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B.C. 735-715
2Ki_16:1-20
"Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the House was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king-
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he draw
God’s altar to disparage arid displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished."
- "Paradise Lost, " 1:467-476
ACCORDING to our authorities, Ahaz ("Possessor") began his reign of sixteen years at the age of twenty. Of the exactitude of these references we cannot be certain, because they also state {2Ki_18:2} that Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and this reduces us to the absurdity of supposing that Hezekiah was born when his father was only eleven years old. We might infer from Isa_3:4 that Ahaz was not so old as twenty when he succeeded Jotham; for there-in a terrible prophecy which can only refer to the beginning of this reign-we read, "And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them"; or, as it should be perhaps rendered, "And with childishness, or willfulness, shall they rule over them."
Whatever may have been the king’s age, surely never king succeeded to a more distracted kingdom, or reigned over a more terrified people! If he could have had any choice in the matter, he might well have declined the fearful burden. Describing the state of things, the great prophet Isaiah, who now began his career, exclaims, -
"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the elder; the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counselor, and the cunning charmer, and the skilful enchanter. And the people shall be oppressed every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the elder, and the base against the honorable. Then a man shall take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying, ‘Thou hast clothing, be thou our judge, and let this ruin be under thy hand’ in that day shall he lift his voice, saying, ‘I will not be a builder-up; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: ye shall not make me a ruler of the people.’ For Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen. The show of their countenance is against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not. As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." {Isa_3:1-12}
This is a frightful picture of famine-the dearth of intellect, the dearth of statesmen, of all genius, of all insight. It describes the prevalence of oppression and of ghastly destitution, accompanied by such utter despair that no one cared to exert himself for the arrest of the ruin which seemed imminent over that which was already no better than itself a ruin.
The Book of Isaiah is arranged in a most confused and unchronological manner, and it is probable that the first five chapters should be placed after the sixth, which describes the prophet’s call in the year that King Uzziah died. They paint a picture of moral collapse. His first chapter is called by Ewald "the great arraignment," and by its references describes the awful period of alarm during the war of Syria and Ephraim against Judah. It might seem as if the combined host was even then in the country, or had only just retired from it; for we read, -
"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a wilderness, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city."
But even in the midst of this afflictive dispensation there were no signs of repentance. The children of Israel were rebels who despised the Holy One of Israel, -"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that deal corruptly!" {Isa_1:7-9} They had all the externals of religion: they offered vain sacrifices, and kept a multitude of idle feasts, and offered many formal prayers; but all this was but a cumbrance to Him who desired clean hands and a pure heart as conditions of forgiveness (Isa_1:10-20). What hope could there be for a city of murderers, who loved bribes and perverted judgment (Isa_1:21-24)? The land was full of pride, full of idols, full of the luxury of the rich amid the starvation of the Isa_2:1-22. Women partook of the general corruption. They walked mincingly with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, thinking of nothing but their anklets, and crescents, and bracelets, and mufflers, ear-drops, head-tires, perfumes, mirrors, armlets, and nose jewels: therefore they should have sackcloth for stomachers, ropes for girdles, and burning instead of beauty, and only a remnant should escape. {Isa_3:16-26; Isa_4:1} Judah was like a vineyard.-rich in advantages, blessed with fondest care; but when God looked for grapes, it only brought forth wild grapes-a semblance, but only a poisoned semblance, of the true vintage: therefore it should be left neglected and rainless. Woe to the greedy land-grabbing, and drunkenness, and revelry of the rich! Woe to their mockery of God and their devotion to vanity! Woe to their insane pride and wanton injustice! Could they escape vengeance? No! Jehovah had looked for judgment (mishpat), but behold oppression (mishpach); for righteousness (tse’ dakah), but behold a cry (tse’ akah) {Isa_5:1} They might escape-they would escape-the Syrian and the Ephraimite; but behind these lay a more terrible and a more portentous foe, even the Assyrian, the scourge of God’s wrath (Isa_1:25-30). "It was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim." Is it strange that in such a condition of things the heart of Ahaz and of his people "was moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind?" Such was the terrible crisis at which Isaiah began his ministry. He was the son of Amoz, who has been (much too precariously) identified with a brother of Amaziah. It is probable that he was a man of distinguished, if not of princely birth, and he exercised a more powerful influence over the politics of his country than any other prophet-not even excepting Jeremiah.
2Ki_16:1-20
"Expediency is man’s wisdom; doing right is God’s."
