[Illustration: 028b.jpg Esneh--Principal Abyssinian Trading Village] We may here pause to inquire how Hezekiah was occupied while his fate was being decided on the field of Altaku. He was fortifying Jerusalem, and storing within it munitions of War, and enrolling Jewish soldiers and mercenary troops from the Arab tribes of the desert. He had suddenly become aware that large portions of the wall of the city of David had crumbled away, and he set about demolishing the neighbouring houses to obtain materials for repairing these breaches: he hastily strengthened the weak points in his fortifications, stopped up the springs which flowed into the Gibon, and cut off the brook itself, constructing a reservoir between the inner and outer city walls to store up the waters of the ancient pool. These alterations* rendered the city, which from its natural position was well defended, so impregnable that Sennacherib decided not to attack it until the rest of the kingdom had been subjugated: with this object in view he pitched his camp before Lachish, whence he could keep a watch over the main routes from Egypt where they crossed the frontier, and then scattered his forces over the land of Judah, delivering it up to pillage in a systematic manner. He took forty-six walled towns, and numberless strongholds and villages, demolishing the walls and leading into captivity 200,150 persons of all ages and conditions, together with their household goods, their horses, asses, mules, camels, oxen, and sheep;** it was a war as disastrous in its effects as that which terminated in the fall of Samaria, or which led to the final captivity in Babylon.*** * Isa. xxii. 8-11. * An allusion to the sojourn of Sennacherib near Lachish is found in 2 Kings xviii. 14-17; xix. 8, and in Isa. xxxvi. 2; xxxvii. 8 *** It seems that the Jewish historian Demetrios considered the captivities under Nebuchadrezzar and Sennacherib to be on the same footing. The work of destruction accomplished, the Rabshakeh brought up all his forces and threw up a complete circle of earthworks round Jerusalem: Hezekiah found himself shut up in his capital "like a bird in a cage." The inhabitants soon became accustomed to this isolated life, but Isaiah was indignant at seeing them indifferent to their calamities, and inveighed against them with angry eloquence: "What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? O thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town; thy slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle. All thy rulers fled away together, they are made prisoners without drawing the bow; they are come hither from afar for safety, and all that meet together here shall be taken together."* * [The R.V. gives this passage as follows: "They were bound by the archers: all that were found of thee were bound together, they fled afar off."--TR.]