Seven centuries before the birth of Christ, in the ninth year of Hoshea, King of Israel, Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, came up and besieged Samaria. So great was the strength of this city, both from its position among the hills and the pains which had been bestowed on the building of it, that it was able to withstand the siege for a period of three years. Under Sargon, the successor of Shalmaneser, however, it fell, and numberless Israelites were deported and placed in Halah and Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities which the Assyrian kings had captured from the Medes; and a foreign population from Cuthah, and Hamath, and Sepharvaim, was poured into the cities of Israel. Thus the kingdom of Israel, as an independent kingdom, came to an end for ever. And now a like fate seemed to be awaiting Judah.
1. The Holy Land was situated much as Afghanistan is, which Lord Lytton once described as a pipkin between two brazen pots, which sooner or later must be crushed by the two strong Powers beside it. In Egypt supreme power was held by Tirhakah, a famous conqueror, who ruled what we call Upper Egypt and the Soudan. He was now threatening Assyria, which was governed by Sennacherib, whose armies were advancing to meet and crush him as a dangerous rival; and the little kingdom of Judah seemed to be a thorn in his side. Already the Assyrians had overrun the country, but Jerusalem and a few other fortified places still held out, and Sennacherib was not satisfied to leave the issue doubtful between himself and them. We can easily understand his reasoning. If Russia and Britain were at war, and the great northern Power was about to attack India, Afghanistan, though a feeble Power compared with these great empires, might, if hostile to Russia, make it almost impossible for her to advance; and therefore Russia would bend all her energies towards securing her friendship or her submission.
In Jerusalem, as there had been in the Northern Kingdom, there was a powerful party who posed as patriots, and they advocated the short-sighted policy of an alliance with Egypt. But the Egyptian forces were slow in arriving, and the Assyrians subdued and punished the Philistines and Arabians of Ekron and Sinai, and, turning against Judah, swept over the land, taking the fenced cities by storm, and compelling Hezekiah to sue for peace, and pay a heavy war indemnity, for which he was reduced to plunder the Temple of its treasures. The prophet Isaiah was always against this alliance with Egypt, or Ethiopia, and blamed Shebna, the king's adviser, for this foolish and disastrous policy.
Egypt had a great reputation, and was a mighty promisor. Her brilliant antiquity had given her a habit of generous promise, and dazzled other nations into trusting her. Indeed, so full were Egyptian politics of bluster and big language that the Hebrews had a nickname for Egypt. They called her Rahab-Stormy-speech, Blusterer, Braggart. It was the term also for the crocodile, as being a monster, so that there was a picturesqueness as well as moral aptness in the name. Ay, says Isaiah, catching at the old name and putting to it another which describes Egyptian helplessness and inactivity, I call her Rahab Sit-still, Braggart-that-sitteth-still, Stormy-speech, Stay-at-home. Blustering and inactivity, blustering and sitting still, that is her character; for Egypt helpeth in vain and to no purpose.… Isaiah tracks the bad politics to their source in bad religion, the Egyptian policy to its roots in the prevailing tempers of the people. The Egyptian policy was doubly stamped. It was disobedience to the word of God; it was satisfaction with falsehood. The statesmen of Judah shut their ears to God's spoken word; they allowed themselves to be duped by the Egyptian Pretence.1 [Note: G. A. Smith, Isaiah, i.-xxxix., 223.]
2. It was apparently at this time that Hezekiah was seized with what had every appearance of proving a fatal illness, and received from Isaiah the message: “Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” The loss of the king at this juncture would have been an irreparable blow to Judah, for as yet Hezekiah had no heir, and the safety of the State depended on its having at its head a strong and capable ruler, devoted to the pure worship of Jehovah. Hezekiah prayed earnestly that he might live, and “wept sore” at the thought of death. A poem is attributed to him on this occasion, and no gloomier view of death is taken in any part of the Old Testament. Hezekiah's hymn, preserved by Isaiah, is a model of psalm-writing, and shows us that the poetic form invented by David, which consisted of a rhythmical meditation of the soul on human injustice, its own backslidings and its hope in God, was very popular at the close of the eighth century.
Hezekiah's prayer was heard: a poultice of figs applied by the advice of Isaiah healed the tumour from which he was suffering, and the prophet could assure him that God had added fifteen years to his life. As a sign of the Divine favour, the shadow went back ten steps on the sundial of his father Ahaz.
