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The account of the construction of Hezekiah's water tunnel under Jerusalem by King Hezekiah shortly before the city was besieged by Sennacherib in about 701 BC is described in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:2-4, 30.
As for the other events of Hezekiah's reign, all his achievements and how he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?” 2 Kings 20:20
When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to make war on Jerusalem, he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. A large force of men assembled, and they blocked all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land. "Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?" they said.” 2 Chronicles 32:2-4.
It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David. He succeeded in everything he undertook.” 2 Chronicles 32:30. (Second Chronicles 32:30 also cites the flow of the water from east to west)
(Incidentally modern radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel in Jerusalem by a team led by Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that it was excavated about 700 BC and can thus be safely attributed to the Judean King Hezekiah)
The Assyrian Empire
The Assyrian Empire once located in what is now northern Iraq and southeast Turkey were not only monumental builders but was the most highly developed, specialized war-machine of its time. The empire had a fearsome reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty. As said by the British historian historian Paul Kriwacze
Assyria must surely have among the worst press notices of any state in history. Babylon may be a byname for corruption, decadence and sin but the Assyrians and their famous rulers, with terrifying names like Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, rate in the popular imagination just below Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan for cruelty, violence, and sheer murderous savagery. [Kriwaczek, Paul. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Thomas Dunne Books, 2010.As quoted in World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/assyria/]
Dr Simon Anglim Teaching Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London co-authored Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World in which he wrote, Assyria was...
... an aggressive, murderously vindictive regime supported by a magnificent and successful war machine. As with the German army of World War II, the Assyrian army was the most technologically and doctrinally advanced of its day and was a model for others for generations afterwards. The Assyrians were the first to make extensive use of iron weaponry [and] not only were iron weapons superior to bronze, but could be mass-produced, allowing the equipping of very large armies indeed. (Anglim, S. FIGHTING TECHNIQUES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 3000 BCE-500CE. Amber Books, 2013.)
The Assyrians and Israel
Because the northern kingdom of Israel "were untrue to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves with the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them". "the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, that is, the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile..." (1 Chronicles 5:25-26)
The Assyrians decimated the northern kingdom of Israel in around 700 BC.
The Assyrians and Judah
They then turned their attention towards Judah. 2 Kings 18:13 reads
Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria marched against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. (NASB)
However, fully aware of the reputation of this particularly fierce and bloodthirsty army who had captured the ten northern tribes of Israel and much of Judah Jerusalem itself was bracing itself for the inevitable offensive. In 701 BC the Assyrians were marching toward the city of David that was still standing undefeated
While much of his army was busy invading Lachish a city just a few miles away from Jerusalem, Sennacherib sent some men to Jerusalem with the following message from him - Hezekiah was misleading them and they would die of hunger and thirst - no god of any nation or kingdom was able to save his people from Sennacherib’s hand or from the hand of his fathers. Their God would not save them. etc. etc. (2 Chronicles 32:9 -19 NASB)
It was propaganda campaign but heeding Isaiah Hezekiah did not give in.
King Hezekiah
However, Hezekiah recognized the fact that Jerusalem was particularly vulnerable because the Gihon spring - its only permanent water supply that had sustained the city for thousands of years was located outside the city walls. A marauding enemy that controlled the Gihon spring could overwhelm the inhabitants very quickly for lack of water. (Hezekiah's concern about an impending military threat is evidenced by the remnants of a wall that expanded to the south and west, considerably beyond the boundaries of the City of David.
Recognizing the need to preserve the city's only source of fresh water, Hezekiah undertook an incredibly ambitious and very risky project - a tunnel, more than a third of a mile long was dug through solid rock under the city,
The goal was to channel the Gihon Spring waters from the Kidron Valley through the bedrock under the hillside of the City of David into a pool that lay within Jerusalem's walls where it would be out of the reach of the Assyrians and would keep a steady supply of water supplied to Jerusalem during Sennacherib’s anticipated siege.(2 Chronicles 32:30)
Even today the serpentine tunnel delivers water from the Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool - 500 metres away.
It was an amazing feat of engineering for the time especially since it was constructed without the use of intermediate shafts that would have provided air, light, food and water to the laboring workmen. The work was carried out in the depths of the earth with minimal lighting by oil lamps and little oxygen.
