Monday, July 29, 2024

Isaiah berates King Hezekiah for trusting, not in God, but in weaponry and defence works

by Damien F. Mackey “The Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah, and you looked in that day to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest. You saw that the walls of the City of David were broken through in many places; you stored up water in the Lower Pool. You counted the buildings in Jerusalem and tore down houses to strengthen the wall. You built a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the Old Pool, but you did not look to the One who made it, or have regard for the One who planned it long ago. Isaiah 22:8-11 It was the Lord’s work. He, it was, who had stripped Judah naked of its defence cities, most notably Lachish. The point being made was that Jerusalem, the capital of ‘a godless nation’, was now utterly defenceless against the might of Assyria - a might that was being Divinely driven according to Isaiah 10:5-6: ‘Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets’. King Sennacherib of Assyria, however, was totally out of touch with the Divine Plan. All the might, he thought, emanated from his own glorious self (Sennacherib Prism): As for Hezekiah the Judahite, who did not submit to my yoke: forty-six of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small towns in their area, which were without number, by levelling with battering-rams and by bringing up siege-engines, and by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels, and breeches, I besieged and took them. 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil. (Hezekiah) himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. Those who mistakenly think that this was the occasion of Judah’s miraculous deliverance from the Assyrians are forced to conclude that Sennacherib’s words here were an empty boast. They weren’t. This is exactly what the Assyrians managed to do to Judah during Sennacherib’s first major campaign there. Look at the archaeology of once strong forts such as Lachish. Isaiah tells us just what was the mentality of Sennacherib at the time (10:7-14): But this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations. ‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says. ‘Has not Kalno fared like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad, and Samaria like Damascus? As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria— shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?’ When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes. For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their kings. As one reaches into a nest, so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations; as people gather abandoned eggs, so I gathered all the countries; not one flapped a wing, or opened its mouth to chirp”.’ However, it was the Lord, not Sennacherib, so Isaiah tells us, who was really fighting against Judah and Jerusalem: ‘When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem …’. Assyria was merely serving as God’s potent instrument, “the rod of my anger”, “the club of my wrath”, my “axe”, but soon to be discarded (vv. 15-19): Does the axe raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it? As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up, or a club brandish the one who is not wood! Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame. The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers. The splendor of his forests and fertile fields it will completely destroy, as when a sick person wastes away. And the remaining trees of his forests will be so few that a child could write them down. So, today, do nations rely upon, boast of, their defences, their Iron Dome missile systems and their mighty armouries, not taking to heart that it is the Lord who guides the fortunes of the nations and who determines outcomes (Isaiah 45:6-7): ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things’. … but you did not look to the One who made it, or have regard for the One who planned it long ago. ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword’ (Matthew 26:52). Sennacherib will be severely punished for his blasphemous boasting against the Lord, “for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes”. But King Hezekiah of Judah will also need to be brought down a peg or two. Did not even Sennacherib himself refer to the King of Judah as “the strong, proud Hezekiah” (Sennacherib’s Bull Inscriptions)? King Hezekiah was second only to David King Hezekiah of Judah had, like all of us, his own particular faults and failings. He was proud. But he was a good pious king, second only to King David amongst the Kings of Judah. If that seems to be what was said also about the great reforming king, Josiah, then I have no problem whatsoever with that. See e.g. my article: Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses (5) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu in which I arrive at the conclusion that King Josiah was King Hezekiah. But King Hezekiah (Josiah) had yet to learn about faith and complete trust in the Lord. It is a lesson that we all need to learn - and quickly, the way that the world is going. Meanwhile, even as his fortified cities are falling like dominoes to the Assyrian army, King Hezekiah is to be found frantically gathering weapons and fortifying Jerusalem. It must have been on this occasion that King Hezekiah built the great moat of Jerusalem, recently found, surely the same as the pool: King Hezekiah made the pool in Jerusalem (5) King Hezekiah made the pool in Jerusalem | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Some are assigning the moat to the time of King Josiah of Judah. Again, I have no problem with that if King Josiah was King Hezekiah. The following 2009 article is taken from: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/a-tiny-piece-of-the-puzzle/ A Tiny Piece of the Puzzle