46. § 8. Judea Under Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah

§ 8. Judea Under Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah With regard to Jotham’s reign there is little to be said. In it the conditions were in every respect the same as they had been under Uzziah. After having reigned for sixteen years, Jotham was succeeded by Ahaz, the worst among all the rulers of the kingdom of Judah. He combined the worship of Jehovah with idolatry, and was so fanatical in the latter, that he offered up one of his sons to Moloch. In all probability Ahaz perpetrated this horror when he was placed in the utmost extremity by the expedition of the Syrians and Israelites. Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, had already, in the latter days of Jotham, entered into an alliance against Judah; but it was only in the first years of the reign of Ahaz that they began to carry out their plan, which was destined to serve as a just judgment on this king. He thought he could only prevent the destruction of the whole kingdom by seeking help from the Assyrians, to whom accordingly he sent great presents. Isaiah, who directed him to the Lord as the sole helper, and warned him against alliance with the Assyrians, found no hearing. He had to repent his unbelief bitterly. He sustained a great defeat from Rezin and Pekah. Probably the retreat of these kings was caused by fear of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, who had promised to come to the assistance of Ahaz. and did really advance with his army a short time afterwards, occupying Damascus, the capital of Syria, and leading away captive a considerable number of the inhabitants of the kingdom of the ten tribes. But Ahaz was obliged to purchase this help at a great sacrifice. Even at that time he was heavily oppressed by the Assyrians, comp. 2 Chronicles 28:20; and under his successor Hezekiah the dependent relation of the country towards Assyria brought heavy misfortune upon it, for its bulwarks against Assyria, Syria, and Israel, had been broken down by the fault of Ahaz.

After a reign of sixteen years, Ahaz was succeeded by his pious son Hezekiah, who made it his first care to remove the abominations of idolatry and to re-establish a worship in accordance with the Mosaic law. His reformation is very fully described in the books of the Chronicles. The faith of the king at once brought salvation to him and his people. His victory over the Philistines is but a small thing in comparison with the help which the Lord vouchsafed him at the time when the nation was most grievously oppressed by the Assyrians, after the counsels of the ungodly nobles who had sought help from Egypt, unknown to the prophet Isaiah and contrary to his advice, had by the result been shown to be utterly worthless. The Egyptian cavalry, they had hoped, would offer effectual opposition to the dreaded Assyrian cavalry. The assumption that the overthrow of the Assyrians before Jerusalem was caused by a ravaging pestilential disease sent upon them by the Lord, probably owes its origin to the account of the dangerous illness which fell upon Hezekiah after the retreat of the Assyrians. A distorted tradition of the event is to be found in Herodot. ii. p. 141, drawn from the account of Egyptian priests. Here also the defeat of the Assyrian army appears as a most remarkable occurrence, and as having taken place in one night, owing to divine agency. The fact that it is attributed to the Egyptian idols and not to the true God forms no essential difference. This does not alter the fact itself, but only the judgment with respect to its causes. The transference of the event to Pelusium also owes its origin to Egyptian vanity. It is characteristic that it remained at the frontier town. When Egyptian tradition relates how field-mice ate the arrows, bow-strings, and shield-straps of the Assyrian forces in one night, we must undoubtedly understand this symbolically,—the mouse being an image of secret destruction. The king of Assyria now returned home in hasty flight. Here he was afterwards slain by two of his sons,—a statement which has received confirmation from a fragment of Berosus in the Armenian Chronicle of Eusebius, i. pp. 42, 43. Niebuhr says, p. 170: “For those who, notwithstanding the deadness of our day, still retain capacity for the vivid contemplation of the past by means of the simple and few words of the old narratives, there is nothing more striking than the Old Testament description, how Sennacherib, in all the arrogance of the conqueror, in the delusion of supernatural endowments, was dashed to the ground by a sudden stroke direct from the hand of God. It is a judgment such as that which took place in Moscow, but more sudden, and hence more fearful. And in fact there are few greater turning-points in history. From this time the supremacy of the Shemites draws ever nearer and nearer to its end.” The sign of the retrograde movement of the shadow, which was given to Hezekiah through Isaiah, caused so much excitement, that, according to 2 Chronicles 32:31, an embassy of Babylonians, who occupied themselves with astronomic and kindred investigations, was sent to the king in order to ascertain the true nature of the phenomenon. In addition