Altaku capitulated, an example followed by the neighbouring fortress of Timnath, and subsequently by Ekron itself, all three being made to feel Sennacherib’s vengeance.  “The nobles and chiefs who had offended, I slew,” he remarks, “and set up their corpses on stakes in a circle round the city; those of the inhabitants who had offended and committed crimes, I took them prisoners, and for the rest who had neither offended nor transgressed, I pardoned them.”

[Illustration:  028.jpg THE PASS OF LEGNIA, IN LEBANON]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph given in Lortet.

[Illustration:  028b.jpg Esneh—­Principal Abyssinian Trading Village]

We may here pause to inquire how Hezekiah was occupied while his fate was being decided on the field of Altaku.  He was fortifying Jerusalem, and storing within it munitions of War, and enrolling Jewish soldiers and mercenary troops from the Arab tribes of the desert.  He had suddenly become aware that large portions of the wall of the city of David had crumbled away, and he set about demolishing the neighbouring houses to obtain materials for repairing these breaches:  he hastily strengthened the weak points in his fortifications, stopped up the springs which flowed into the Gibon, and cut off the brook itself, constructing a reservoir between the inner and outer city walls to store up the waters of the ancient pool.  These alterations* rendered the city, which from its natural position was well defended, so impregnable that Sennacherib decided not to attack it until the rest of the kingdom had been subjugated:  with this object in view he pitched his camp before Lachish, whence he could keep a watch over the main routes from Egypt where they crossed the frontier, and then scattered his forces over the land of Judah, delivering it up to pillage in a systematic manner.  He took forty-six walled towns, and numberless strongholds and villages, demolishing the walls and leading into captivity 200,150 persons of all ages and conditions, together with their household goods, their horses, asses, mules, camels, oxen, and sheep;** it was a war as disastrous in its effects as that which terminated in the fall of Samaria, or which led to the final captivity in Babylon.***

     * Isa. xxii. 8-11.

     * An allusion to the sojourn of Sennacherib near Lachish is
     found in 2 Kings xviii. 14-17; xix. 8, and in Isa. xxxvi. 2;
     xxxvii. 8

     *** It seems that the Jewish historian Demetrios considered
     the captivities under Nebuchadrezzar and Sennacherib to be
     on the same footing.