60. Judah from B.C. 809 to 696

Judah from B.C. 809 to 696

Chapter VI

Timeline View:

The prophets Isaiah, Nahum, Micah, and Habakkuk, flourish after Uzziah.

1. In the kingdom of Judah, Uzziah, otherwise called Azariah, was but five years old when his father was slain. He was sixteen before he was formally called to the throne and it is disputed by chronologers, whether we should count the fifty-two years of his reign from the beginning or from the end of the eleven intervening years. In the first half of his reign, this king behaved well, and was mindful of his true place as viceroy of the Divine King. He accordingly prospered in all his undertaking’s. His arms were successful against the Philistines, the Arabians, and the Ammonites. He restored and fortified the walls of Jerusalem, and planted on them engines of defence, for discharging arrows and great stones; he organized the military force of the nation into a kind of militia, composed of 307,500 men, under the command of 2600 chiefs, and divided into bands liable to be called out in rotation; for these he provided vast stores of all kinds of weapons and armour—spears, shields, helmets, breastplates, bows, and slings.

2. Nor were the arts of peace neglected by king Uzziah: he loved and fostered agriculture; and he also dug wells, and constructed towers in the desert, for the use of the flocks. At length; when he had consolidated and extended his power, and developed the internal resources of his country, Uzziah fell. His prosperity engendered the pride which became his ruin. In the twenty-fourth year of his reign, incited probably by the example of the neighboring kings, who united the regal and pontifical functions, Uzziah, unmindful of the fate of Dathan and Abiram, dared to attempt the exercise of one of the principle functions of the priests, by entering the holy place to burn incense at the golden altar. But, in the very act, he was smitten with leprosy, and was thrust forth by the priests. He continued a leper all the rest of his life, and lived apart as such—the public functions of the government being administered by his son Jotham, as soon as he became of sufficient age. His whole reign was fifty-two years, being, with the sole exception of Manasseh’s, the longest in the Hebrew annals. In this reign Isaiah began to prophesy in Judah.

Castle

3. Jotham was a meritorious prince, and prospered accordingly. He repelled an invasion of the Ammonites, and laid them under a yearly tribute; and he built various cities, castles, and towers, in different harts of his dominions. Besides the time that he acted as regent during the leprosy of his father, Jotham reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem.

4. Ahaz, then twenty years old, ascended the throne. He proved an unworthy son of a good father, being equally forgetful of his allegiance to the Lord as his King, and of his reverence to him as his God. He apostatized not only to the idolatries of the surrounding heathen, but to that of the golden calves. He erected images and altars to various idols in different parts of Jerusalem, and adopted all the horrid rites by which their worship was celebrated. So intense was the passion of this prince for idolatry, that it rather resembled the insatiate craving of a drunkard than the reverence of a worshipper. The Syrian idolatry appears to have been that which he most admired; for he introduced the idols and altars of that country, and altered the temple and its services after the model of those of Damascus. At length he shut up the sacred building altogether. To punish him for these crimes, his kingly state was brought very low. In the early part of his reign, a formidable confederacy was formed against him by Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, with the fixed intention of dethroning the house of David, and of bestowing the crown on some person whom we only know as “Tabeal’s son.” In this war, Rezin stripped Judah of its external territories, and carried away great numbers of Jews as captives to Damascus. Pekah was equally successful: he slew in one day 120,000 men of Judah, and carried away 200,000 as captives to Samaria. But he was induced to treat them well, and to send them back again, at the instance of the prophet Obed and other persons of influence, who refused to hold their brethren in bondage, and were in this supported by public feeling in Israel. This shows that, after all, the separation had riot produced an exasperated state of feeling between the nations. After this, the allies besieged Jerusalem, but were unable to take it; while the general distress was aggravated by the incursions of the Edomites on the south and the Philistines on the west, who took several cities and villages in the low country, and settled in them.