to this and its other avowed object, the embassy was sent to congratulate the king on his recovery. Probably it had also another hidden motive. The Babylonian monarchy was not independent at that time; the king of Babylon was only a subordinate king appointed by the Assyrians. It is not improbable that the then king of Babylon, taking advantage of the great defeat of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem, had either already revolted from Assyria, or was about to do so, and the embassy was designed to invite the king to enter into an alliance against the common enemy, as well as to make observation of his resources. This conjecture, already previously made, is raised almost to certainty by the Armenian Chronicle of Eusebius. According to a fragment of Berosus to be found there, i. pp. 42, 43, the Assyrian vice-king Merodach-Baladan revolted at Babylon, but was slain after having reigned for six months; whereupon his successor returned to the old relation towards Assyria, until a later period, when the rebellion was renewed under more favourable circumstances, and Babylon took the place of Nineveh in the Asiatic supremacy. Niebuhr’s remarks on the mutual relation of Assyria and Babylon, p. 146, are very important for the understanding of many Old Testament passages, especially for the prophecies of Isaiah, in which Babylon, with its Chaldeans, appears as successor to Assyria in the dominion of the world: “Among the nations to whom the ruling people belonged, Assyria was by no means the most important or the oldest. It was the inhabitants of Shinar, the Babylonians, that were so. The Ninevites had gained ascendency over them by bravery and good fortune; and the older race, who possessed the centre of religion, the greatest wealth of the land, the origin of history, was obliged to submit to the younger. We see how galling the Babylonians felt this disgrace from their repeated attempts to revolt. It is very probable that the Babylonians under Nineveh’s supremacy may have had an independence which must, according to our political ideas, be called very great. It is not impossible that there was a kind of twin-relationship between the Ninevites and Babylonians, the Babylonians having a sort of participation in the government. This does not, however, exclude a state of oppression.” Supplementary to Isaiah’s account respecting an embassy from Babylon to Judea, we have Ezekiel 23:14-18, a passage of great historical importance. In a historical survey of the political fickleness and idolatry of Israel, he there states that attempts had been made by Judah to enter into an alliance with the Chaldeans at a time when the Assyrian power was still in existence, and therefore before the embassy of Merodach-Baladan, Judah taking the initiative in every respect. The pictures on the walls mentioned in this passage are doubtless traditionary representations of the Chaldeans as a proudly aspiring power, who might perhaps be able to afford help against the old oppressor Assyria. This embassy prepared a temptation for Hezekiah to which he succumbed. He was not so well able to bear fortune as misfortune. The proposition of the Babylonians flattered his vanity. He wished to show that he was worthy of such a proposal, that he was an ally not to be despised. Triumphantly he showed the ambassadors all his treasures; and where his treasure was, at that moment his heart was also. Instead of giving the honour to the Lord, he placed a carnal confidence in his human resources, which might so easily and quickly be taken from him by the same hand which had bestowed them. A union of his power with the Babylonian, he thought, would render both invincible to the Assyrians. The greater the mercies which had formerly been granted to him, the more he deserved the censure of Isaiah. His enthusiasm for the Babylonians must have cooled very considerably, when the prophet told him that all these treasures, the object of his vain joy, and even the royal family, would at a future time be carried away captive into that land, and by those in whom in his blindness he now placed a sinful confidence. That this remarkable prediction, with which the other prophecies of Isaiah respecting the Babylonish captivity are connected, and which is also announced by his contemporary Micah, had a natural foundation in the present, upon which it rested, appears from the fact of the revolt of the Babylonian vice-king, which, though fruitless at the moment, shows us a rising greatness in opposition to a decaying one. The answer of the king shows recognition of his sin, and a mind in harmony with the leadings of God. The subsequent life of Hezekiah, who reigned altogether twenty-nine years, fifteen after his illness, which occurred at the close of the fourteenth year, is passed over in silence in the historical books, doubtless because it passed quietly and without any very remarkable events. What most of all distinguishes the reign of Hezekiah is that it forms the culminating point of the activity of Isaiah, who, moved by the threatening aspect of the power of the world, drew the picture of the future Redeemer with a clearness and completeness previously unheard of, making it the centre of the spiritual life of the elect in Israel.