Albert Barnes Commentary 2 Kings 18:13

"Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them." — 2 Kings 18:13 (ASV)

In the fourteenth year - This note of time, which places the invasion of Sennacherib only eight years after the capture of Samaria, is hopelessly at variance with the Assyrian dates for the two events. The first event falls in the first year of Sargon, and the second in the fourth year of Sennacherib, twenty-one years later. We must therefore choose between completely rejecting the Assyrian chronological data and amending the present passage. Of the proposed amendments, the simplest is to remove the note of time altogether, viewing it as having crept in from the margin.

Sennacherib - This is the Greek form of the name Sin-akh-irib from the inscriptions. He was the son of Sargon and his immediate successor to the monarchy. The death of Sargon (705 B.C.) was followed by a number of revolts. Hezekiah also rebelled, invaded Philistia, and helped the national party in that country throw off the Assyrian yoke.

From Sennacherib’s inscriptions, we learn that after subduing Phoenicia, recovering Ashkelon, and defeating an army of Egyptians and Ethiopians at Ekron, he marched against Jerusalem.

The fenced cities - Sennacherib reckons the number he took at “forty-six.” On his way to the holy city, he seems to have captured a vast number of small towns and villages, carrying off 200,000 of their inhabitants . From then on, the ground his main army occupied outside the modern Damascus gate was known to the Jews as “the camp of the Assyrians.”

Further details about the siege may be gathered from Isaiah 22 and 2 Chronicles 32. After a while, Hezekiah resolved to submit. As recorded in 2 Kings 18:14, Sennacherib had left his army to continue the siege and had gone in person to Lachish. The Jewish monarch sent his embassy to that town.