The Lachish letters are a collection of 22 ostracones discovered during the excavations of James Starkey in 1935 and 1938 and the excavations of Yochanan Aharoni in 1966. Additional ostracones were discovered in Lachish during the various excavations conducted at the site, but this collection is identified as a group with a common denominator: documents sent to Yosh, the base commander The military in Lachish sometime between the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 6th century BC. A significant part of the documents are bills sent by Hosheyahu, the commander of a smaller military base located between Lachish and Azkah. The rest of the documents are lists of names, probably of soldiers who served In Lakish or other bases in the region.

Among the letters, No. 3 and No. 4 stand out in particular: Letter No. 3 includes the wording “And the book of Tobiah, the next king to Shalom son of Yade, by the prophet to say: “Keep! Send your servant to my Lord” which may allude to the event described in Jeremiah 26, 20-24, in which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, sent his men to capture the prophet Uriah son of Shemaiah from Kiryat Yearim and then executed him. Letter No. 4 includes the wording “and he knew that to the Lachish beacon we camped guarding all the signs that my Lord gave so that we would not see Azeka”. There are researchers who believed that this letter was an emergency message to the army sitting in Lachish informing that the senders of the letter could not see the beacons of Azkah, the nearest city – meaning it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Other researchers believed that it was a routine letter informing that the inhabitants of the smaller base were relying on Lachish’s beacons because Azka was lower and her beacons could not be seen.

Sources:

N. H. Turchiner, Documents from Lachish: Letters from the days of Jeremiah the prophet, Jerusalem 5th century.

.D. M. Pike, ‘Israelite Inscriptions from the Time of Jeremiah and Lehi’, BYU Faculty Publications 3697