5. In this extremity, Ahaz sought the assistance of Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, to whom he sent an embassy, declaring himself his vassal, and bearing a subsidy of all the sacred and the royal treasures. Glad of a pretext for interference, Tiglath-pileser readily promised the assistance thus required. Accordingly, he defeated and slew tile king of Syria, and took possession of his dominions; he also made himself master of all the Hebrew possessions beyond Jordan, and sent away captive, into Assyria and Media, the three tribes—Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh.[*] Ahaz visited the Assyrian king at Damascus, to congratulate him, and to render him homage. He found, however, that although temporarily relieved from an imminent danger, he had little cause to rejoice in the result. He had become the tributary of a foreign power; and instead of a rival, he had now a powerful and overbearing master for his neighbor. Little is known of his future reign, except that be persisted in his old courses, and lived, it would seem, under the odium of the whole nation for having been the apparent cause of the captivity into which three tribes of Israel had fallen. When, therefore, he died, after an inglorious and disastrous reign of sixteen years, he was refused a place in the royal sepulchers, although a grave in Jerusalem was allowed him. In this reign Micah delivered the prophesy contained in the book which bears his name.

[*] There was only half of Manasseh beyond Jordan; but the king of Assyria completed the tribe for captivity, by adding the other half which was west of the Jordan.

6. Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, was twenty-five years old when he ascended the throne. In all respects his character was the very reverse of that of his father, entitling him to rank as one of the very best kings of David’s line; indeed, the Scriptures seems to give him the preference to them all (2Ki 18:5). The characteristics of a good king under the Hebrew system of government have been so often mentioned, that it is scarcely needful to repeat that they consisted in a faithful obedience to the revealed will of God—first, in his general character, as Creator and sole Lord of the Universe; secondly, in his more particular character, as the God who had made Israel his chosen people, and to whom, therefore, he was a national God, as distinguished from the national gods of the heathen around; and, thirdly, in the still more intimate character of the actual King and political Head of the nation, and who, as being incapable of error, exacted, and was entitled to, the most unlimited and confiding obedience. In all these characters Hezekiah understood him; and hence he also understood his own true position it the state. The first act of his reign was to open and purify the temple, and to extirpate all the idolatries which his father had sanctioned or introduced. He even went so far as to destroy the brazen serpent of Moses, which had been preserved as a memorial, the people having manifested a disposition to burn incense to it as a holy relic.

7. This conduct of Hezekiah was rewarded by prosperity in all his undertakings. He subdued the Philistines; and at length ventured to withhold the yearly tribute which his father had agreed to pay to the Assyrians. Shalmaneser, the son and successor of Tiglath-pileser, was too much occupied in other quarters to pay much attention to Hezekiah; but in the sixth year of his reign, he carried away into captivity the flower of the seven tribes of Israel on the west side of Jordan, thus completing the ruin of the ten tribes. This event appears to have made a salutary impression on Judah, and probably afforded much aid to Hezekiah in his reformations. These were more radical than any former kings, however well-disposed, had thought necessary; for Hezekiah not only abolished idolatry and restored the worship of God, but he revived the national observances, which had been altogether neglected in former reigns—such as the passover, which he celebrated at Jerusalem with greater solemnity than had been observed since the time of Solomon. Not only his own subjects, but the desolate remnants of the ten tribes were invited to this great feast; many of them came, but others mocked and refused.

8. At length the Assyrians, having subdued the small nations between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, found leisure to call Hezekiah to account for his arrears of tribute. Shalmaneser was dead, and had been succeeded by his son Sennacherib, who invaded Judah with a mighty host. Hezekiah, disappointed of assistance which he had expected from Egypt, did not consider it safe to attempt to oppose him; but made his intercessions, and offered to furnish any tribute which the Assyrian might think proper to impose. He accordingly paid the heavy ransom of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, although this obliged him not only to exhaust the sacred and the royal treasures, but to strip off the gold which covered the doors and pillars of the temple. Sennacherib took the money, and went towards Egypt, which he intended next to invade; but on the way he changed his mind, and resolved not to leave unbroken in his rear a power so well inclined to ally itself with the Egyptians. He, therefore, took the strong towns of the south; and, while he laid siege to Libnah and Lachish, sent his general Rabshakeh against Jerusalem. The language which this man used in summoning Hezekiah to surrender, was in the highest degree offensive and blasphemous. Hezekiah, with humble confidence, referred the matter to God, and was answered by the promise of deliverance. Accordingly, a rumour reached Sennacherib that Tirhakah the Ethiopian, king of Upper Egypt, was marching with an immense army to cut off his retreat; so that he deemed it prudent to abandon his operations, but not without sending a boastful and threatening letter to Hezekiah respecting his future intentions. But the very night after, the Assyrian host of 180,000 were destroyed by “a blast,” which may be understood to have been the simoom, or hot pestilential wind which sometimes blows in those regions. The baffled tyrant hastened home to Nineveh, where he behaved with great severity to the captive Israelites. But his career was short; for, seven weeks after his return, he was slain by his own sons while worshipping in the temple of Nisroc, the great idol of the Assyrians. The parricides fled, and left the throne open to their younger brother Esarhaddon.