- GEORGE MEREDITH
ISAIAH was one of those men whom God provides for the need of kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled: insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have been different.
But the position of things was indeed disastrous. Judah was attacked from every side. On the southeast the Edomites renewed their devastating raids, and swept off multitudes of captives, who were sold as slaves in the Western slave-markets. On the southwest the Philistines once more rose in revolt, and acquired permanent repossession of many parts of the Shephelah mastering Beth-Shemesh Ajalon, Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath, Gimzo, and all the adjacent districts. But this was nothing compared with the humiliation and destruction inflicted by Rezin and Pekah. They shut up Ahaz in Jerusalem; and though they could not storm its almost impregnable defenses, which had recently been fortified by Uzziah and Jotham, they were undisputed masters of the rest of the land, so that Judah was "brought low and made naked." {2Ch_28:19} Rezin, indeed, weary of a tedious siege, swept southwards to Elath, on the gulf of Akabah, seized it, and peopled it with an Edomite garrison, thereby destroying the commerce in which Solomon and Jehoshaphat had taken pride, and which Uzziah had recently re-established. Having thus left an effectual annoyance to Judah in his rear, he gave up the design of dethroning Ahaz and substituting in his place "the son of Tabeal, " who would have been a tool in the hands of the confederate kings. He seized, however, a multitude of captives, and with them and with much booty he returned to Damascus. "The son of Tabeal"-a name which occurs nowhere else-has been found very puzzling. I believe it to be simply an instance of the Rabbinic process of transposition, called Themourah. Some identify it with Itibi’alu of an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. Others suppose that he was a Syrian, and that Tabeal stands for Tabrimmon. But by the application of Themourah (called the Albam) Tabeal simply gives us "Remaliah," and is either a scornful variation of the name of Pekah’s father, or has arisen from the watchword of a secret conspiracy. Since in the text of Jeremiah {Jer_41:1-18} (by Atbash, another form of the secret transposition of letters of which the generic name was Gematria) we read Sheshach for Babel, the name Tabeal may have been dealt with in a similar method. Pekah, according to the Chronicler, inflicted far deadlier injuries than Rezin. In one day he slew one hundred and twenty thousand "sons of valor," because they had forsaken Jehovah, God of their fathers. His general Zichri, a mighty Ephraimite, slew Maaseiah, the king’s son; {2Ch_28:7} and Azrikam, the chancellor; and Elkanah, the second to the king. The army carried away two hundred thousand captives and much spoil to Samaria. But on their arrival, a prophet named Oded reproved the Israelites for having massacred the Judaeans "in a rage that reacheth to heaven." Aided by various princes, he succeeded in inducing the people to refuse to harbor the captives, and clothed, fed, and sent them back unharmed to Jericho, mounting the feeble on horses and asses. The story bears on the face of it the signs of enormous exaggeration.
In the crisis of their miseries, but just before the siege, Ahaz had gone outside the city walls "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the causeway of the fuller’s field," probably to look after the water supply, which had always been a difficulty for Jerusalem, and on which depended her capacity to withstand a siege. Here he was met by the prophet Isaiah, who was leading by the hand the little son to whom he had given the name of "Shear-jashub" ("A renmant shall return"), as a witness to the truth of the prophecy which he had heard on the occasion of his call, -
"And if there should yet be a tenth in it, this shall be again consumed; yet as the terebinth and the oak, though cut down, have their stock remaining, even so a sacred seed shall be the stock thereof." {Isa_6:13}
The object of the prophet was to cheer up the fainting heart of the king, and to say to him first, -
"Take heed, and be quiet."
This mandate probably refers to rumors-which Isaiah must have heard-of the king’s intention to follow the counsels of the party which urged him to seek foreign assistance. One of these parties advised him to throw himself into the arms of Egypt, and rely on her protection; the other gave the more perilous counsel of invoking the aid of Assyria. Isaiah’s mandate to the king and to the nation was to take neither step, but to trust in the Lord, and to repent of individual and national misdoing. He summed up his message in the rule, -
"In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."
The advice was emphasized by a promise of the most decisive and encouraging kind. When all looked so helpless, the prophet was bidden to say, -
"Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for these two stumps of smoking torches, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of Remaliah’s son. They have taken evil counsel against thee. But thus saith the Lord God, ‘It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is only Rezin, and the head of Samaria is a mere Remaliah’s son."’
And then, to confirm the lesson of confidence in God, the brief assurance, -
"If ye will not confide, Surely ye shall not abide."