The dial was probably a pyramid of steps on the top of which stood a short pillar or obelisk. When the sun rose in the morning, the shadow cast by the pillar would fall right down the western side of the pyramid to the bottom of the lowest step. As the sun ascended the shadow would shorten, and creep up inch by inch to the foot of the pillar. After noon, as the sun began to descend to the west, the shadow would creep down the eastern steps; and the steps were so measured that each one marked a certain degree of time. It was probably afternoon when Isaiah visited the king. The shadow was going down according to the regular law; the sign consisted in causing the shadow to shrink up the steps again. Such a reversal of the ordinary progress of the shadow may have been caused in either of two ways: by the whole earth being thrown back on its axis, which we may dismiss as impossible, or by the occurrence of the phenomenon known as refraction. Refraction is a disturbance in the atmosphere by which the rays of the sun are bent or deflected from their natural course into an angular one. In this case, instead of shooting straight over the top of the obelisk, the rays of the sun had been bent down and inward, so that the shadow fled up to the foot of the obelisk. There are many things in the air which might cause this; it is a phenomenon often observed; and the Scriptural narratives imply that on this occasion it was purely local (2Ch_32:31).1 [Note: G. A. Smith, Isaiah, i.-xxxix., 378.]
But can it be, one suppliant tear
Should stay the ever-moving sphere?
A sick man's lowly breathëd sigh,
When from the world he turns away,
And hides his weary eyes to pray,
Should change your mystic dance, ye wanderers of the sky?
We too, O Lord, would fain command,
As then, Thy wonder-working hand,
And backward force the waves of Time,
That now so swift and silent bear
Our restless bark from year to year;
Help us to pause and mourn to Thee our tale of crime.
Bright hopes, that erst the bosom warm'd,
And vows, too pure to be perform'd,
And prayers blown wide by gales of care:-
These, and such faint half waking dreams,
Like stormy lights on mountain streams,
Wavering and broken all, athwart the conscience glare.
How shall we 'scape th' o'erwhelming Past?
Can spirits broken, joys o'ercast,
And eyes that never more may smile-
Can these th' avenging bolt delay,
Or win us back one little day
The bitterness of death to soften and beguile?
Time's waters will not ebb, nor stay,
Power cannot change them, but Love may;
What cannot be, Love counts it done.
Deep in the heart, her searching view
Can read where Faith is fix'd and true,
Through shades of setting life can see Heaven's work begun.1 [Note: Keble, The Christian Year (1st Sunday after Christmas).]
3. An embassy from Merodach-baladan soon afterwards visited the king, ostensibly to congratulate him on his recovery, and “to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land” (especially interesting to the Babylonian sages), but really, no doubt, to sound him as to an alliance against Assyria. An embassy from so famous and distant a sovereign as Merodach-baladan was an extremely flattering acknowledgment of Hezekiah's importance in Palestine. Everything was evidently prepared in Jerusalem for war: the treasury and armoury were alike full, and Hezekiah gratified his pride by displaying them to the Babylonians: “there was nothing in all his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not.” Isaiah regarded the king's conduct with disapproval, and uttered the remarkable prediction: “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
To the simple and incautious Hezekiah such a disclosure of his secret resources before the ambassadors of a prince whose reign had been a constant and unsuccessful struggle against Sargon, his own great enemy, seemed innocent and harmless. But Isaiah, his faithful counsellor, knew better than his master. The sudden rise and fall of Oriental empires was often startling. Their provinces were always ready to throw off the yoke imposed on them only by resistless violence. The life of Sargon, indeed, had been spent in putting down revolts, from Media to Tyre, from Armenia to Arabia. Merodach-baladan's tenacity in resistance showed a vitality in his claims which might hereafter reverse the relations between him and Nineveh. Above all, prophetic insight corroborated natural prescience. It had been revealed to the seer that Babylon would one day be supreme, and that Judah would then suffer for the vanity of Hezekiah, by utter ruin. Ever fearless in his duties as the servant of God, this could not be withheld, though Hezekiah was at once his friend and his king. Once more the black mantle of the prophet was seen in the private chamber of the palace, and the monarch had to listen while his reprover told him that he was sent from Jehovah to foretell the future destruction of the kingdom by that very power whose representatives had thus received the royal confidence. The palace would be plundered, the national wealth seized, and his own descendants carried off to be servants in the palace of the king of Babylon. The blow was heavy, but it fell on a heart duly humble. “Good is the word of Jehovah,” replied the king, “which thou hast spoken”-an answer followed by the mitigating assurance that the catastrophe would not happen in his own days.1 [Note: C. Geikie, Hours with the Bible (ed. 1890), iv. 423.]
