Siege

Siege warfare runs from Joshua's circuit around Jericho to Antiochus' engines at Dora, and from Moses' law of approach to a city through the famine-cries on Samaria's wall and the prophets' oracles of mounds and battering rams against Jerusalem. The pattern is consistent: an attacking army encamps round about, builds forts and bulwarks, cuts the besieged off from food and water, and either breaks the walls or starves them out — while the defenders inside answer with engines, water-tunnels, sallies, and prayer.

The Law of Approach

Israel's law fixed the procedure before the first ladder went up. A peace offer comes first: "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. And it will be, if it answers peace to you, and opens to you, then it will be, that all the people who are found in it will become slave labor to you, and will serve you. And if it will not make peace with you, but will make war against you, then you will besiege it" (Deut 20:10-12). Once the siege began, the orchard outside the wall was protected: "When you will besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you will not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; for you may eat of them, and you will not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of you?" (Deut 20:19). The non-fruit trees were the engineering stockpile — "you will build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls" (Deut 20:20).

Mounds, Forts, and Battering Rams

The standard construction is the same in narrative and oracle. Joab at Abel of Beth-maacah "cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart; and all the people who were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down" (2Sa 20:15). Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem "encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about" (2Ki 25:1). Yahweh's oracle to Ariel uses the same vocabulary against the city itself: "I will encamp against you round about, and will lay siege against you with posted troops, and I will raise siege works against you" (Isa 29:3).

Ezekiel adds the rams. The prophet's miniature siege of a brick is told in operational order: "lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about" (Eze 4:2). The same kit is in the Babylonian king's hand at the divination scene: "In his right hand was the reading [for] Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounds, to build forts" (Eze 21:22). Against Tyre the rams shade into engines and axes: "And he will set his battering engines against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers" (Eze 26:9).

Defenders had engines too. Uzziah equipped Jerusalem with them: "And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and on the battlements, with which to shoot arrows and great stones" (2Ch 26:15). In the Maccabean wars the device-against-device pattern is explicit. Against Beth-zur the besiegers "made battering slings and engines" (1Ma 6:20); at the sanctuary the king "set up there battering slings, and engines and instruments to cast fire, and engines to cast stones and javelins, and pieces to shoot arrows, and slings" (1Ma 6:51); and the Jewish defenders "also made engines against their engines, and they fought for many days" (1Ma 6:52). Simon brought a single decisive engine to Gazara — "he made a siege engine, and set it against the city, and he struck one tower, and took it" — and the storming party "within the engine leaped into the city" (1Ma 13:43-44). At Dora, "King Antiochus moved his camp to Dora the second time, assaulting it continually, and making engines: and he shut up Tryphon, that he could not go out" (1Ma 15:25).

Distress Inside the Walls

Famine is the siege's slow weapon. At Samaria under Ben-hadad, scarcity reaches obscene prices: "there was a great famine in Samaria: and, look, they besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for 80 [shekels] of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five [shekels] of silver" (2Ki 6:25). The king of Israel walking on the wall hears the worst of it from a woman: "This woman said to me, Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son, and ate him: and I said to her on the next day, Give your son, that we may eat him; and she has hid her son" (2Ki 6:28-29). The same horror is named in Jeremiah's word over Jerusalem: "I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters; and they will eat every one the flesh of his fellow man, in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies, and those who seek their soul, will distress them" (Jer 19:9). Isaiah's earlier oracle uses the same hunger-image: "one will snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he will eat on the left hand, and they will not be satisfied: they will eat every man the flesh of his own arm" (Isa 9:20).

Rabshakeh's taunt under Sennacherib's standard turns the famine forward into a threat. He directs his words past Hezekiah's negotiators "to the men who sit on the wall, to eat their own feces, and to drink their own urine with you⁺" (Isa 36:12). At Babylon's last siege the breaking point comes by hunger, not by ram: "the city was besieged to the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the [fourth] month the famine was intense in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land" (2Ki 25:2-3); Jeremiah's parallel adds the breach — "Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled" (Jer 52:7).

Jericho

The book of Joshua sets the first siege under Israel's hand against the highest stakes and resolves it without a ram. The city is sealed: "Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the sons of Israel: none went out, and none came in" (Jos 6:1). The taking is by trumpet and shout: "the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city" (Jos 6:20). The campaign continues from there — "Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai" (Jos 7:2) — but the site itself becomes a marker of the conquest geography, "the Plain of the valley of Jericho the city of palm-trees" (Deut 34:3), the place "beyond the Jordan at Jericho" where Israel had encamped (Num 22:1).

Rabbah, Abel, Gibbethon, Tirzah

The early monarchy stacks short siege notices around the early kings. Joab takes Rabbah of Ammon under David: "at the return of the year, at the time when kings go out [to battle], that David sent Joab, and his slaves with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the sons of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah" (2Sa 11:1); the closing report is brief — "Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the sons of Ammon, and took the royal city" (2Sa 12:26). At Abel of Beth-maacah Joab again "cast up a mound against the city" and the people "battered the wall, to throw it down" (2Sa 20:15). In the northern kingdom the palace-coup wars circle siege camps around Philistine and Israelite towns: Nadab "and all Israel were laying siege to Gibbethon" when Baasha killed him there (1Ki 15:27); Omri "went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah" (1Ki 16:17).

