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travel to Nineveh (Jonah 1:1-3). When he eventually arrived in the Assyrian capital, Jonah preached
God’s impending judgment. After hearing Jonah’s message, the king of Assyria and the entire city of
Nineveh repented, and God turned His anger away for a time (Jonah 3:10). The grace of God was
extended even to the Assyrians.
The military rulers, as in many other nations, could be a brutal breed. They ruled their empire and
subdued nations with absolute terror. Here is a quote from an ancient writing from an Assyrian military
officer:
“I destroyed, I demolished, I burned. I took their warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes
before their cities. I flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the
piles [of dead corpses]. Many of the captives I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some I cut
off their hands to the write; from others I cut off their noses, ears, and fingers; I put out the eyes of
many of the soldiers."

I slew two hundred and sixty fighting men; I cut off their heads and made pyramids thereof. I slew
one of every two. I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chief men of the rebels,
and I covered the wall with their skins. Some of them were enclosed alive in the bricks of the wall,
some of them were crucified on stakes along the wall; I caused a great multitude of them to be
flayed in my presence, and I covered the wall with their skins. I gathered together the heads in the
form of crowns and their pierced bodies in the form of garlands." 101

God used the pagan Assyrians to bring a horrendous judgment to Northern Israel. Many of the Minor
Prophets foretold of the impending doom to come to Israel because they refused to submit their lives to
Yahweh and willfully defied His commandments. They also predicted judgment that would come to
Assyria because of their wickedness.

The prophet Nahum predicted Nineveh's destruction by the Babylonians and Medes, which came in 612
BC, and the famous city was never rebuilt. In the New Testament, Jesus commended the inhabitants of
Nineveh for repenting at the preaching of Jonah while condemning the Jewish leaders for resisting His
own message.

In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign (king in Judah), in 701 BC, the Assyrians under Sennacherib
took 46 of Judah’s fortified cities (Isaiah 36:1). Then they laid siege to Jerusalem—the Assyrian king
engraved upon his stele that he had the king of Judah caught like a caged bird in his own country.

However, even though Sennacherib’s army occupied Judah up to the very doorstep of Jerusalem, and
even though Sennacherib’s emissary Rabshakeh boasted against God and Hezekiah (Isaiah 36:4-21),
Assyria was rebuffed. Hezekiah prayed, and God promised that the Assyrians would never set foot inside
the city (Isaiah 37:33). God slew 185,000 Assyrian forces in one night (Isaiah 37:36), and Sennacherib
returned to Nineveh, where he was slain by his own sons as he worshiped his god Nisroch (Isaiah 37:38).

In 612 BC, Nineveh was besieged by an alliance of the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians, and the city
was so completely destroyed that even its location was forgotten until British archaeologist Sir Austen

101 (Time Frame 1500-600 BC by Time-Life Books) Assyrian War Bulletin (1000 BCE)
(http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cfford/342worldhistoryearly.html)

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