4. Some years afterwards we find Sennacherib sending an embassy to Jerusalem, and completely ignoring the terms of his treaty with Jerusalem. The facts of this embassy are so obscure that we cannot determine whether it was that, when the Assyrians had withdrawn, the Jews had opened negotiations with Egypt and so provoked the hostility of Sennacherib, or that Sennacherib, having to subdue Libnah and Lachish, fortresses which might materially assist the approaching Tirhakah, King of Upper Egypt, did not wish to leave so formidable a city as Jerusalem in his rear and pretended to believe that the compact had been broken by Hezekiah.
From Lachish, Sennacherib sent a large detachment to Jerusalem, headed by the Tartan, or “General,” of the host. They took up their position on the north of the city, on a spot long afterwards known as “the camp of the Assyrians.” The General, accompanied by two high personages, known like himself through their official titles, “Head of the Cup-bearers” and “Head of the Eunuchs,” approached the walls, and came to the same spot where, many years before, Isaiah had met Ahaz. Hezekiah feared to appear. In his place came Eliakim, now chief minister, Shebna, now in the office of secretary, and Joah, the royal historian. The Rabshakeh, as spokesman, showed himself to be an overbearing and insolent man, but at the same time possessed of a shrewd knowledge of the weak points of the character of the Judæans. He opened the discussion by asking what had induced Hezekiah to resist his master. Did he trust in Egypt? It was like trusting “upon the staff of a bruised reed … whereon if a man lean it will go into his hand, and pierce it.” Did he trust in Jehovah? The Rabshakeh appealed to the disaffected party in Judah, who doubtless regarded Hezekiah as a sacrilegious fanatic for removing the ancient sanctuaries, and asked: “Is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?” The ministers of Hezekiah, afraid of the forcible effect of these taunts on the people, besought the Rabshakeh to speak in the Aramæan dialect, the diplomatic language of all Syria, and not to use the Jewish tongue; but the Assyrian officer was too astute to consent to this. He turned to the people on the wall, and, addressing them in coarse language suited to the rude soldiers, he called on them to surrender their city and to come into a better land and a wealthier home, which Sennacherib would give them in exchange for their patrimony.
The Rabshakeh's speech was received by the people in dead silence. The three ministers tore their garments in horror, and appeared in that state before the king. He, too, gave way to an uncontrolled burst of grief. Then he sent for Isaiah, from whom he heard words of comfort and encouragement, and his heart was strengthened against Sennacherib, and the messengers of that monarch withdrew without having effected their purpose.
Having no spare troops to detach for the siege of Jerusalem, Sennacherib trusted to the effect of a violent letter to Hezekiah ordering him to surrender the place. Hezekiah took the letter, and penetrating, as it would seem, into the most Holy Place, laid it before the Divine Presence enthroned above the cherubim, and called upon Him whose name it insulted, to look down and see with His own eyes the outrage that was offered to Him. From that dark recess no direct answer was vouchsafed. The answer came through the inspired prophet. Isaiah entered, and uttered his magnificent defiance of Assyria-one of the treasures of religious literature. In the prophetic words which are embodied in the narrative we have for the most part genuine utterances of Isaiah, harmonizing with that “most beautiful of all his discourses” which marks the peaceful and triumphant close of his ministry, and which finds an echo in the 46th, perhaps also in the 48th, 75th, and 76th Psalms. The prophet's words had a terrible fulfilment. “It came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and fourscore and five thousand.”
