The Expositor's Bible Part 26

Isaiah was one of those men whom G.o.d provides for the need of kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have been different.

But the position of things was indeed disastrous. Judah was attacked from every side. On the south-east the Edomites renewed their devastating raids, and swept off mult.i.tudes of captives, who were sold as slaves in the Western slave-markets. On the south-west the Philistines once more rose in revolt, and acquired permanent repossession of many parts of the Shephelah, mastering Beth-Shemesh, Ajalon, Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath, Gimzo, and all the adjacent districts. But this was nothing compared with the humiliation and destruction inflicted by Rezin and Pekah. They shut up Ahaz in Jerusalem; and though they could not storm its almost impregnable defences, which had recently been fortified by Uzziah and Jotham, they were undisputed masters of the rest of the land, so that Judah was "brought low and made naked."[442] Rezin, indeed, weary of a tedious siege, swept southwards to Elath, on the gulf of Akabah, seized it, and peopled it with an Edomite garrison, thereby destroying the commerce in which Solomon and Jehoshaphat had taken pride, and which Uzziah had recently re-established. Having thus left an effectual annoyance to Judah in his rear, he gave up the design of dethroning Ahaz and subst.i.tuting in his place "_the son of Tabeal_," who would have been a tool in the hands of the confederate kings. He seized, however, a mult.i.tude of captives, and with them and with much booty he returned to Damascus. "The son of Tabeal"--a name which occurs nowhere else--has been found very puzzling.[443] I believe it to be simply an instance of the Rabbinic process of transposition, called _Themourah_. Some identify it with Itibi'alu of an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. Others suppose that he was a Syrian, and that Tabeal stands for Tabrimnon. But by the application of Themourah (called the _Albam_) Tabeal simply gives us "Remaliah," and is either a scornful variation of the name of Pekah's father, or has arisen from the watchword of a secret conspiracy. Since in the text of Jeremiah (li. 41, xxv. 26) (by _Atbash_, another form of the secret transposition of letters of which the generic name was _Gematria_) we read _Sheshach_ for Babel, the name Tabeal may have been dealt with in a similar method.[444] Pekah, according to the Chronicler, inflicted far deadlier injuries than Rezin. In one day he slew one hundred and twenty thousand "sons of valour," because they had forsaken Jehovah, G.o.d of their fathers. His general Zichri, a mighty Ephraimite, slew Maaseiah, the king's son;[445] and Azrikam, the chancellor; and Elkanah, "the second to the king." The army carried away two hundred thousand captives and much spoil to Samaria. But on their arrival, a prophet named Oded[446] reproved the Israelites for having ma.s.sacred the Judaeans "in a rage that reacheth to heaven." Aided by various princes, he succeeded in inducing the people to refuse to harbour the captives, and clothed, fed, and sent them back unharmed to Jericho, mounting the feeble on horses and a.s.ses. The story bears on the face of it the signs of enormous exaggeration.

In the crisis of their miseries, but just before the siege, Ahaz had gone outside the city walls "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the causeway of the fuller's field," probably to look after the water-supply, which had always been a difficulty for Jerusalem, and on which depended her capacity to withstand a siege. Here he was met by the prophet Isaiah, who was leading by the hand the little son to whom he had given the name of "Shear-jashub" ("A remnant shall return"),[447] as a witness to the truth of the prophecy which he had heard on the occasion of his call,--

"And if there should yet be a tenth in it, this shall be again consumed; yet as the terebinth and the oak, though cut down, have their stock remaining, even so a sacred seed shall be the stock thereof."[448]

The object of the prophet was to cheer up the fainting heart of the king, and to say to him first,--

"Take heed, and be quiet."

This mandate probably refers to rumours--which Isaiah must have heard--of the king's intention to follow the counsels of the party which urged him to seek foreign a.s.sistance. One of these parties advised him to throw himself into the arms of Egypt, and rely on her protection; the other gave the more perilous counsel of invoking the aid of a.s.syria.