Convinced of the certainty of this immediate deliverance, Isaiah bade the king to ask for a sign from Jehovah, either in the height above, or in the depth beneath.
But the timid and hypocritical king was not so to be influenced. He had on his side "the scornful men, who ruled Judah"; the mocking priests, who sneered and jeered at Isaiah’s teaching as repetitive and commonplace, and only fit for children; and the princes and nobles, who formed the Court party, headed by Shebna the scribe. He probably looked on Isaiah as a mere unpractical faddist, an excited fanatic-all very well as a prophet, but not a man who ought to thrust himself into the plans of politicians. Ahaz had his own plans, and he had not the smallest intention of altering them in consequence of anything which Isaiah might say. He was far too timid and unfaithful to rely on anything so vague as Divine assurance. He was convinced that his only chance lay in the horses of Egypt or the fierce infantry of Assyria. So he said with sham piety, merely intended to put the prophet off, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah."
That moment marks what may be called the birth-throe of Messianic prophecy in its most specific character. For then the prophet, after reproving the king for wearying Jehovah as well as His servants, adds, in words of far wider arid deeper significance than their immediate bearing, that Jehovah Himself should give a sign; for the maiden should conceive and bear a Son, and call His name Immanuel ("God with us"). The child should grow up in a time of scarcity; for owing to the devastation of the land, he would only be able to be nurtured on curdled milk and honey. But before he had reached years of discretion-before he had arrived at the power of moral choice-the land whose two kings Ahaz abhorred should be a desert. Yet let not Ahaz exult too much in the immediate deliverance! Days of unexampled misery were at hand. Jehovah should hiss for the fly from the farthest canals of Egypt, and for the bee of Assyria, and they should settle in swarms in the valleys and pastures. Ahaz-he had not alluded to the design, but Isaiah knew it well-was about to hire a razor from beyond the Euphrates, but that razor should sweep away the hair and beard of Judah. Agriculture should languish, and the people should only be able to live in privation on whey and honey; and the vineyards should be full of briers and thorns, and should be mere places for hunting. {Isa_7:1-25}
This event, therefore, as Caspari says, stands at the turning-point of Old Testament History. It marks the beginning of that second period of the History of the Chosen People in which their hopes were granted as a counterpoise to their anguish and their humiliation. "It stood, therefore, at the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of the prophet which reached out over the whole development of the people of God."
To all such prophecies Ahaz was utterly deaf: they did not for a moment induce him to swerve from his purpose. But to call still further attention to his promise as the Syrian Ephraimitish host pressed forward, Isaiah took a great piece of vellum, and inscribed on it, in the ordinary characters, -
"SPEED-PLUNDER-HASTE-SPOIL."
He put it up in some conspicuous place, before his own house or in the Temple, and took the priest Urijah and Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah, into his confidence as faithful witnesses. He told them the explanation of his sign, and they would satisfy the curiosity of the people on the subject. It meant that in nine months’ time his wife should bear a son, and that he and his wife, the prophetess, would call the boy’s name "Speed-plunder-haste-spoil," as a sign that before the child was able to say "Father" or "Mother" Rezin and Pekah should be extinguished. For the Assyrian should speed to the plunder and haste to the spoil, and the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria should be carried away by the King of Assyria. Since Judah despised "the soft flowing waters of Shi-loah," and preferred Rezin and Pekah, they should be deluged by the Euphrates of Assyria, and Assyria’s outspread wings should overshadow thy land, O Immanuel (Isa_8:1-8). How vain, then, of the people to try and meet the confederacy of Syria and Ephraim by a new confederacy of Judah with Assyria! This, after all, is Immanuel’s land. God is with us. We have but to fear God, we have but to be faithful to duty, and Jehovah shall be our sanctuary, though He be a stumbling-block to many in Israel, and a snare to many in Jerusalem. This is God’s teaching and God’s testimony, and Isaiah and his children are signs of it. For does not Isaiah mean "Salvation of Jehovah"; and Shearjashub, "A remnant shall return"; and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Swift-spoil-speedy-prey"; and Immanuel, "God is with us"? What need, then, to seek wizards and necromancers? Seek God; confide, abide! Trouble and darkness there should be; but all was not utterly hopeless. Northern Israel had been bedimmed and afflicted; but soon they should be exalted, and see light, and their yoke be broken as in the day of Midian, and the trampling boot and blood-stained mantle of the war-nor shall be burned in the fire: for a Child is born, a Son is given unto us of David’s line, who shall be a Mighty Deliverer, a Prince of Peace and Israel shall perish.