Even more amazing is the fact that the tunnel was simultaneously dug from both ends, the workers meeting in the middle.
Archaeological Corroboration
Scholars initially doubted the truth of the story as no traces of such a tunnel had ever been found. However, details of Hezekiah's defense strategy as outlined in the Bible have been confirmed by the 19th century discovery of a tunnel winding in an S-shape from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam - an important New Testament site. In John 9:1–12 a blind man was told by Jesus to go wash his eyes in this pool.
The builders of the tunnel left their own description of the work engraved in the rock wall near the tunnel outlet on the Pool of Siloam. The inscription (called the Siloam Inscription) was found in 1880 and is now in Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. It reads:
"... the tunneling through. And this is the account of the tunneling through. While [the workmen raised] the pick each toward his fellow and while there [remained] to be tunneled [through, there was heard] the voice of a man calling to his fellow, for there was a split in the rock on the right hand and on [the left hand]. And on the day of the tunneling through the workmen stuck, each in the direction of his fellow, pick against pick. And the water started flowing from the source to the pool, twelve hundred cubits. And the height of the rock above the head of the workmen was a hundred cubits.".
(The inscription stated that the tunnel was 1,200 cubits in length, which indicates that the ancient cubit was approximately 18 inches long).
The Taylor Prism
 In 1830 a British colonel called R. Taylor discovered a six-sided clay artifact called the Prism of Sennacherib (also known as the Taylor Prism) The prism contains six columns covered by over 500 lines of writing. On the six inscribed sides of this clay prism King Sennacherib recorded eight military campaigns undertaken against various peoples who refused to submit to Assyrian domination.
One of the cities mentioned was Lachish some thirty miles south west of Jerusalem however the Bible tells us very little about the siege and utter defeat of Lachish.
The Wall Relief in Nineveh
One of the most exceptional artifacts found among the ruins of Nineveh was a wall relief (covering almost an entire wall) depicting Sennacherib’s defeat of the city of Lachish. He apparently considered his victory at Lachish of great consequence. (Archaeological digs at the city of Lachish bear out the details of Sennacherib’s wall relief including enormous sloping siege ramp thrown up against the city walls south of the gate).
What is particularly interesting is that the Assyrians had a vast army and, according to the Taylor Prism, had conquered ‘46 outlying cities’, ‘walled forts’ and ‘countless small villages’. It even refers to Hezekiah being shut up in Jerusalem (“Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage”) but the silence is deafening as far as any conquest of Jerusalem is concerned.
This is particularly odd because defeat of the capitol Jerusalem would have commanded far more attention than the triumph over Lachish. All that is said on the Taylor Prism about Sennacherib’s military invasion of Judah is
As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth) ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving his city’s gate”. (See 2 Chronicles 32:1)
The Bible tells us why no boast was made about the conquest of Jerusalem. Very simply although the city was completely surrounded by the Assyrian empire, it was not defeated. This is borne out by the evidence of silence.
The Deliverance:
All of which begs the question.. How did the Israelites withstand the might of the powerful Assyrian army?
Isaiah delivered a message from the LORD, assuring Hezekiah that Sennacherib would not enter the city,
Therefore, this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: ‘He will not come to this city nor shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield, nor heap up an assault ramp against it. ‘By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he will not come to this city,’ declares the LORD. ‘For I will protect this city to save it for My own sake, and for My servant David’s sake.’” Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when the rest got up early in the morning, behold, all of the 185,000 were dead. (Isaiah 37:33-36 NASB)
The second book of Chronicles documents what happened.
But King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, prayed about this and called out to heaven for help. And the LORD sent an angel who destroyed every warrior, commander, and officer in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned in shame to his own land. And when he had entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons killed him there with the sword. So the LORD saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib the king of Assyria and from the hand of all others, and guided them on every side. (2 Chronicles 32:20-22 NASB)
Isaiah telling the king not to surrender, Hezekiah’s building of the tunnel that kept the city supplied with fresh water, and God’s slaying the Assyrian army outside the walls of Jerusalem enabled the survival of this nation"
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