Isaiah's mandate to the king and to the nation was to take neither step, but to trust in the Lord, and to repent of individual and national misdoing. He summed up his message in the rule,--

"In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

The advice was emphasised by a promise of the most decisive and encouraging kind. When all looked so helpless, the prophet was bidden to say,--

"Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for these two stumps of smoking torches, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of Remaliah's son. They have taken evil counsel against thee. But thus saith the Lord G.o.d, 'It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pa.s.s. For the head of Syria is only Rezin, and the head of Samaria is a mere Remaliah's son.'"[449]

And then, to confirm the lesson of confidence in G.o.d, the brief a.s.surance,--

"If ye will not confide, Surely ye shall not abide."

Convinced of the certainty of this immediate deliverance, Isaiah bade the king to ask for a sign from Jehovah, either in the height above, or in the depth beneath.

But the timid and hypocritical king was not so to be influenced. He had on his side "the scornful men, who ruled Judah"; the mocking priests, who sneered and jeered at Isaiah's teaching as repet.i.tive and commonplace, and only fit for children; and the princes and n.o.bles, who formed the Court party, headed by Shebna the scribe. He probably looked on Isaiah as a mere unpractical faddist, an excited fanatic--all very well as a prophet, but not a man who ought to thrust himself into the plans of politicians. Ahaz had his own plans, and he had not the smallest intention of altering them in consequence of anything which Isaiah might say. He was far too timid and unfaithful to rely on anything so vague as Divine a.s.surance. He was convinced that his only chance lay in the horses of Egypt or the fierce infantry of a.s.syria. So he said with sham piety, merely intended to put the prophet off, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah."

That moment marks what may be called the birth-throe of Messianic prophecy in its most specific character. For then the prophet, after reproving the king for wearying Jehovah as well as His servants, adds, in words of far wider and deeper significance than their immediate bearing, that Jehovah Himself should give a sign; for the maiden should conceive and bear a Son, and call His name Immanuel ("G.o.d with us"). The child should grow up in a time of scarcity; for owing to the devastation of the land, he would only be able to be nurtured on curdled milk and honey. But before he had reached years of discretion--before he had arrived at the power of moral choice--the land whose two kings Ahaz abhorred should be a desert. Yet let not Ahaz exult too much in the immediate deliverance! Days of unexampled misery were at hand. Jehovah should hiss for the fly from the farthest ca.n.a.ls of Egypt, and for the bee of a.s.syria, and they should settle in swarms in the valleys and pastures. Ahaz--he had not alluded to the design, but Isaiah knew it well--was about to hire a razor from beyond the Euphrates, but that razor should sweep away the hair and beard of Judah. Agriculture should languish, and the people should only be able to live in privation on whey and honey; and the vineyards should be full of briers and thorns, and should be mere places for hunting.[450]

This event, therefore, as Caspari says, stands at the turning-point of Old Testament History. It marks the beginning of that second period of the History of the Chosen People in which their hopes were granted as a counterpoise to their anguish and their humiliation. "It stood, therefore, at the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of the prophet which reached out over the whole development of the people of G.o.d."

To all such prophecies Ahaz was utterly deaf: they did not for a moment induce him to swerve from his purpose. But to call still further attention to his promise as the Syrian Ephraimitish host pressed forward, Isaiah took a great piece of vellum, and inscribed on it, in the ordinary characters,--

"SPEED-PLUNDER-HASTE-SPOIL."

He put it up in some conspicuous place, before his own house or in the Temple, and took the priest Urijah and Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah, into his confidence as faithful witnesses. He told them the explanation of his sign, and they would satisfy the curiosity of the people on the subject. It meant that in nine months' time his wife should bear a son, and that he and his wife, the prophetess, would call the boy's name "Speed-plunder-haste-spoil," as a sign that before the child was able to say "Father" or "Mother" Rezin and Pekah should be extinguished. For the a.s.syrian should speed to the plunder and haste to the spoil, and the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria should be carried away by the King of a.s.syria. Since Judah despised "the soft flowing waters of Shiloah,"[451] and preferred Rezin and Pekah,[452]

they should be deluged by the Euphrates of a.s.syria, and a.s.syria's outspread wings should overshadow thy land, O Immanuel (viii. 1-8). How vain, then, of the people to try and meet the confederacy of Syria and Ephraim by new confederacy of Judah with a.s.syria! This, after all, is Immanuel's land. G.o.d is with us. We have but to fear G.o.d, we have but to be faithful to duty, and Jehovah shall be our sanctuary, though He be a stumbling-block to many in Israel, and a snare to many in Jerusalem.[453] This is G.o.d's teaching and G.o.d's testimony, and Isaiah and his children are signs of it. For does not Isaiah mean "Salvation of Jehovah"; and Shear-jashub, "A remnant shall return"; and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Swift-spoil-speedy-prey"; and Immanuel, "G.o.d is with us"? What need, then, to seek wizards and necromancers? Seek G.o.d; confide, abide![454] Trouble and darkness there should be; but all was not utterly hopeless. Northern Israel had been bedimmed and afflicted; but soon they should be exalted, and see light, and their yoke be broken as in the day of Midian, and the trampling boot and blood-stained mantle of the warrior shall be burned in the fire: for a Child is born, a Son is given unto us of David's line, who shall be a Mighty Deliverer, a Prince of Peace,--and Israel shall perish.

FOOTNOTES:

[442] 2 Chron. xxviii. 19.

[443] It may mean "G.o.d is good" (Tabeel).

[444] For further explanations I must refer to my paper on Rabbinic Exegesis (_Expositor_, First Series, v. 373).

[445] 2 Chron. xxviii. 7.

[446] Of Oded nothing else is known.

[447] Some, however, interpret the name "A remnant repents" (LXX., ?

?ata?e?f?e?? ?as??; Vulg., _Qui derelictus est Jaseb_).

[448] Isa. vi. 13.

[449] The words "And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people" (Isa. vii. 8), are almost certainly an interpolation: for (1) the overthrow came within far less than sixty years; (2) the clause awkwardly breaks the context; (3) the "sixty years" is inconsistent with the promise (vii. 16) that it should be within very few years.

[450] Isa. vii. 1-25.

[451] Not improbably the water which afterwards flowed through Hezekiah's new tunnel between the Virgin's Tomb and the Pool of Siloam. It is referred to in 2 Chron. x.x.xii. 3, 30 (Isa. xxii. 9-11).

See Appendix II.

[452] This, if it be correct, can only mean that the son of Tabeal had a party in Jerusalem; but Hitzig renders it "_dreadeth_," not "rejoiceth in."

[453] The meaning is by no means clear.

[454] See Driver, _Isaiah_, p. 34.

CHAPTER XXIV

_THE APOSTASIES OF AHAZ_

2 KINGS xvi. 1-18

"For when we in our wickedness grow hard, Oh misery on't! the wise G.o.ds seal our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut To our confusion."

Ahaz was indifferent to these prophecies because his heart was otherwhere. It is clear from our authorities that this king had excited an unusually deep antipathy in the hearts of those later writers who judged religion not only from the earlier standpoint, but from the stern and inexorable requirements of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes.

The historian, adopting an unusual phrase, says that "he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel." He not only continued the high places, as the best of his predecessors had done, but he increased their popularity and importance by personally offering sacrifices and burning incense "on the hills and under every green tree." It is probable, too, that he introduced into Judah horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.[455] "He made molten images for the Baalim," says the Chronicler, "and burnt incense in the valley of the son of Himmon."

This last was his crowning atrocity: he actually sanctioned the revolting worship of the abomination of the children of Ammon, which Solomon had tolerated on the mount of offence. "He made his son to pa.s.s through the fire." The Chronicler expresses it still more dreadfully by saying that "he _burnt his children_ in the fire."[456]

In the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, or of the Beni-Hinnom, of which the name is perpetuated in Gehenna, the place of torture for lost souls, there stood a frightful image of the king--Moloch, Melek, Malcham. It represented the sun-G.o.d, worshipped, not only as Baal under the emblems of prolific nature, but, like the Egyptian Typhon, as the emblem of the sun's scorching and blighting force. It was perhaps a human figure with the head of an ox. The arms of the brazen image sloped downwards over a cistern, which was filled with fuel; and when a human sacrifice was to be offered to him, the child was probably first killed, and then placed on these brazen arms as a gift to the idol. It rolled down into the flaming tank, and was consumed amid the strains of music. Recourse was only had to the most frightful form of human sacrifice--the burning of grown-up victims--in extremities of disaster, as when Mesha of Moab offered up his eldest son to Chemosh on the wall of Kir-Hareseth in the sight of his people and of the three invading armies. But the sacrifice of children was public, and perhaps annual. Hence Milton, following the learned researches of Selden in his Syntagma _De Dis Syriis_, writes:--

"First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard that pa.s.s'd through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipp'd in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the Temple of G.o.d On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant Valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the type of h.e.l.l."[457]

But it may be doubted whether Ahaz, in spite of his frightful position, or, in later days, the less excusable Mana.s.seh, really destroyed the lives of their young sons.[458] The ancients had a notion that they could easily cheat their devil-deities. If a white ox of c.l.i.tumnus became unfitted for a victim to Jupiter of the Capitol by having on its body a few black spots, it was quite sufficient to make it pa.s.s with the _Di faciles_ by chalking the black spots over it.[459] If human victims had to be thrown into the Tiber to Hercules, Numa taught the people that little wickerwork images (_scirpea_) would suit the purpose just as well.[460] Figures of dough were sometimes offered instead of human beings on the altar of Artemis of Tauris.

Thus it became the custom, it is believed, merely to throw or to pa.s.s children through or over the flames, and conventionally to _regard them_ as having been sacrificed, though they might escape the ordeal with little or no hurt. This was called _februatio_, or "l.u.s.tration by fire."[461] We may hope that this device was adopted by the two Judaean kings, and, if so, they did not add to their horrible apostasy the crime of infanticide. If, however, Ahaz was even to the smallest extent implicated in such foul idolatries, it is not surprising that he was in no mood to listen to Isaiah. What is profoundly surprising, and is indeed a circ.u.mstance for which we cannot account, is that no word of fierce indignation was addressed to him on this account by Urijah, the high priest, whom Isaiah seems to describe as faithful, or by Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah, or by Micah, or by Isaiah, who feared man so little and G.o.d so much.

The a.s.syrian party at the Court of Ahaz prevailed over the Egyptian.

Until the accession of the Ethiopian Sabaco[462] in 725, Egypt was indeed in so weak, hara.s.sed, and divided a condition under feeble native Pharaohs, that her help was obviously unavailable. The King of Judah, seeing no extrication from his calamities except in the way of worldly expediency, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser. In this he followed the precedent of his ancestor Asa, who had diverted the attack of Baasha by invoking the a.s.sistance of Syria. Ahaz sent to the a.s.syrian potentate the humble message, "I am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me from the Kings of Syria and Israel." If he had not faith to accept Isaiah's promises, what else could he do, when Syria, Israel, the Philistines, Edom, and Moab were all arrayed against him?

The amba.s.sadors probably made their way, not without peril, along the east of Jordan, or else by sea from Joppa, and so inland. Whether they took with them the enormous bribe without which the appeal of the helpless king might have been in vain, or whether this was sent subsequently under a.s.syrian escort, we do not know. It was euphemistically described as "a present" or "a blessing," but must be regarded either as a tribute or a bribe.

Tiglath-Pileser II. saw his opportunity, and at once invaded Damascus.