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Faithless politicians

 

An impressive sequence of chapters in Isaiah, (e.g. Is. 30:1; 31:2), and elsewhere, makes it fairly evident that at the time of the king's sickness control of the nation's affairs passed into the hands of the princes of Judah, who immediately proceeded to disregard Hezekiah's fine exhortation (2 Chr. 32:7), instead substituting a typical political policy of appeasement. As this and succeeding chapters will show, they tried to buy off the invader. Even if this show of weakness brought them respite only for a while, it would (so they reasoned) surely give them time to consolidate an alliance with Egypt and so gain salvation from the threat of war and devastation.

 

"Because ye have said: We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement (by paying heavy tribute to Sennacherib), when the overflowing scourge (of the Assyrian army) shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge (was this being openly said in Jerusalem?), and under falsehood have we hid ourselves...your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand (for Sennacherib had his spies in Jerusalem; see ch.22); when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye (the rulers of Judah) shall be trodden down by it" (Isaiah 28:15,18).

 

With the king laid aside, it was left to Isaiah to continue his witness to the true source of strength:

 

"For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel (6:1-3); In returning (to Him) and rest (in Him) shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence (in Him) shall be your strength — and ye would not" (30:15).

 

There were evidently drastic efforts being made to throttle the testimony of Isaiah and his colleagues:

 

"They say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things (the kind of message we want to hear), prophesy deceits: get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us" (30:10,11).

 

These were the men ("heads of the house of Jacob and princes of the house of Israel") whom Micah had earlier apostrophized for their casual indifference to social evils and a true reliance upon God (see Micah 3). Their secret scheming was now reprobated as godless.

 

"Woe to them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, 'Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?' Surely your turning of things upside down (the reversal of the policy already referred to; 2 Kgs. 18:14) shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not?" (Is. 29:15,16).

 

All their scheming would come to nothing:

 

"They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spiders web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity: wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way to peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings" (59:5-8).

 

The stricken king was lightly spoken of, and his policy of faith in God was treated

with contempt:

 

"When we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him...He hid as it were his face from us (an allusion to the commandment concerning lepers;

Lev. 13:45); he was despised, and we esteemed him not...we have turned every one to his own way" (53:2,3,5).

 

However, their plans for saving the nation, and their own skins, were futile:

 

"I said unto the fools, deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn (of your own authority)...speak not with a stiff neck. For promotion cometh not from the east (Arab allies joined the enemy; see ch. 21:13-17), nor from the west (the Philistines also were about to be overrun by the Assyrians), nor from the south (any treaty with Egypt will prove useless; see ch.14). But God is the judge..." (Ps. 75:4-7).

 

Help from the north was, of course, out of question, for in that quarter lay the enemy, powerful and (as it proved) inexorable.

 

It may even be inferred that national policy was being influenced by luxury-loving empty-headed women at the court in Jerusalem (Is. 32:9-11). Affairs truly were in a parlous state. The change from prosperity and godliness to panicky improvisation and cynical political manoeuvring had come with a rush, and all because of Hezekiah's illness and the simultaneous threat of Assyrian invasion.

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9. Shebna

 

Among the group of worthless men who took over the administration of affairs when Hezekiah fell sick was a certain Shebna who seems to have been a Cardinal Wolsey two thousand years before his time.

 

This man apparently took to himself, by some unscrupulous means, the most in­fluential offices of state. He became the treasurer, the chancellor of the exchequer; and to this he added full authority over the temple — "Shebna, which is over the House" (Is. 22:15).

 

To this man the pomp and circumstance of high office were meat and drink. He loved to be seen in Jerusalem in "the chariots of his glory", and the entire city knew that even in this time of threat and insecurity he had diverted valuable man-power to the excavation and preparation of a special tomb, as impressive as any of the sepulchres of the kings of Judah, to proclaim to all generations following, the greatness of the man buried there (22:16).

 

"What (right) hast thou here? and whom hast thou here? (i.e. what royal con­nection?) that thou hast hewed thee out...a sepulchre on high, that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock?"

 

High aspirations

 

This presumptuous political and social climber comes in for reprobation elsewhere also:

 

 

"Wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish" (Ps. 49:10-12).

 

No amount of effort to leave a reputation and a name behind him could alter the fact that death is a great leveller:

 

"Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall be their shepherd...their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling...Be not thou afraid when one is made rich when the glory of his house is increased (cf. the shame of thy Lord's House; Is. 22:18); for when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him" (Ps. 49:14-1 7).

 

The next Psalm has a strong expostulation against the doings of "the wicked one" (this wicked man?):

 

"What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee...Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit..." (50:16-19).

 

W.A. Wordsworth has suggested that the fierce denunciation of "the drunkards of Ephraim" (Is. 28:1) was aimed primarily at Shebna. The context (especially v. 14,15) is certainly appropriate to such a reading.

 

But why "drunkards of Ephraim"? In any case, the phrase has to be taken in a figurative sense, for no men of Ephraim (the northern kingdom) "ruled this people which is in Jerusalem" (28:14,15). So it is probably used as a term of reproach against men who, like the apostates of Israel, had chosen to disregard the way of Jehovah.

 

And the penalty for this disloyalty is set out in one of Hezekiah's Songs of Degrees:

 

"As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth (to captivity) with the workers of iniquity" (Ps. 125:5).

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His fate foretold

 

More explicitly and more vigorously, Isaiah pronounced this judgment on Shebna to his face:

 

"Behold, the Lord will cast thee away with the casting away of a mighty man (the name Shebna suggests 'captivity'), and covering he will cover thee (as in a tomb). Spinning he will spin thee a spinning like a quoit into a large land: there thou shalt die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of thy Lord's House" (Is. 22:17,18).

 

How did it come about? In a later chapter it will be shown that when the siege of Jerusalem was about to begin, a number of the rulers (including Shebna?) sought at the last moment to escape by "fleeing upon horses" (the chariot's of Shebna's glory?), and were pursued and captured by Assyrian cavalry. Thus this proud upstart met his end in a miserable captivity in a far-off land.

 

Another Shebna?

 

There remains a problem.