Sun-Dial

9. The same year Hezekiah was taken ill, apparently with the plane; and was warned by the prophet Isaiah to prepare for death. But he so fervently and devoutly prayed for his recovery, that the prophet was sent back with a second message, promising a prolongation of his life for fifteen years. To assure him that his recovery was indeed miraculous, and not “a chance,” and to give him confidence in the promise, a token was given in the going backward of the sun’s shadow ten degrees, as measured by the sun-dial of Ahaz, which was probably something of the same kind as the architectural dial at Delhi, which is also used as an observatory.

10. The great loss which the Assyrians had sustained in Palestine, enabled the governor of Babylon, Merodach-baladan, to declare himself independent; and he naturally desired to form amicable relations with the monarch in whose dominions the Assyrian power had been so greatly disabled. To congratulate Hezekiah on his recovery, and to inquire concerning the attendant miracle, were, however, the ostensible objects of the embassy which the Babylonians sent to Jerusalem. Highly flattered by such an embassy from so distant a quarter, Hezekiah forgat his usual discretion, and to convince the ambassadors of his importance, and that be was a desirable ally, he made to them a very ostentatious display of his treasures and armories. Because he had indulged in this vainglory, instead of referring all his power and greatness to that Divine King who had cared for and protected him and his people, the Lord was displeased; and the prophet Isaiah was commissioned to warn him, and to humble him by the intimation that the day was coming when all the treasure which he and his fathers had laid up should be spoil for the Babylonians, and when his descendants should be servants in the palace of the king of Babylon. The remainder of his own reign, however, which lasted for twenty-nine years, was peaceful and prosperous.

11. Sacred Writers—The prophet Joel is generally supposed to have delivered his predictions during the reign of Uzziah; but his whole history is perfectly unknown, and it is even uncertain whether he belonged to the kingdom of Judah or that of Israel. In nervous and animated language, he endeavours to awaken the people to repentance, by announcing the devastation of their fields, and consequent famine, as the punishment of their sins. In the reign of Hezekiah, several eminent prophets flourished, some of whom, however, had begun to prophesy before his reign. At the head of them, and indeed of all the prophets, stands Isaiah. We know little of him, except that be was the son of one Amoz, and that he discharged the prophetic office in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, before the last of whom be probably died; although there is Jewish tradition which alleges that he survived to the time of Manasseh, by whose order be was sawn asunder. His prophetic ministry, therefore, extends over the whole period which also embraced the prophets Amos, Hoshea, Joel, and Micah. His extensive predictions embrace every matter in which the Jews or their neighbors were interested. They are delivered with marvellous sublimity of thought and language, especially in those portions in which he foretells the advent of the Messiah, and the circumstances attending his birth, his ministry, his death, and the ultimate glory of his kingdom. Micah prophesied in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He was a native of Morasthi, a small town in the southern part of Judah; and this is all we know of him. His prophesied relate to both the kingdoms, which he invites to repentance by threatenings and promises. He also spoke of the Messiah, and named Bethlehem as the place of his birth. Nahum appears to have prophesied in the time of Hezekiah, and not long after the subversion of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmanezer. The principal object of his prophesy is to declared the future downfall of that great Assyrian power by which Israel had lately been desolated, and to which Judah was then tributary.

Tower of Babel.