Thirteen miles to the southwest is the site of Lachish, called by the Arabs Um Lâkis. The intervening country is rocky and undulating, and occasionally dotted with deserted villages. The hill on which the city stood is low and flat, and is strewn with fragments of marble columns and blocks of hewn stones. Lachish was among the cities of Judah captured by Joshua,[389] but derives its chief significance from having been fortified by Rehoboam,[390] and afterward besieged by Sennacherib. It was while the latter was encamped here that King Hezekiah sent unto him, saying, “I have offended; return from me; that which thou puttest on me I will bear.” To meet the demand for 300 talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, Hezekiah emptied his own treasure and that of the house of the Lord; and, to supply a deficiency that remained, “he cut off the gold from the doors and pillars of the Temple.” But, not satisfied with a sum so large, Sennacherib sent three of his generals to Jerusalem to demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of the city. One of the three was Rabshakeh, whose blasphemous speech offended Heaven, as his proud and defiant words had overwhelmed the king with consternation and fear. That night God heard Hezekiah’s prayer, and vindicated his own insulted majesty. From his throne “the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand.” The next morning Sennacherib departed for Nineveh, where he was assassinated by two of his sons while worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, his god. In one of his noblest odes, Byron has described the destruction of the Assyrian host: “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. “Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay wither’d and strown. “For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d; And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still. “And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, And through it there roll’d not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beaten surf. “And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.