 

When the Assyrians were actually at the gates of Jerusalem, Eliakim and Shebna and Joah were sent out as an official deputation to discuss terms with Rabshakeh, Sennacherib's official representative. They met him near the entrance to Hezekiah's conduit, and soon returned, having made no progress at all (Is. 36:2,3). Whereupon, Hezekiah, now marvellously recovered, sent Shebna and Eliakim to Isaiah to implore him that he "lift up his prayer for the remnant that is left" (37:2-4). The problem is this:

 

Psychologically it is not possible to believe that one who had received such a trouncing from Isaiah as Shebna had lately done would now be employed by Hezekiah for such highly important negotiations. It is hardly conceivable that after Isaiah's denunciation Shebna would still continue in high office as "the scribe" (Secretary of State). Much less can it be imagined that Shebna, exposed as a poltroon by Isaiah, the king's friend, would be used to beseech the prophet to use his most earnest prayers on behalf of the faithful remnant. Is there any reason why there should not have been two separate Shebnas? — besides the one who was pompous, arrogant, self-important and godless, there was another, Shebna the scribe, who was fully in sympathy with Hezekiah's godly outlook and who was accordingly used along with Eliakim the high priest to enlist the powerful prayers of Isaiah, priest and prophet, on behalf of a city now on the edge of despair.

 

This seems to be the most likely resolution of what appears to be flat contradiction in the character of Isaiah's Shebna. And if Shebna was a title of office — meaning "sit thou here" (at the king's side, in order to act as secretary) — such a duplication of names would be natural enough.

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10. The Invasion

 

During the reign of Ahaz the Pathetic the prophet Isaiah must have earned for himself a worse reputation than that which Jeremiah built up for himself in later days, for repeatedly and in the most graphic language he foretold the inevitability of invasion as a well-deserved judgment from the Lord. Even if the prophet had not troubled to specify who the invader would be, it would have made little difference, for in those days everyone in the Levant knew and feared the fierce empire-building Assyrians. So identification was an easy guess — hardly a guess.

 

The wrath of God

 

Certainly the nation was left in no doubt that their God was angry and that retribu­tion was on the way. Time and again Isaiah came back to this theme, and not just in occasional brief allusions, as when he foretold:

 

"cities wasted and without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land utterly desolate" (6:11).

 

but also in sustained prognostications of calamity and wretchedness in powerful language of vivid literary quality. Consider this as an example:

 

"...therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched out his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and the carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets...behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: none shall be weary or stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep: neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoe be broken: whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it. And in that day they shall roar...like the roaring of the sea: and if one look to the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof" (5:25-30).

 

It is interesting to note that part of this prophecy took on a modified fulfilment, for whilst it is true that the Assyrians "laid hold of the prey, and carried it away safe", their captives were marvellously delivered, thanks to the staunch faithfulness of Hezekiah (see ch.33).

 

"Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened and the people shall be as the fuel of fire" (9:19).

 

This emphasis on darkness is very striking (cp. also 8:21,22). Perhaps it is the prophet's way of warning his people of fire as one of the great horrors of war — the burning of crops and homesteads, the sky being constantly covered with a pall of smoke.

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The horrors of invasion

 

Joel, a contemporary prophet, comes very near to matching the vigour and gloom of Isaiah's words as he describes the same catastrophic retribution (attempts to pin Joel's prophecies on to any other period than that of Isaiah only result in a great loss of vigour in the interpretation):

 

"A nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white...the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men" (1:6,7,1 2).

 

"The day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand: a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness (cp. Isaiah!)...a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like...a fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness: yea, and nothing shall escape them" (2:1-3).

 

Even whilst Ahaz was on the throne, Isaiah was specific that the inevitable disaster would be brought by none other than his friends, the Assyrians:

 

"O Assyria, the rod of mine anger and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey (Maher-shalal-hash-baz!) and to tread them down like the mire of the streets" (Is. 10:5,6).

 

"The Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many (Assyria's western boundary
then
was the northern Euphrates; Nineveh's river was the Tigris), even the king of Assyria and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks...he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel" (8:7,8).

 

And matters would be made worse, not better, by the appearance of a vast army of Judah's allies, the Egyptians. (It will be noted that in his eagerness to make the out­come perfectly plain, in these passages the prophet had no objection to mixing his metaphors!)

 

"The Lord shall bring upon thee...days that have not come (Jl. 2:2) from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah...the Lord shall hiss for the fly (mosquito — innumerable, but with only nuisance value) that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee (hornet) that is in the land of Assyria...the Lord shall shave with a razor that is hired (Ahaz had "hired" Assyria to "shave" his enemies!)...where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briars and thorns" (7:17,18,20,23).

 

The Hezekiah psalms also have some vivid and even horrifying pictures of what this invasion meant.

 

Psalm 83 has a quite pathetic plea for help — and it is addressed to the God who had already told them plainly that the Assyrian was "the rod of His anger"; and it was He who had sent these invaders "against a hypocritical nation". See, then, what changes bitter tribulation can work in God's chosen race! — and will yet work once again in the near future.

 

"Keep not thou silence, O God...For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people...They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance" (Ps. 83:1-4).

 

And so the people suffered. How they suffered!

 

"Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter" (44:22).

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and for vengeance

 

There was never an hour when some fresh horror story did not reach the ears of the tense populace in Jerusalem, so that in their prayers they were constrained to ask for a most bitter vengeance:

 

"O daughter of Babylon (Sennacherib had lately conquered Babylon and was mighty proud of having added "King of Babylon" to his long list of titles), O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy
little ones against the stones" (137:8,9).

 

It was an excruciating time:

 

"The ploughers ploughed upon my back; they made long their furrows...Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion" (1 29:3,5).

 

Isaiah did not confine himself to prophecies of what would, or might, happen. When it came, he described it in terms of unexampled hardship and suffering. It was:

 

"a vexation only to understand the report, For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself (the regions and towns where the dogs of war had not yet penetrated were becoming fewer and fewer, and packed with refugees), and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it (the means of pro­tection were already painfully inadequate)" (28:19,20).

 

"The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth...the land mourneth and languisheth" (33:8,9).

 

All attempts to cope with the situation came to grief. There was only intense frustra­tion. If their God did not have pity on them, then all was hopelessness.

 

"The palmerworm...the locust...the cankerworm.the caterpillar" (Joel 1:4) —

 

these masses of plundering, fierce, cruel, irresistible Assyrian troops seemed to be everywhere, and everywhere gleefully set on spreading havoc and ruin, on torture, suffering and death.

