Isaiah 20

Chap. 20. About the time of the Assyrian attack on Ashdod, the prophet is directed to walk naked and barefoot as a sign of the defeat and captivity of the Egyptians and Ethiopians who were at war with Assyria. The first verse fixes the date of this symbolical transaction; the second contains the Divine command and the record of its execution; the third and fourth explain the meaning of the symbol; the fifth and sixth predict its effect, or rather that of the event which it prefigured. A.

Isaiah, by a Divine direction, makes himself personally a sign to the people by laying off his usual sackcloth and sandals, and “walking naked and barefoot,” to indicate how the Egyptians and Ethiopians were to be borne away as captives before the king of Assyria. Cases of such symbolic acts are frequent in Ezekiel. This stands alone in Isaiah. This chapter introduces to our acquaintance a new king of Assyria, not mentioned by name elsewhere in the Scriptures—Sargon. He was one of the greatest of Assyrian monarchs. Tartan, his lieutenant-general, served in the same capacity under his son Sennacherib. (See 2 K. 18:17.) The moral bearing of this prophecy is obvious—viz., to show the Jews how vain were all their hopes of aid from Egypt against Assyria. When they saw Egyptians and Ethiopians led captive in a manner so disgraceful to the prowess of their nation, how could they expect help from that quarter to prevent the Assyrians from coming down upon themselves? H. C.

The inscriptions of an Assyrian king who reigned shortly after Tiglath-pileser illustrate several passages of Scripture, more especially Isa. 20:1-5; 2 K. 17:6; 18:10 and 20:12. The name of this monarch is read as Sargina or Sar-kina, and the time of his reign is fixed by the Assyrian canon to the years B.C. 722-705. As Isaiah flourished from about B.C. 750 to 698, Sargina must have been contemporary with him; and as there is no other name at all like Sargina in the Assyrian royal lists, it is impossible to doubt that the monarch in question is identical with the “Sargona king of Assyria,” here mentioned (verse 1) by Isaiah as a contemporary. That mention of an Assyrian king named Sargon had, until the Assyrian inscriptions were deciphered, received no confirmation at all from profane history. The occurrence of the name once, and once only, in Isaiah, and not at all in Kings or Chronicles, was commonly felt as a difficulty; and it was generally assumed that the monarch so called must have borne also one of the names assigned to Assyrian sovereigns in the Book of Kings—that he must, in fact, have been either Shalmaneser, or Sennacherib, or Esarhaddon. The inscriptions of Sargina, and other Assyrian documents, have now shown that he was a distinct monarch from any of them, and that his reign of seventeen years intervened between those of Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, the former of whom ceased to reign in B.C. 722, while the latter ascended the throne in B.C. 705. Sennacherib tells us in all his inscriptions that he was Sargina’s son; and Sargina is shown by the Assyrian canon to have succeeded Shalmaneser. The history which Isaiah attaches to the name of Sargon also exactly accords with the annals of Sargina.

Egypt was at this time closely connected with Ethiopia, which under Piankhi, Shabak, Shabatok, and Tirhakah, exercised the rights of a suzerain power, permitting, however, to certain native Egyptian princes a delegated sovereignty. Hence the close connection in which we find Ethiopia and Egypt placed in the present prophecy. In the year that the Assyrian Tartan, or commander-in-chief, took Ashdod, having been assigned the task by Sargon, king of Assyria, the successor of Shalmaneser IV, and father of Sennacherib—probably the year B.C. 714—Isaiah was directed to renew his warning against trust in these African powers. They had become the “glory” and the “expectation” of his countrymen, whither they were ready to “flee for help” (verses 5, 6). In order to impress the Jews with the folly of their vain hopes, Isaiah was instructed to announce a coming victory of Assyria over combined Egypt and Ethiopia, the result of which would be a great removal of captives, belonging to both nations, from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tigris, to the great “shame” of the conquered and the great glory of the conquerors. To arrest the attention of his nation, he was to take the garb of a prisoner himself, and to go barefoot and “naked”—i.e., clad in a single scant tunic, for three years, at the end of which time his prophecy would be accomplished. The prophecy seems to have had its first accomplishment when, in B.C. 711, Ashdod revolted from Assyria, under promise of support from the Ethiopian Pharaoh of the period, and was captured, with its garrison, which is likely to have consisted in part of Egyptians and Ethiopians. We are expressly told that the prisoners were on this occasion trans-

ported into Assyria, their place being supplied by captives taken in some of Sargon’s eastern wars. G. R.