No record of Sennacherib's expedition and its disastrous issue is preserved on the Assyrian monuments, and the Biblical account is full of difficulties. But the Biblical account finds an echo in the story told by Herodotus (ii. 141), the destruction of the Assyrian army being probably due to a plague in the pestiferous region on the borders of Egypt where the Crusaders and others have had a similar experience. Though its historical character has been much criticized, the story is one of the most vividly dramatic narratives in the Old Testament, and the way in which Jerusalem escaped destruction was the culminating triumph both of Isaiah's long prophetic career, and of the chequered reign of Hezekiah.
The miracle of Jerusalem's deliverance was not that by faith the prophet Isaiah foretold it, but that by faith he did actually himself succeed in bringing it to pass. The miracle, we say, was not that Isaiah made accurate prediction of the city's speedy relief from the Assyrian, but far more that upon his solitary steadfastness, without aid of battle, he did carry her disheartened citizens through this crisis of temptations, and kept them, though silent, to their walls till the futile Assyrian drifted away. We may recall the parallel case of Charlemagne in his campaign against the Moors in Spain, from which he was suddenly and unseasonably hastened north on a disastrous retreat by news of the revolt of the Saxons. In the vast Assyrian territories rebellions were constantly occurring that demanded the swift appearance of the king himself; and God's Spirit, to whose inspiration Isaiah traced all political perception, suggested to him the possibility of one of these. In the end, the Bible story implies that it was not a rumour from some far-away quarter so much as a disaster here in Syria which compelled Sennacherib's “retreat from Moscow.” But it is possible that both causes were at work, and that as Napoleon offered the receipt of news from Paris as his reason for hurriedly abandoning the unfortunate Spanish campaign of 1808, so Sennacherib made the rumour of some news from his capital or the north the occasion for turning his troops from a theatre of war where they had not met with unequivocal success, and had at last been half destroyed by the plague.1 [Note: G. A. Smith, Isaiah, i.-xxxix., 354.]
5. Little else is recorded of Hezekiah, who died some three or four years after the great deliverance. His life was not without its mistakes, but they did not proceed from impure motives. His faults resulted from temperament rather than from design. There was a want of reserve towards the court of Babylon, when its representatives came to congratulate him on his recovery. He needlessly showed them the wealth of his house and the glory of his kingdom. This excited their greed, and hastened the doom of Jerusalem. We do not favour his reply to the prophet when he announced the fall of his kingdom: “Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken-is it not so?-if peace and truth be in my days.” Too prone was he to personal ease, and too little alive to the future of his dynasty. Happily this is all-this amiable weakness-the sacred narrative contains of doubtful matter; in all other respects he stands before us in the garb of spotless integrity.
Hezekiah appears from an incidental notice in Pro_25:1 to have been a patron of literature. Probably some of the other writings of the Old Testament were also compiled and arranged at this time by the royal scribes. His work is noted also in fortifying Jerusalem-especially the reservoir which he constructed in the Tyropœan valley by bringing thither by an underground “conduit” the water from Gihon. His only military operations seem to have been those in the early part of his reign against the Philistines. He was succeeded in 697 by his son Manasseh.
The personal character and endowments of Hezekiah were illustrious. Ready for war when necessary, and alike brave and skilful in its conduct, he was more inclined to the gentle arts of peace. Though he could wrest cities from the Philistines and defend Jerusalem with resolution and ability, he gave his heart rather to the promotion of the internal welfare of his kingdom. His tender religious sensibility, and poetic genius-the first instance of the latter since David-are seen in the hymn which he composed after his recovery from almost mortal sickness. His love of culture displayed itself in his zeal for the preservation of the religious writings of his nation, of which their literature to a great extent consisted. Descended, apparently on his mother's side, from Zechariah, the favourite prophet of Uzziah, he inherited a lofty enthusiasm for the ancient faith. In direct contrast to his father, who had zealously favoured everything Assyrian, Hezekiah gave himself passionately to whatever was national, and devoted his life to the restoration of the worship of Jehovah and the purification of the land from the heathenism which Ahaz had introduced. The “Law” was his guiding star in public and private. The prophets were his honoured and cherished counsellors. He was intelligent and refined as he was humble and godly. Jewish tradition, magnifying his fame and merits in after years, fancied that he must have been the promised Messiah; and the inspired compiler of the Second Book of Kings only reflects the universal homage of contemporary public opinion in the grand eulogium, that “he trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.”1 [Note: C. Geikie, Hours with the Bible (ed. 1890), iv. 330.]
