near the present-day moshav of Lakhish.
Ekron, in the Hellenistic period known as Accaron was a Philistine city, one of the five cities of the Philistine Pentapolis, located in present-day Israel.
A hechsher or hekhsher is a rabbinical product certification, qualifying items that conform to the requirements of Jewish religious law.
MMST is a word written in Paleo-Hebrew abjad script. It appears exclusively on LMLK seal inscriptions, seen in archaeological findings from the ancient Kingdom of Judah, whose meaning has been the subject of continual controversy.
Matthew 1:10 is the tenth verse of the first chapter in the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible. The verse is part of the section where the genealogy of Joseph, the father of Jesus, is listed.
Matthew 1:9 is the ninth verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible. The verse is part of the non-synoptic section where the genealogy of Joseph, the legal father of Jesus, is listed, or on non-Pauline interpretations the genealogy of Jesus. The purpose of the genealogy is to show descent from the line of kings, in particular David, as the Messiah was predicted to be the son of David, and descendant of Abraham.
David Ussishkin is an Israeli archaeologist and professor emeritus of archaeology.
Nahal Tut is an archaeological site excavated along the streambed of the same name in northern Israel's Menashe Heights from February to July 2005 by Amir Gorzalczany and Gerald Finkielsztejn in preparation for the northward extension of Highway 6. Trig Point N-568 is situated south of Nahal Melah highway about halfway between modern Bat Shlomo and Yokneam.
The siege of Lachish was the Neo-Assyrian Empire's siege and conquest of the town of Lachish in 701 BCE. The siege is documented in several sources including the Hebrew Bible, Assyrian documents and in the Lachish relief, a well-preserved series of reliefs which once decorated the Assyrian king Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh.
KhirbetQeiyafa, also known as Elah Fortress and in Hebrew as Horbat Qayafa, is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley and dated to the first half of the 10th century BCE. The ruins of the fortress were uncovered in 2007, near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, 30 km (20 mi) from Jerusalem. It covers nearly 2.3 ha and is encircled by a 700-meter-long (2,300 ft) city wall constructed of field stones, some weighing up to eight tons. Excavations at site continued in subsequent years. A number of archaeologists, mainly the two excavators, Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, have claimed that it might be one of two biblical cities, either Sha'arayim, whose name they interpret as "Two Gates", because of the two gates discovered on the site, or Neta'im; and that the large structure at the center is an administrative building dating to the reign of King David, where he might have lodged at some point. This is based on their conclusions that the site dates to the early Iron IIA, ca. 1025–975 BCE, a range which includes the biblical date for the biblical Kingdom of David. Others suggest it might represent either a North Israelite, Philistine, or Canaanite fortress, a claim rejected by the archaeological team that excavated the site. The team's conclusion that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a fortress of King David has been criticised by some scholars. Garfinkel (2017) changed the chronology of Khirbet Qeiyafa to ca. 1000–975 BCE.
Sennacherib's Annals are the annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. They are found inscribed on a number of artifacts, and the final versions were found in three clay prisms inscribed with the same text: the Taylor Prism is in the British Museum, the Oriental Institute Prism in the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Prism is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Ziph was a town in the Judean Mountains south-east of Hebron. Here David hid himself from Saul. The name of Zif is found about four miles south of Hebron, attached to a rounded hill of some 100 feet in height, which is called Tell Zif. Its name appears on a number of LMLK seals along with those of Hebron, Socoh and MMST. It has been identified as the Palestinian village of Zif, Hebron.
The Lachish reliefs are a set of Assyrian palace reliefs narrating the story of the Assyrian victory over the kingdom of Judah during the siege of Lachish in 701 BCE. Carved between 700 and 681 BCE, as a decoration of the South-West Palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh, the relief is today in the British Museum in London, and was included as item 21 in the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects by the museum's former director Neil MacGregor. The palace room, where the relief was discovered in 1845–1847, was fully covered with the "Lachish relief" and was 12 metres (39 ft) wide and 5.10 metres (16.7 ft) long. The Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal sequence was found in the same palace.
2 Kings 18 is the eighteenth chapter of the second part of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah by a Deuteronomic compiler in the seventh century BCE, with a supplement added in the sixth century BCE. This chapter records the events during the reign of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, a part of the section comprising 2 Kings 18:1 to 20:21, with a parallel version in Isaiah 36–39.
2 Kings 19 is the nineteenth chapter of the second part of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah by a Deuteronomic compiler in the seventh century BC, with a supplement added in the sixth century BC. This chapter records the invasion of Assyrian to Judah during the reign of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, a part of the section comprising 2 Kings 18:1 to 20:21, with a parallel version in Isaiah 36–39.
2 Chronicles 32 is the thirty-second chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles the Old Testament in the Christian Bible or of the second part of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by modern scholars as "the Chronicler", and had the final shape established in late fifth or fourth century BCE. This chapter belongs to the section focusing on the kingdom of Judah until its destruction by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II and the beginning of restoration under Cyrus the Great of Persia. The focus of this chapter is the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah.
Sennacherib's campaign in the Levant in 701 BCE was a military campaign undertaken by the Neo-Assyrian Empire to bring the region back under control following a rebellion against Assyrian rule in 705 BCE. After the death of Sargon II, Sennacherib’s father, a number of states in the Levant renounced their allegiance to Assyria. The rebellion involved several small states: Sidon and Ashkelon and Byblos, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, and Edom who then submitted to the payment of tribute to Assyria. Most notably, Hezekiah of Judah, encouraged by Egypt, joined the rebellion and was subsequently invaded by the Assyrians who captured most of the cities and towns in the region. Hezekiah was trapped in Jerusalem by an Assyrian army and the surrounding lands were given to Assyrian vassals in Ekron, Gaza, and Ashdod, however, the city was not taken and Hezekiah was allowed to remain on his throne as an Assyrian vassal after paying a large tribute. The events of the campaign in Judah are famously related in the Bible which culminate in an “angel of the Lord” striking down 185,000 Assyrians outside the gates of Jerusalem prompting Sennacherib’s return to Nineveh.