 

Isaiah even quoted his own prophecy (10:22; 28:22), to prove himself a true prophet. It was his "I told you so, but you took no notice".

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11. The Land Desolated

 

There was never a war which was conducted on gentlemanly principles, with considerate regard for the property and well-being of the ordinary people being overrun. In the Apocalypse the red horse of war has to be accompanied by (not, followed by) the black horse of famine and the deathly horse of pestilence.

 

Plundered and derelict

 

So also in Hezekiah's day. The Assyrians, and their allies well-instructed by Assyrian example, were experts in the inculcation of misery and terror through the thoroughness of rapine and havoc in which they delighted:

 

"The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness...Before their face the people shall be much pained; all faces gather blackness" (Joel 2:3,6).

 

"Beat your breasts (NIV) for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briars; yea, upon all the houses of joy (luxurious villas?) in the joyous city: because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and the towers shall be as dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks (Is. 32:12-14).

 

It was the delight of the uncouth invader to let in the wilderness. This power-drunk Assyrian was

 

"the man that made the land to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners (to let them go back to the homeland whence they had been marched away)" (Is. 14:16,17).

 

The blitzkrieg of these pitiless warriors brought nothing but misery to all classes of the people:

 

"The dark places of the land are full of the habitations of cruelty" (Ps. 74:20).

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Fortresses captured

 

A prime objective of the campaign was the utter destruction of Hezekiah's "fenced cities" — forty-six of them, says Sennacherib's boastful inscription. In those times a walled city was a difficult obstacle in the path of any invader. Yet the Assyrians seem to have captured these fortresses in rapid succession. How was this achieved? When Lachish showed strong resistance, its capture became the outstanding military operation of the year. The dramatic bas-reliefs of this siege, now in the British Museum, make this very evident. Then why such rapid and devastating success elsewhere? Was there a complete collapse of morale in Israel's forces? Or had the Assyrians somehow organized a very efficient fifth column?

 

"The defenced city is desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness.. .for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them" (Is. 27:10,11).

 

Micah had foretold

 

"I (the Lord) will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strongholds" (5:11).

 

Indeed, this prophet went further than that. He particularised in a long list of shattered fortresses, making grim untranslatable puns on one name after another (1:10-15):

 

"Tell it not in Gath (Tell-town);

weep tears in Tear-town.

In Beth Ophrah (Dust-town) roll in the dust.

Fare forth stripped, O Fair-town (Shaphir).

Those who live in Exile (Zaanan) will not come out.

Beth Ezel is in mourning (here the pun has got lost);

its protection is taken from you.

Those who live in Maroth (Great Bitterness) writhe in pain, awaiting relief...

Harness your steeds and away, O Horsetown (Lachish),

O source of Zion's sin (there is clear archaeological evidence of a vigorous idolatry at Lachish)...

Israel's kings are ever balked at Balktown (Ashbib).

I will bring a conqueror against you who live in Mareshah (Conquest).

He who is the glory of Israel will come to Adullam (i.e. as a refugee;

Mic. 1:10-15 — this translation has been helped out by NIV and Moffat).

 

The acute misery of this period may be inferred from the sharp contrast in Isaiah's glowing picture of coming prosperity:

 

"Surely I will no more give thy com to be meat for thine enemies: and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured" (Is. 62:8).

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One prophecy unfulfilled

 

But there remains one, just one, outstanding passage about spoliation and plunder which did not find fulfilment in Hezekiah's time:

 

"Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful House (this must be the temple), where our fathers praised thee, is burned with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste" (Is. 64:10,11).

 

Since the Babylonian-captivity reference of Isaiah 40-66 is quite inadmissible as Book 3 of this commentary will show, one is left with these alternative readings of this passage: either as an expression of what the Assyrian invader asserted that he would do, or else as a prophetic declaration of intended judgment on Jerusalem, which intention was changed for the sake of righteous Hezekiah and his faithful remnant (for copious examples of this principle in operation, see "Revelation", HAW, p.259ff). Certainly this solitary passage and a badly misunderstood allusion to Cyrus (44:28) must not be allowed to distract the understanding of such a wonder­ful book as "Deutero" Isaiah from its proper reference.

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12. Captivity

 

The captivities of the Jews best known to most Bible students are these three: that of the Northern Kingdom, by Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II; that of Judah, by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; and that by Titus in A.D. 70. The figures available regarding these are, respectively, 27,290 (Sargon's display inscription), 4,600 (Jeremiah 52), and 97,000 (Josephus Wars 6.9.3 — and Josephus has a rep­utation for exaggerating the numbers he reports).

 

Swept away to slavery

 

It comes, then, as something of a shock to read in Sennacherib's inscription that his Judaean campaign yielded 200,150 prisoners sent back to Nineveh and especially to Babylon (Mic. 4:10; Ps. 137) as a replacement population for those he had lately deported from that city. So far as available figures go, this is quite the most massive deportation in all Jewish history (until Hitler came on the scene). Yet there is no specific documentation of it in the OT. histories.

 

However, other contemporary OT. writings are found to make plenty of allusions to this important aspect of the trauma of the Assyrian invasion. The picture fills out quite vividly.

 

But first, Sennacherib's own description of this phase of his highly successful (sic!) campaign:

 

"I made to come out from them 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, innumerable horses, mules, donkeys, camels, large and small cattle, and counted them as the spoils of war" (Taylor prism).

 

Before it happened Isaiah foretold this grim experience:

 

"Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst" (5:13).

 

"until...the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking (i.e. a flight of refugees) in the midst of the land" (6:1 2).

 

Refugees

 

Vast numbers of these pathetic and terror-stricken people found their way to Egypt:

 

"In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan (i.e. Hebrew)" (19:18) —

 

and even there they encountered oppression (1 9:20).

 

As already intimated, most of those taken prisoner were marched off to Babylon.

 

What sort of wastage rate was there during the almost endless torment of this long trek?

 

"Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth...in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon" (Mic. 4:10).

 

"By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion...they that carried us away captive required of us a song (male and female musicians Hezekiah sent me later to Nineveh, my lordly city — Taylor Prism); and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" (Ps. 137:1-4).

 

Sennacherib's mention of Nineveh does not exclude the Bible's reference to Babylon, it supplements it.

 

"My people is taken away for nought; they that rule over them make them to howl (Hebrew:
y'hililu
a deliberate parody of the Hallelujah, the Lord's song)" (Is. 52:5).

