Biblical battle between an Angel and 185,000 soldiers in Jerusalem
Archaeologists have discovered an old military site that may support a Bible story about angels protecting Jerusalem.
About 2,700 years ago, according to legend, God sent an angel to fight the Assyrian soldiers attempting to conquer the Holy Land. The angel is said to have appeared among the enemy troops and defeated 185,000 of them in a single night. To date, there has been no archaeological evidence to confirm this extraordinary event or the battle itself.
However, archaeologist Stephen Compton now claims that advanced mapping methods have uncovered further evidence supporting the occurrence of this legendary battle.
The Assyrian Empire existed from 1365 to 609 BC, many centuries before the time of Christ. King Sennacherib of the Assyrian Empire led an invasion of Jerusalem to secure control over trade routes through the Syrian Desert to the Mediterranean Sea. Researchers had previously discovered carvings on the walls of King Sennacherib's palace, depicting his victory over Lachish, a city south of Jerusalem. These carvings provided a layout of the military base, which Compton compared with photographs from the 1910s. He identified a site matching the dimensions depicted on the palace walls, finding ruins with remains of a surrounding wall and pottery fragments. Through extensive archaeological investigation, Compton concluded that the site was abandoned shortly after Sennacherib's invasion and remained uninhabited for over 2,600 years.
This discovery opens up opportunities to locate additional military sites nearby, potentially revealing ancient cities devastated by the Assyrian Empire. In 2021, Compton announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he had pinpointed the exact locations of Sennacherib's military camps. He described each camp as circular and located just over a mile north of the old city walls. He also noted that historical maps referred to the camps as “Mudawwara,” an Arabic name.
The significance of these sites lies in their association with Sennacherib's strategic planning for the invasion, as reflected in the Arabic name Khirbet al Mudawwara, which means “the ruins of the encampment of the invading ruler.” Before Compton's discovery, only one other ancient military camp had been found in the region.
Three Bible stories—in Isaiah 37:36-38, 2 Kings 19:35, and 2 Chronicles 32:21—describe how Assyrian soldiers were killed the night before their planned attack on Jerusalem. In each story, the Israelite deity Yahweh sent an angel who moved through the camp while the soldiers slept, striking them down for threatening His followers. The biblical passage 2 Kings 19:35 states: “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and sixty-five thousand; and when they rose up early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” The term “Angel of the Lord,” written in Hebrew as “malak Yahweh,” means “messenger of the Lord.”
This angel was sent to protect Jerusalem after its ruler, Hezekiah, prayed to God for safety. According to another version of the story, a plague killed the Assyrian soldiers. A Greek tale states that rats invaded the camp during the night, chewing through the bowstrings and shield straps of the soldiers, leaving them defenseless.
