Siege of Lachish
Assyrian relief depicting the siege of Lachish
When the city was next rebuilt (Level II), probably in Josiah’s day, it was much smaller and less fortified. It held out against the Babylonians longer than most (Jer. 34:7) but eventually fell. The Lachish letters are military communications found in the gatehouse, describing the system of beacons used to communicate between the defensive hill forts as the enemy closed in.
After the exile. After the Babylonians destroyed and burned the city, archaeological evidence suggests it lay abandoned for some time. Nehemiah reports that it was resettled after the return from exile (Neh. 11:30). Archaeological remains from the Persian and Hellenistic periods indicate that this rebuilding (Level I) was in use until the second century BC.
Longman, Tremper, III, Peter Enns, and Mark Strauss, eds. The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary 2013 : 1024. Print.
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