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A tragic theme

 

All the contemporary prophets reflect in their own wretchedness this captivity of their people:

 

"Lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve" (Am. 9:9; this is not about the northern kingdom; see v.11).

 

"Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children...for they are gone into captivity from thee" (Mic. 1:16).

 

"Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat: and hast scattered us among the heathen. Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by their price" (Ps. 44:11,12). See also Obadiah 1:11,12; Joel 3:1-7; Mic. 7:12 RV, 13).

 

In some of the Hezekiah psalms the sufferings of the helpless captives are pictured in a most moving fashion:

 

"Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee: according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die" (79:11).

 

Yet for those of the faithful remnant who were so ruthlessly snatched away from their homes (such as Isaiah's son Shear-Jashub, "a remnant shall return"), the hope of seeing once again the land of their fathers was not lost:

 

"Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise" (Ps. 106:47).

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13. Double Dealing

 

In an earlier chapter (ch.8) there was mentioned the pusillanimous policy of appeasement by which it was sought to evade the ghastly horrors of further Assyrian invasion.

 

The simple explanation of that shameful attempt to buy off the Assyrians by the pay­ment of massive Danegelt, as Tyre had already done, is that this policy, which Isaiah (and therefore Hezekiah) never ceased to deplore, was a scheme formulated by the princes who took over the regency (ch.8) during the period of the king's disability. Later (in ch.14) it will be seen that other aspects of Judah's war policy chime in with this reading of the situation. The government had fallen into wrong hands. The Taylor Prism gives Sennacherib's own account of this humiliation of the power of Judah, and how "peace" was bought:

 

"I made to come out from them (and here is inserted a catalogue of all kinds of valuable and rare articles); also his (Hezekiah's) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians (from the temple choir and orchestra: Ps. 137:1,2) he sent to me later to Nineveh".

 

The "daughters" referred to here were probably Hezekiah's sisters. Or it may be that there is here a misunderstanding of Isaiah's phrase about "the spoiling of the daughter of my people" (22:4). Also, the word "later" suggests that it was deliberately contrived that the hostages and wealth now handed over should arrive belatedly in Nineveh, after the great Assyrian debacle at Jerusalem, as an attempted cover-up of the military disaster in Judaea. But of course the truth was bound to come out sooner or later.

 

A "Munich" agreement

 

Back in Jerusalem there was intense jubilation that the invader had been bought off. No doubt that sinister phrase "Peace with honour", so popular in London in the appeasement days of September 1938, was used by officials taking unearned credit to themselves when they broke the news of this treaty of disgrace. Delirious cheering broke out spontaneously, and almost the entire city gave itself over to celebration, dancing in the streets, and much drinking. There was smug satisfaction on the part of the politicians and much mutual congratulation spoken with sighs of relief. In his bitter indignation the prophet saw to it that the entire city felt the sharp edge of his tongue:

 

"What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops (their equivalent of parties in the streets!). Thou that art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city: thy slain men are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle" (22:1,2) —

 

instead they were dead drunk, celebrating their "Peace with honour". In more ways than one the entire population seemed to have lost its sense of balance.

 

"The Lord God of hosts hath called to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth (all the appropriate tokens of shame and disaster): and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die (and not today, as we feared!). And it was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of hosts: Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of hosts" (22:12-14).

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Sennacherib's gloating

 

Whilst the citizens of Jerusalem were taking pride and delight in their humiliation and ignominy, Sennacherib was making sure that his radio propaganda told more than the truth:

 

"I laid waste the wide district of Judah, and made the overbearing and proud Hezekiah (sic!), its king, bow submissively at my feet" (Bull Inscription).

 

Pure invention, Sennacherib! Hezekiah was a desperately sick man at this time, and in any case would rather have died than submit before a crude conqueror like yourself. But back in Nineveh the report sounded well!

 

"I overthrew the wide district of Judah. I imposed my yoke-ropes on Hezekiah its king" (Nineveh Slab Inscription).

 

This too sounded well in the Assyrian capital. And in that far-off city who was to know (until the grim truth came out later) just how elastic the "facts" were. In both Nineveh and Jerusalem, in this time of ruthless war, truth was the greatest casualty. But now and then Sennacherib did come nearer to telling the truth:

 

"He (Hezekiah) sent a personal messenger to deliver the tribute and make a slavish obeisance" (Taylor Prism).

 

"The officials, nobles, and people of Ekron who had thrown Padi their king into iron fetters (Hezekiah had been behind this; 2 Kgs. 18:8), as one loyal to the treaty and obligations of Assyria, had given him up to Hezekiah the Jew, as an enemy...I caused Padi their king (evidently a friend of Assyria)
to come out of Jerusalem,
and sat him on the throne as lord over them (in Ekron)" (Taylor Prism).

 

Evidently the freeing of this Padi was one of the conditions insisted on in the peace treaty.

 

Treacherous dealing

 

Regarding the main clauses of that treaty, neither side had any intention of honourable fulfilment. Those statesmen in Jerusalem "made lies their refuge" and cynically said so openly. And Sennacherib took all the treasure and other fine gifts without any intention of easing his threat against Jerusalem.

 

"The treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth" (Is. 21:2).

 

The first of Hezekiah's Songs of Degrees apostrophizes the enemy's "lying lips" and "deceitful tongue":

 

"What shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?...My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war" (Ps. 120:3,6,7).

 

The threat hanging over Jerusalem was as sinister as ever. The Assyrian army still came on.

 

"Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee (but soon they did, for this was their intention from the start!). When thou hast ceased to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled: and when thou hast made an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee" (Is. 33:1 RV).

 

In desperation a deputation was sent out to parley with the enemy — Eliakim, the new high priest, and Shebna, secretary of state, and Joah (Joel?), in charge of state archives. They achieved exactly nothing, and returned with their robes rent. It was "a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness".

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14. Salvation from Egypt?

 

There was, doubtless, a great surge of bitter feeling in Jerusalem when it was realised how deceitful Sennacherib had been in his dealings with the Jewish dep­utation. What had been dressed up as "positively his final demand" (an immense once-for-all payment of tribute, together with important hostages as a guarantee of good faith) was now seen to be a cynical exercise in duplicity. But of course this tough Assyrian could afford to behave in this way, for he had no Jehovah of high morality to answer to; and were not all the cards in this game of poker stacked in his favour?