Six-Letter Inscription Suggests Monumental Building of Hezekiah By Hershel Shanks Ancient Jerusalem sometimes reveals itself in little bits. In this case, it is a tiny inscription with only six letters preserved. So little remains of ancient Israel in the City of David (the 12-acre ridge where the oldest inhabited part of Jerusalem is located) because later inhabitants continually destroyed evidence of earlier occupation. Over the millennia, the stones that made up the houses, temples and monuments of Iron Age Jerusalem were swept aside and scattered to make room for new settlements. A few years ago, archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron discovered a huge water pool at the southern tip of the City of David that dates to the time of Jesus. This is entirely different from the tiny pool nearby that was long thought to be the Pool of Siloam. The new pool is undoubtedly the one to which the New Testament refers when it describes the man, blind from birth, who was miraculously cured by Jesus at “the Pool of Siloam” (John 9:1–11).a The Pool of Siloam is at the outlet to another well-known monument in the City of David: Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This 1,750-foot-long tunnel begins at the Gihon Spring (ancient Jerusalem’s only flowing water source) and winds its way west and south until it debouches into the Pool of Siloam. In 1880 some boys swimming in the tunnel discovered an inscription engraved into the wall near the southern outlet. Later vandals chiseled the inscription out of the wall. Eventually, the Ottoman authorities seized it and sent it to Istanbul. To this day, it remains one of the highlights of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The famous inscription written in late-eighth-century B.C. script describes how two teams dug the tunnel from opposite ends and met in the middle. How they managed to do it remains somewhat of a puzzle. But you can still walk through the water-filled tunnel and decide for yourself.b The tunnel brought water from the spring outside the city wall into the city as a safety measure for whenever it would be dangerous to venture outside. This was probably critical to the city’s survival when the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib besieged the city in 701 B.C. Recently Reich and Shukron found a small piece of white limestone (5.3 x 3.7 inches [13.5 x 9.5 cm]) that adds one small, intriguing piece to the puzzle of Jerusalem in the eighth century B.C. It is broken on all sides and is engraved with just six paleo-Hebrew letters, the kind used before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Unfortunately, the stone was found in a thick fill, rather than in a stratified context. But the pottery sherds in the fill all dated to the eighth century B.C., which was the first hint of the date of the inscription on the stone. The second hint was the shape of the six letters. They closely resemble the letters of the Siloam Inscription discovered in Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Hezekiah’s workmen dug the tunnel in the late eighth century B.C. when, as adverted to earlier in this article, the Judahite king was preparing for a siege of Jerusalem by the fearsome Assyrian monarch Sennacherib—a siege that came in 701 B.C. The siege was unsuccessful [sic], however, and Jerusalem no doubt survived in part because of the water carried into the city by the tunnel. All this is described in the Bible (2 Chronicles 32; 2 Kings 18–20), as well as in a cuneiform account in which Sennacherib boasts that he had Hezekiah imprisoned like “a bird in a cage.” But Sennacherib makes no claim to having conquered the city. What makes the new six-letter inscription especially tantalizing is that it was part of an impressive monumental inscription, probably part of some large public building. But what did it say? Alas, we will never know for sure. The possibilities, however, are intriguing. The six letters are arranged in two lines. In the second line, a dot separates the second and the third letter. Dots were customarily used to divide the words of monumental inscriptions at that time. Thus, in the second line we have two letters of one word and one letter of a second word. The three letters of the first line are all part of a single word. The letters on the first line are qyh. This is enough to tell the excavators that it is probably part of a personal name ending in –yahu, a so-called theophoric element, referring to the personal name of the Israelite God, Yahweh. However, several names in the eighth century B.C. ended this way. And several of them incorporate this three-letter sequence. The excavators refrain from expressing any preference. But one leading Biblical scholar in Jerusalem told me that he was sure of what the name was: [Hiz]qyh[w] = Hizqiyahu, or “Hezekiah” in English! The first word in the second line includes the two letters kh. Again there are several possibilities, and the excavators express no preference. But the Bible scholar I spoke with is sure he knows: [br]kh = beracha, or “pool” in English. There must have been a pool at the termination of Hezekiah’s Tunnel even in the First Temple period, as there was in the Second Temple period, when Jesus walked this earth, and as there has always been since then. Perhaps this fragment of a monumental inscription graced a public building erected by King Hezekiah in connection with the pool. This little fragment of stone is only the latest evidence of a thriving metropolis at Jerusalem during the First Temple period. In an excavation in the City of David led by the late Yigal Shiloh, a fragment from a similar monumental inscription was discovered, though on a different kind of stone. Still another such inscription was found further north in an excavation led by Benjamin Mazar and Meir Ben-Dov. Piece by tiny piece, a picture of ancient Jerusalem comes into focus.1 ….

No comments: