The remains of Lachish an ancient Jewish city is  a two-day walk from Jerusalem. Recent discovering at the city have caused major problems for secularist because it is not going along with their preconceived ideas. Secularists basically don’t believe the Bible is true treating it as little more than a collection of myths.

It is taken awhile but most secularists finally acknowledged that King David and King Solomon did exist, which is a big step forward because for years they didn’t even believe that. But after repeated archaeological discoveries proved them wrong, they have finally allowed the facts to speak for themselves.

So they changed their tune slightly and decided the two existed, but were little more than small village warlords and not the leaders of a formidable kingdom portrayed in the Bible.

But a recent discovery at Lachish is putting that notion of a tribal war lord to route. According the Biblical record, Lachish was a major fortified city in Israel during the reign of King Rehoboam.

Rehoboam was Solomon’s son (grandson of King David) and was ultimately responsible for the civil war that divided Israel into two nations, Judah and Israel, because of high taxes.

Lachish was part of a significant defensive network set up by Rehoboam which revealed a significant nation and administration:

⁵ Rehoboam lived in Jerusalem, and he built cities for defense in Judah. ⁶ He built Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa, ⁷ Beth-zur, Soco, Adullam, ⁸ Gath, Mareshah, Ziph, ⁹ Adoraim, Lachish, Azekah, ¹⁰ Zorah, Aijalon, and Hebron, fortified cities that are in Judah and in Benjamin. ¹¹ He made the fortresses strong, and put commanders in them, and stores of food, oil, and wine. ¹² And he put shields and spears in all the cities and made them very strong. So he held Judah and Benjamin. (2 Chronicles 11:5-11 ESV)

Now they have been doing archaeological work at the Lachish Tel for a few years and because archaeologists found no outer walls, this was used to support the notion that the Biblical record was wrong.

However, Professor Yosef Garfinkel, from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who has seen the Bible repeatedly proven by archaeology believed if the Bible stated that Lachish was a fortified city, then there was a wall at the city.

So he began specifically looking for it.

It took three digs, but Garfinkel finally found the city’s large outer wall on the Northern end of the Tel and as important at the bottom of the wall, he found olive pits. These were probably part of meal of the builders constructing the wall. Because they were organic, this meant these pits could be carbon dated and testing showed that they were dated to 950 BC, exactly during the reign of Rehoboam and King Solomon.

The secularists who were using the lack of walls at Lachish as evidence David and Solomon were simple tribal warlords were on the defensive. But because they had already decided that this was true, some immediately countered that despite the Carbon dating evidence this wall was not constructed by Rehoboam.

But you can’t use the lack of walls as evidence of your theory and then refuse to acknowledge the walls when they suddenly show up.

But this is not the only archaeological evidence that confirms the Biblical record about Lachish. In 2 Kings 18:14, we read the story of how the Assyrian King Sennacherib was laying siege to Lachish during the reign of Hezekiah.

Why would you need to lay siege to a city if there was no wall?

And that siege was confirmed hundreds of miles away during archaeological work on the ancient nation of Assyria when they discovered a relief of King Sennacherib giving orders for his army to attack Lachish.

Sources:

• New Lachish find adds fuel to the debate: is the Bible accurate: Breaking Israel News
• Did the Kingdom of David exist? New wall found in Southern Israel re-ignites debate: Haaretz