 

More than this, his KGB spies in Jerusalem kept him well informed of cabinet deci­sions there. He knew in good time that the princes of Judah were as two-faced as himself. Pretending to a deep satisfaction with their binding agreement (sic!) just signed, they were already full of a secret plan to bring in the aid of Egypt's Pharaoh and his massive Ethiopian army.

 

From the earliest days of the Assyrian threat, even whilst Ahaz was still alive, this idea had been the bulwark of these princes of Judah. When the worst comes to the worst, the almost innumerable manpower of Egypt and Ethiopia will come to our rescue. So they thought!

 

An evil policy exposed

 

Isaiah knew that they thought thus, and he spoke out boldly against the folly and forlorn fatuity of such empty optimism:

 

"The Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid (cp. 2 Chr. 32:7). Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself: and let
him
be your fear, and let
him
be your dread" (8:11-13).

 

But it made no difference. These politicians were set on buying help from Egypt. So Isaiah was much more explicit:

 

"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots (from Egypt), because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!...Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not Spirit (as is the cherubim chariot of the Lord; Ez. 1:12)" (31:1,3).

 

And still it made no difference! Not only a persuasive deputation, but also an im­pressive cavalcade of horses and camels and asses, loaded with expensive de­lectable gifts to bewitch the heart of Pharaoh. All this was prepared in secret, and sent off by the remote southern route, to deceive friend and foe alike that this was a normal mercantile caravan bound for Sheba, maybe, but certainly not for Egypt. And that made no difference. The prophet of the Lord saw through the scheme at once, and with his public scornful "burden of the beasts of the Negeb" (an incisive double meaning here) he exposed their political chicanery:

 

"They will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit still" (30:6,7).

 

This faithlessness was a blatant sin which could not go unrebuked. Nor would it go unpunished:

 

"Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord...that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth (contrast 'Pharaoh' which in Hebrew reads very much like 'Bad Mouth'): to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt (a deliberate contrast with God's pillar of cloud and fire; Ex. 14:19,20) your confusion. For his (Pharaoh's) princes are at Zoan, and his ambassadors have come to Hanes (to meet the delegation from Jerusalem). They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them..." (30:1-5 RV).

 

What a vexation it must have been to Isaiah's political opponents to know that their best-laid schemes were known and broadcast by him, in one public diatribe after another.

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Assyrian propaganda

 

And the Assyrians knew as well. They turned the news into contemptuous propaganda to weaken yet further the morale of the people in the city. One of Rabshakeh's earliest efforts had this as his target:

 

"Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt (Hezekiah did not so trust, but his craven statesmen certainly did!); whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him" (36:6).

 

Hezekiah in his sickness was himself "a bruised reed" (42:3), yet he did not break because throughout this wearing crisis his trust was firmly in Jehovah (26:3).

 

When Rabshakeh was attempting another, later, propaganda onslaught on the besieged people,

 

"He heard say concerning Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, He is come forth to make war with thee" (37:9).

 

Rahab, whose strength was to sit still, had at last bestirred herself, but only because an invasion of Egypt itself was feared. And apparently the very size of this Egyptian thrust into Judaea caused Assyrian concern, for this time Rabshakeh was careful to make no mention of Egypt in the course of his next loud-mouthed onslaught on Jewish confidence. Perhaps he was operating on the well-tried principle of never telling the enemy anything that might give him a grain of comfort. Isaiah had already foretold Egyptian failure in this campaign:

 

"Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea (meaning, the Nile; 19:5), even in vessels of bulrushes" (18:1,2) —

 

and in the next chapter there is a highly poetic description of the entire economy of Egypt coming to a standstill (19:1-10).

 

"Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish" (19:11).

 

The battle of El-tekeh

 

Sennacherib's own description of his defeat of the Egyptians reads like this:

 

"On account of the offence they (the Jews) had committed, their heart took fright and they implored help from the kings of Egypt, bowmen, chariots of the kings of Ethiopia, an innumerable host; and indeed they came to help them. In the plain of Eltekeh (10 miles north-west of Jerusalem), their battle array being drawn up over against me, they prepared their weapons. Depending on the help of Ashur my lord (the god of Assyria) I clashed and effected their defeat. Amid the battle, my own hands captured alive the Egyptian charioteers and princes, together with charioteers belonging to the Ethiopian king" (Taylor Prism).

 

Perhaps it was this victory to which Isaiah alluded:

 

"I gave Egypt for thy (Jerusalem's) ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee" (43:3).

 

The Egyptians suffered, but for the sake of Hezekiah and his faithful ones, Jerusalem went scot-free. Whether Sennacherib did actually thrust on into Egypt is uncertain, but in the Eltekeh victory would be fulfilled Isaiah's earlier prophecy:

 

"Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt" (20:3,4).

 

Meantime, the campaign against Lachish, Libnah, and Jerusalem went on.

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15. Hezekiah's Prayers

 

King Hezekiah, laid aside and racked with pain by a killing disease, turned to his God with a prayer of intense importunity (Is. 38:9ff). That prayer, and all its moving details, has already been carefully reviewed in "Hezekiah the Great" ch. 12. But when Hezekiah recovered, one of his first resolves was: "Therefore we will sing my songs (n'ginothai) to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord" (Is. 38:20) which he was again free to frequent when cleansed from his foul disease (38:22).

 

That plural "songs" indicates that the king was not content that one psalm only should celebrate his astonishing recovery. Today it is well recognized that besides Isaiah 38 the fifteen Songs of Degrees were compiled or composed to commemorate the marvellous double deliverance (38:5,6) by which that first intense prayer was answered.

 

Self-revealing Psalms

 

What is less clearly recognized is that the king's psychology and his unflagging devotion to his God are even more evident in certain of the 'Asaph' and 'Sons of Korah' psalms, some of which could well have been written by Hezekiah himself (see "Psalms", HAW).

 

"Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; for my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength...Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put away my acquain­tance far from me: thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth (how this verse describes the 'side-effects' of his leprosy!). Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: Lord, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Ps. 88:2-12 — verses 10-12 echo Isaiah 38:18,19; compare 77:1-10).

 

Even in the moments of greatest despair, hope was not lost entirely:

 

"Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work (i.e. the reward for it) with my God" (Is. 49:4).

 

There was even remonstration that God should be, apparently, so indifferent to the suffering and the cry of His devoted servant:

 

"I will say unto God my Rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy" (Ps. 42:9).

 

At the back of this constant pleading was an intense eagerness to join once again in the worship of Jehovah in the temple:

 

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God (the God of the living creatures): when shall I come and appear before God?...for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday (Hezekiah's renewal of Passover observance). Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance" (Ps. 42:1-5) - "the health of my countenance" (v.11).

 

Psalm 102 has a most poignant description of the stricken king's sufferings:

 

"My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass: so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert...I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping...for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth: and I am withered like grass" (102:3-11).

 

"He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days" (102:23,24).

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The Faith of King and Prophet

 

Never was despair complete. Always there were flickerings of hope that God would come to the rescue:

 

"Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications...My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning" (130:1,2,6).

 

Then Isaiah, already wending his way from the palace in wretchedness as intense as the king's own grief, was turned back to the royal presence by a further word of inspiration which transformed the entire situation:

 

"Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria" (2 Kgs. 20:5,6).

 

This pronouncement, and its open sign — a cake of figs — immediately took Hezekiah into a new world. Here was promised restoration not only for the king but also for his nation. There was no hesitation in believing the promise fully, only eagerness for its fulfilment:

 

"O send out thy light (the promised appearance of the Shekinah Glory of the Lord) and thy truth (the ensuing fulfilment of the Davidic promise — a continuing seed sitting on David's throne): let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill (the assurance that 'on the third day he would go up to the house of the Lord'), even to thy great dwelling place (the Hebrew has an intensive plural here)" (Ps. 43:3).

 

And in complete faith Isaiah prophesied to the nation, and especially to Shebna the mercenary careerist, that very speedily the king would be once again in full control of the nation's affairs.

 

"I (the Lord) will clothe him with thy robe (Shebna's), and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder: so he shall open and none shall shut; and he shall shut and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place: and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house (i.e. the house of David). And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue (Hezekiah's begetting of children)" (Is. 22:21-24; see later commentary on this).

 

This reading rescues a magnificent prophecy from the expository obscurity in which it has been shrouded for centuries.

 

From the first moment of prophetic reassurance Hezekiah believed very firmly that it would so come to pass:

 

"God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me (in the temple, on the third day)" (Ps. 49:1 5).

 

"I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more" (71:14). "Thou hast holden my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after Glory thou shalt receive me (Heb)...My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever...It is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works" (73:23-28).

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16. Hezekiah, healed and thankful

 

The promise of recovery had come to Hezekiah. The prophet had returned to the presence of the stricken king with this heartening message. Without hesitation Hezekiah believed that it would be even as it was told him. He even began to celebrate in advance his impending cure. According to divine instruction a cake of figs was laid "on the boil". And still nothing happened.

 

A sign from heaven

 

However Isaiah, as confident as Hezekiah himself, now on God's behalf offered a sign: Shall the shadow on the staircase sun-dial going up to the temple go forward or back ten steps?

 

Unlike his foolish father, (Is. 7:11,12), Hezekiah did not refuse the sign, but instead, swinging to the other extreme he chose the more faith-testing token. But suppose it didn't happen? — this phenomenon was unique in that generation, except for the one earlier experience of Isaiah himself (ch.6). The supposition was absurd. Hezekiah knew for sure that it would happen. And of course it did — but only through the importunity of the faithful prophet:

 

"Isaiah the prophet
cried unto the Lord,
and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz (the faithless)" (2 Kgs. 20:11).

 

Isaiah had promised: "Thine eyes shall see the King (the Lord of hosts) in his beauty (the Shekinah Glory)" (33:17), and the king looking out of his window saw for himself, and rejoiced in this fantastic sign as a guarantee of a double wonder promis­ed to him — not only the healing of the unclean creeping horror now gripping him but also the deliverance of the holy city from the unclean horde now creeping irresistibly across the countryside.

 

When at last the Glory of the Lord was revealed, and all flesh saw it together (see "Hezekiah the Great" ch.11) the excitement of the afflicted king was intense.

 

"I shall not die but live (contrast Is. 38:1), and declare the works of the Lord.

 

The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death.

 

Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord" (Ps. 118:17-19).

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Joyful and thankful

 

And once he was recovered, Hezekiah bore glad witness concerning all that God had done for him:

 

"Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. But verily God hath heard me: he hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me" (Ps. 66:16-20).

 

And blessed be the memory of such a man who, through the worst of such a hard­ship, lived so close to such a God:

 

"I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me...I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul" (Ps. 116:1-4).

 

With the king's recovery there came a drastic reversion to the more wholesome standards of government which the nation had known in the earlier years of his reign:

 

"The Lord is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion with judgment and righteousness. And wisdom and knowledge (of God) shall be the stability of thy (Hezekiah's) times, and the strength of (Jerusalem's) salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure" (Is. 33:5,6),

 

of more value in his sight than all the tribute so lavishly and futilely paid out to Sennacherib.

 

"One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob (the Supplanter); and another shall subscribe himself with his hand, unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel"

 

(44:5) — possible allusions to Eliakim the high priest and Shebna and Joah the recorder with his name changed to Joel.

 

With the more wholesome government and more godly policies now brought back, men in Jerusalem would think of the earlier prophecy, so Messianic in flavour, which Isaiah had published at the time of the king's bar-mitzvah:

 

"And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick under­standing in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins." (Is. 11:1-5).

 

And in later days Isaiah, looking back with awe and wonder at all that had befallen Hezekiah and his city and his people, saw the divine shaping of all these events as a marvellous foreshadowing of a greater redemption to be brought through God's promised Messiah:

 

"He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge (by their knowing of him?) shall my righteous Servant justify many: for he shall bear their iniquities, Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong" (53:10-12).

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17. Panic in Jerusalem

 

Whilst Hezekiah was yet a sick man, and whilst not only he but also Isaiah and his faithful remnant were agonizing with intense wrestlings of soul for an evidence of God's healing mercy, most of Jerusalem's citizens were paralysed with panic, for now it seemed that nothing could save the city.

 

One of the Assyrian armies was drawing ominously nearer. All the smooth words which earlier had made the people almost delirious with relief and reassurance were now, with what bitterness, recognized as just so much diplomatic claptrap, not worth the paper they had been so impressively written on. The equally false backstairs bargaining with Pharaoh which had earlier given promise of relief was now exposed as so much futility. True, there was word of a massive army of Ethio­pians on the move; but, alas, they moved more slowly than any of Egypt's sleepy crocodiles. So Jerusalem was left to its own resources. And it had none — no faith in the God of their fathers (had he not denounced them by His prophets and cast them off?), no hope that their erstwhile wonderful king would recover and save them, no confidence in the interim government which had lately specialised in making such a mess of things, no trust in the makeshift defences which had been hastily improvised, and no reason at all to believe that the pathetically small and demoralised army would be of any use at all when it was needed. Apparently there was a mass exodus by those who should have been stalwart to defend the city; so says a Sennacherib inscription:

 

"As for Hezekiah, the awful splendour of my lordship overwhelmed him, and the irregular and regular troops which he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his royal city, fell away" (Taylor Prism; Is. 21:13-17 suggests that these "irregulars" were Arab mercenary soldiers).

 

Desperation

 

Now in the city there seemed to be only consternation and hopelessness:

 

"O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke (like the burning villages round about) against the sheep of thy pasture?" (Ps. 74:1).

 

"Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel be no more in remembrance" (Ps. 83:1-4).

 

And Isaiah apostrophized Jerusalem as having "drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury: thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out. There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth; (Hezekiah laid aside, and his cabinet demoralised)...Behold, I have taken out , of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury: thou shalt no more drink it again" (Is. 51:17,18,22).

 

But just now the holy city seemed destined to be "cast down into destruction... utterly consumed with terrors" (Ps. 73:18,19). The sun and moon (of Israel) were darkened, and the stars had withdrawn their shining (Joel 3:15).

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Flight a futility

 

Now amongst many in Jerusalem, and especially in the hearts of those who until Hezekiah's recovery had held the reins of government there was panic. They fled from the doomed city like rats from a sinking ship:

 

"For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning (to Me) and rest (in Me) shall ye be saved: in quietness and in confidence (in Me) shall be your strength; and ye would not. But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ten thousand flee: till ye (in the city) be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on a hill" (Is. 30:15-1 7, with LXX emendation).

 

These attempts at flight mostly ended in worse calamity. The fugitives fell into the hands of hostile cavalry and archers:

 

"All thy rulers are fled together, they are bound by the archers: all that are found in thee are bound together, which have fled from far. Therefore said I, Look away from me; I will weep bitterly, labour not to comfort me because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people" (22:3,4).

 

The few who did avoid capture found themselves miserable and helpless in the

great empty spaces of the Negeb:

 

"He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way" (Ps. 107:40; contrast v.41 about the renewed blessing on Hezekiah).

 

At this crucial time, faith in the God of Israel was infallibly sorting out the people of Israel into sheep and goats.

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18. The faithful remnant

 

From the days of Israel in the wilderness, right up to the present day (and in the New Israel also) there has always been a dichotomy. It was so, very markedly, in the days of Hezekiah, even at the time when the enemy was at the gates — a faithful few put their trust in the God of their fathers and in the unflinching propagation of truth by His prophets, whilst the majority either followed a religion of formality or relied on the scheming of politicians.

 

It was for the sake of the former group, and in spite of the latter, that such an amazing divine salvation was wrought in those days of desperate fear and taut nerves and fervent prayer.

 

In all the Old Testament no prophet gave so much prominence to the faithful remnant as did Isaiah. This rather pathetic unpowerful minority believed the assurances which reached them from "the valley of vision" and, in the face of an accumulation of frightening circumstances, they held on with tenacious loyalty. Through the evil days of Ahaz these never lost heart. Isaiah's encouragement was constantly being renewed to them (1:9; 3:10; 6:13; 8:16; 10:20-23).

 

Isaiah's leadership

 

Then, at the time of Hezekiah's reformation, his heartening words were scarcely needed. For a while an extraordinary surge of godliness carried great numbers of the people along. But, as in the reformation headed by John the Baptist, in the souls of the majority the enthusiasm was short-lived, so that when at last the threatened Assyrian invasion materialised it was only among his faithful remnant that Isaiah found a steadfast faith. These had his unflagging care:

 

"The Lord hath founded Zion (he declared staunchly), and the poor of his people shall trust in it (Him?)" (14:32).

 

He foretold that in the evil days when the entire land seemed to be reduced to a wilderness, there would always be the few whose faith was unquenchable:

 

"Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord God of Israel. At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images" (1 7:6-8).

 

His prayers for the faithful

 

Isaiah was not only the mouthpiece of the Lord to these faithful ones, but also in very moving terms he was their spokesman in prayer before God:

 

"O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou their (our?) arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble" (33:2). "Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them" (26:16).

 

These faithful ones were encouraged to think of themselves as the true seed of Abraham:

 

"Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. (These figures of speech are now interpreted): Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone (a
very
small faithful remnant!), and blessed him, and increased him" (51:1,2).

 

There is here an implicit promise that as God brought Abraham through many vicissitudes, so also these would be preserved and blessed.

 

"Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law: fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings" (51:7).

 

It is not clear whether the allusion here is to the biting Assyrian propaganda of Rabshakeh, or to the supercilious criticism of the worldly priests and aristos in Jerusalem.

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The scorners

 

Regarding these latter Isaiah had one sustained passage of searing sarcasm. He called them "the drunkards of Ephraim" because their apostasy was every bit as bad as that of the northern kingdom:

 

"They also have erred through wine...the priest and the (false) prophet have erred through strong drink..." (28:7).

 

Then follows their drunken mockery of the earnest disciples Isaiah had gathered round him:

 

"Whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts (they are no better than mindless children!). For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept..." (28:9,10).

 

Here the NIV is very effective in its repetitious simplicity:

 

"Do and do, do and do,

rule on rule, rule on rule,

a little here, a little there"

 

And, indeed, this drunken mimicry of Isaiah's insistent instruction of his followers was not only cleverly done but also accurate, for right through his prophecy the message is expressed in parallelism, every single detail being said at least twice. Very well, then, says Isaiah in sardonic response to their ridicule, that is how you shall receive the word of the Lord:

 

"For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people to whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear" (28:11,12).

 

This remarkable passage is often read as having reference to the Assyrian invaders, as though saying: 'If you won't listen to the word which I bring you from the Lord, instead He will instruct you through the uncouth ill-understood bullying of these brutal warriors.'

 

But much more probably the context (and also the apostle Paul's use of this scripture in 1 Cor. 14:21) suggests a different reference — to those of Isaiah's faithful remnant who had come from the northern tribes (as also the disciples of Jesus came from Galilee) to keep Passover in Jerusalem. These with their northern dialect and lack of education would repeat Isaiah's insistent message now so drunkenly parodied:

 

"Tzav latzav, tsav latzav,

Qav laqav, qav laqav

Z'ir sham, z'ir sham"

 

Thus these simple-minded devout folk would bear witness to "the rest" and "the refreshing" which God was offering in these war-torn times. And the outcome was in every way appropriate. For those who scorned the message sought refuge in flight into the wilderness and instead found capture, torture, and death (Chapter 17). But these faithful ones, whose piety had brought them to Jerusalem to honour the Lord for His ancient Passover salvation now found their own salvation in the only place which proved immune to Assyrian assault. (Other "faithful remnant" passages: Isaiah 24:13-16; 25:4; 26:2,3,7,8; 30:15; 50:10; 59:20; 65:8,9; 66:5).

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19. Safety assured in Jerusalem

 

Before ever Jerusalem came under direct threat from the Assyrians, Hezekiah was assured that his capital would be inviolate. When Isaiah brought the message of the king's imminent restoration to health, it was also revealed that:

 

"I (the Lord) will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city" (Is. 38:6).

 

It was after this (so 37:14 indicates) that Sennacherib sent his boastful manifesto to Jerusalem, and Hezekiah, distressed by the fierce confidence of it, sought reassurance from his God, and got it through His prophet in words of warm comfort:

 

"Out of Jerusalem shall go forth (to their homes) a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion...He (the king of Assyria) shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it...For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake" (37:32-35).

 

In point of fact Jerusalem was invested (36:2), the siege did begin (see ch.20), but the aggressive military steps needful for the capture of the city were never initiated.

 

The city of God is safe

 

Certain of Isaiah's prophecies as events moved to their crisis show very clearly that this man of God was making constant witness to the beleaguered people that God would not allow His holy city to fall into pagan hands:

 

"The people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee (the king) at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee. And though the Lord give you (the people) the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers (Isaiah and his fellow-prophets? or — intensive plural — Hezekiah, the outstanding teacher) be removed into a corner any more" (30:19,20).

 

In another place (31:4,5) Isaiah has the graphic simile of Jerusalem and the besieg­ing forces being likened to a lion (Ariel, the lion of God; 29:1) roaring against the confederacy of shepherds who want to see it destroyed:

 

"He will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion." "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly...he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him: his waters shall be sure" (33:15,16).

 

Joel, a fellow-prophet, speaking of "the great and terrible day of the Lord" was at least as explicit:

 

"In mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said (through Isaiah), and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call" (Joel 2:32).

 

But the most vivid passages of this character come in some of the Hezekiah psalms, although it is difficult to be sure whether some of these are inspired anticipations or jubilant God-glorifying celebrations of a deliverance, that has already taken place:

 

"He (the Lord) hath strengthened the bars of thy gates: he hath blessed thy children within thee" (Ps. 147:13).

 

"As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people" (125:2).

 

"God is in the midst of her; God shall help her, and that right early" (46:5).

 

"Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come" (102:13; here
mo'ed
describes a feast of the Lord, in this case, Passover — see chapter 25 — when deliverance came, and judgment on the oppressors).

 

"Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole Land is Zion, on the sides of the north (not only the temple in its north-eastern corner, but also the Assyrians coming from the north and encamping on mount Scopus), the city of the great King (Jehovah, not Sennacherib). God is known in her palaces for a refuge" (48:2,3).

 

The Messianic anticipations in these passages is very easy to discern.

 

Well might Isaiah speak of "the Lord thy Redeemer" as one who

 

"confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, ye shall be built" (Is. 44:26).

 

It is to be noted that there is no promise here of Jerusalem being re-built, for in Isaiah's day the city went unscathed.

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20. Jerusalem invested

 

The situation seemed hopeless. The city was surrounded by hostile armies. True, no attack had been made as yet (nor was it; Is. 37:33), but all supplies were cut off, the uncertain Egyptian ally showed little sign of being an efficient rescuer, and within the walls — until Hezekiah's marvellous recovery and resumption of leadership — there were divided counsels.

 

From early on, Isaiah had anticipated that the Assyrian campaign would develop in this way. He described

 

"the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge (a bothy) in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city" (1:8).

 

With a different figure of speech the idea was repeated. Assyrian power will be like the great river Euphrates overflowing its banks in spring time:

 

"He shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck" (8:8).

 

The metaphor describes a man almost drowned, with only his head (the city of Jerusalem) out of the water.

 

As the evil days drew nearer and the horror intensified, the picture was painted in yet more stark colours:

 

"A day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision (even the prophets were puzzled — or is this describing the Kidron valley full of soldiers?)...Thy choicest valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen (of Assyria) shall set themselves in array at the gate" (22:5,7).

 

The watchman, looking out across the countryside saw only signs of devastation and impending calamity for the isolated capital:

 

"I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem (the fine country houses with which the aristocracy had indulged themselves)" (Amos 2:5).

 

There was no sign of help at all:

 

"Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south" (Ps. 75:6).

 

Aid from the north was, of course, clean out of question, for the Assyrians came from that point of the compass.

 

Sennacherib's own Bull Inscription represents Jerusalem's prospects as hopeless:

 

"Hezekiah himself I shut up like a caged bird within Jerusalem his royal city. I put watch posts strictly round it, and turned back to his disaster any who went out of its city gate."

 

On this Winton Thomas comments: " 'Watch posts' indicates a close blockade rather than a military assault on the city."

 

All the prophetic pictures have the same element of misery about them:

 

"Her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he (the Assyrian) is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem" (Mic. 1:9).

 

"Now also many nations (see Isaiah 21) are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion" (4:11)

 

— the rapist gloating over his victim!

 

But in describing the parlous plight of the holy city, Isaiah remains the master of them all:

 

"These two things are come unto thee...desolation and destruction, and the famine and the sword (but why does he say two, and then enumerate four?); by whom shall I comfort thee? Thy sons have fainted...they are full of the fury of the Lord" (51:19,20).

 

"I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee (contrast 37:30). And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust...as of one that hath a familiar spirit" (29:3,4).

 

Jerusalem as good as dead!

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