Jerusalem

Jerusalem's sieges, listed in chronological order, follow this arc. The earliest is Judah's: "And the sons of Judah fought against Jerusalem, and took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire" (Judges 1:8). Then David, against the Jebusites, who taunt him from inside: "Except you take away the blind and the lame, you will not come in here; thinking, David can't come in here" (2Sa 5:6). After capture, "David dwelt in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward" (2Sa 5:9).

The Syro-Ephraimite war put two kings against Ahaz at the wall: "Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him" (2Ki 16:5).

Sennacherib's siege of the fortified cities of Judah pressed up to Jerusalem itself and broke at the wall. Hezekiah's defensive work was hydrological: "he took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were outside the city... saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?" (2Ch 32:3-4). Sennacherib's mockery from the camp speaks the siege language openly — "On what do you⁺ trust, that you⁺ remain in the siege in Jerusalem?" (2Ch 32:10). Isaiah's counter-oracle denies the siege the standard mound: "He will not come to this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither will he come before it with shield, nor cast up a mound against it" (Isa 37:33). The outcome is angelic and abrupt: "Yahweh sent an angel, who cut off all the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains, in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land" (2Ch 32:21). Sirach later sums it up — "In his days Sennacherib came up, And sent Rabshakeh, Who stretched forth his hand against Zion, And blasphemed God in his pride" (Sir 48:18) — and the prayer in 1 Maccabees recalls the precedent: "O Lord, when those who were sent by King Sennacherib blasphemed you, an angel went out, and slew of them a hundred and eighty-five thousand" (1Ma 7:41).

Babylon's sieges close the Jerusalem record. Daniel's reckoning is the earliest: "In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to Jerusalem, and besieged it" (Dan 1:1). Under Jehoiachin: "At that time the slaves of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city, while his slaves were besieging it" (2Ki 24:10-11). Under Zedekiah, Jeremiah reports the date directly: "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem, and besieged it" (Jer 39:1). The campaign closed eighteen months later with breach and famine (2Ki 25:1-3; Jer 52:4-7), and the king's flight ran east through Jericho until "the army of the Chaldeans pursued after them, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho" (Jer 39:5).

Samaria

Samaria fell to one siege and was nearly broken by another. Ben-hadad's first attempt is named twice — "Ben-hadad the king of Syria gathered all his host together; and there were thirty and two kings with him, and horses and chariots: and he went up and besieged Samaria, and fought against it" (1Ki 20:1) — and he came back: "Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria" (2Ki 6:24). The Assyrian end was three years long. Shalmaneser "came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it" (2Ki 18:9-10), and "Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years" (2Ki 17:5). The wider prophets had foretold the city's fall: "the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria" (Isa 8:4); "I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, [and] as places for planting vineyards; and I will pour down her stones into the valley, and I will uncover her foundations" (Mic 1:6).

The Maccabean Sieges

1 Maccabees compresses the full siege vocabulary into a single generation. Cities are "shut up" — Judas finds Israelites "shut up by him in towers" and "shut up in Barasa, and in Bosor, and in Alima, and in Casphor, and in Mageth, and in Carnaim" (1Ma 5:5; 5:26). Attackers come "carrying ladders and engines to take the fortress, and assault them" (1Ma 5:30). Cities are reduced by continuous assault: "the men of the army drew near, and he assaulted that city all the day, and all the night, and the city was delivered into his hands" (1Ma 5:50). Surprise is sometimes denied — "he came, and sought to take the city and to pillage it: but he was not able, because the design was known to those who were in the city" (1Ma 6:3) — and sometimes successful, where Judas calls "all the people, to besiege them. And they came together, and besieged them in the year one hundred and fifty, and they made battering slings and engines" (1Ma 6:19-20).

The provisioning problem is named openly. The royal commander at Beth-zur reports to his king: "We decay daily, and our provision of victuals is small, and the place that we lay siege to is strong, and it lies on us to take order for the affairs of the kingdom" (1Ma 6:57). Conversely, Beth-zur's defenders "fought many days, and they made engines: but they went forth and burned them with fire, and fought manfully" (1Ma 6:31). Jonathan in Jerusalem turned the device-and-device pattern back on the citadel: "Jonathan gathered together those who were in Judea, to take the castle that was in Jerusalem: and they made many engines of war against it" (1Ma 11:20). At Gaza Jonathan "besieged it, and burned all the suburbs round about, and took the spoils" (1Ma 11:61); Simon at Beth-zur "encamped against Beth-zur, and assaulted it many days, and shut them up" (1Ma 11:65); and the citadel of Jerusalem fell at last by hunger — "those who were in the citadel of Jerusalem were hindered from going out and coming into the country, and from buying and selling: and they were greatly hungered, and many of them perished through famine" (1Ma 13:49). The cycle ends with full encirclement at Dora: "he surrounded the city, and the ships drew near by sea: and they pressed the city by land and by sea, and allowed none to come in or to go out" (1Ma 15:14).