The Expositor's Bible Part 28

[479] His name, _Chizquiyyah_, is shortened from _Yechizquiyyahoo_ (Isa. i. 1; 2 Kings xx. 10; Hos. i. 1). It means "Jehovah's strength"

(_Gesen._), or "Yah is might" (_Frst_).

PROBABLE DATES.

B.C.

745. Accession of Tiglath-Pileser.

746. Death of Uzziah. Accession of Jotham. First vision of Isaiah (Isa. vi.).

735. Accession of Ahaz. Syro-Ephraimitish war.

734-732. Siege and capture of Damascus, and ravage of Northern Israel by Tiglath-Pileser. Visit of Ahaz to Damascus.

727. Accession of Shalmaneser IV.

722. Accession of Sargon. Capture of Samaria, and captivity of the Ten Tribes.

720. Defeat of Sabaco by Sargon at Raphia.

715(?). Accession of Hezekiah.

711. Sargon captures Ashdod.

707. Sargon defeats Merodach-Baladan, and captures Babylon.

705. Murder of Sargon. Accession of Sennacherib.

701. Sennacherib besieges Ekron. Defeats Egypt at Altaqu. Invades Judah, and spares Hezekiah. Invades Egypt, and sends the Rabshakeh to Jerusalem. Disaster of a.s.syrians at Pelusium, and disappearance from before Jerusalem.

697. Death of Hezekiah. Accession of Mana.s.seh.

681. Death of Sennacherib.

608. Battle of Megiddo. Death of Josiah.

607. Fall of Nineveh and a.s.syria. Triumph of Babylon.

605. Battle of Carchemish. Defeat of Pharaoh Necho by Nebuchadrezzar.

599. First deportation of Jews to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar.

588. Destruction of Jerusalem. Second deportation.

538. Cyrus captures Babylon.

536. Decree of Cyrus. Return of Zerubbabel and the first Jewish exiles.

458. Return of Ezra.

CHAPTER XXV

_HEZEKIAH_

B.C. 715-686[480]

2 KINGS xviii

"For Ezekias had done the thing that pleased the Lord, and was strong in the ways of David his father, as Esay the prophet, who was great and faithful in his vision, had commanded him,"--ECCLUS.

xlviii. 22.

The reign of Hezekiah was epoch-making in many respects, but especially for its religious reformation, and the relations of Judah with a.s.syria and with Babylon. It is also most closely interwoven with the annals of Hebrew prophecy, and acquires unwonted l.u.s.tre from the magnificent activity and impa.s.sioned eloquence of the great prophet Isaiah, who merits in many ways the t.i.tle of "the Evangelical Prophet," and who was the greatest of the prophets of the Old Dispensation.

According to the notice in 2 Kings xviii. 2, Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign in the third year of Hoshea of Israel. This, however, is practically impossible consistently with the dates that Ahaz reigned sixteen years and became king at the age of twenty, for it would then follow that Hezekiah was born when his father was a mere boy--and this, although Hezekiah does not seem to have been the eldest son; for Ahaz had burnt "his son," and, according to the Chronicler, more than one son, to propitiate Moloch. Probably Hezekiah was a boy of fifteen when he began to reign. The chronology of his reign of twenty-nine years is, unhappily, much confused.

The historian of the Kings agrees with the Chronicler, and the son of Sirach, in p.r.o.nouncing upon him a high eulogy, and making him equal even to David in faithfulness. There is, however, much difference in the method of their descriptions of his doings. The historian devotes but one verse to his reformation--which probably began early in his reign, though it occupied many years. The Chronicler, on the other hand, in his three chapters manages to overlook, if not to suppress, the one incident of the reformation which is of the deepest interest.

It is exactly one of those suppressions which help to create the deep misgiving as to the historic exactness of this bia.s.sed and late historian. It must be regarded as doubtful whether many of the Levitic details in which he revels are or are not intended to be literally historic. Imaginative additions to literal history became common among the Jews after the Exile, and leaders of that day instinctively drew the line between moral homiletics and literal history. It may be perfectly historical that, as the Chronicler says, Hezekiah opened and repaired the Temple; gathered the priests and the Levites together, and made them cleanse themselves; offered a solemn sacrifice; reappointed the musical services; and--though this can hardly have been till after the Fall of Samaria in 722--invited all the Israelites to a solemn, but in some respects irregular, pa.s.sover of fourteen days. It may be true also that he broke up the idolatrous altars in Jerusalem, and tossed their _debris_ into the Kidron; and (again after the deportation of Israel) destroyed some of the _bamoth_ in Israel as well as in Judah. If he reinst.i.tuted the courses of the priests, the collection of t.i.thes, and all else that he is said to have done,[481]

he accomplished quite as much as was effected in the reign of his great-grandson Josiah. But while the Chronicler dwells on all this at such length, what induces him to omit the most significant fact of all--the destruction of the brazen serpent?

The historian tells us that Hezekiah "removed the _bamoth_"--the chapels on the high places, with their ephods and teraphim--whether dedicated to the worship of Jehovah or profaned by alien idolatry.

That he did, or attempted, something of this kind seems certain; for the Rabshakeh, if we regard his speech as historical in its details, actually taunted him with impiety, and threatened him with the wrath of Jehovah on this very account. Yet here we are at once met with the many difficulties with which the history of Israel abounds, and which remind us at every turn that we know much less about the inner life and religious conditions of the Hebrews than we might infer from a superficial study of the historians who wrote so many centuries after the events which they describe. Over and over again their incidental notices reveal a condition of society and worship which violently collides with what seems to be their general estimate. Who, for instance, would not infer from this notice that in Judah, at any rate, the king's suppression of the "high places," and above all of those which were idolatrous, had been tolerably thorough? How much, then, are we amazed to find that Hezekiah had not effectually desecrated even the old shrines which Solomon had erected to Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom[482] "at the right hand of the mount of corruption"--in other words, on one of the peaks of the Mount of Olives, in full view of the walls of Jerusalem and of the Temple Hill!

"And he brake the images," or, as the R.V. more correctly renders it, "the pillars," the _matstseboth_. Originally--that is, before the appearance of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes--no objection seems to have been felt to the erection of a _matstsebah_. Jacob erected one of these _baitulia_ or anointed stones at Bethel, with every sign of Divine approval.[483] Moses erected twelve round his altar at Sinai.[484] Joshua erected them in Shechem and on Mount Ebal. Hosea, in one pa.s.sage (iii. 4), seems to mention pillars, ephods, and teraphim as legitimate objects of desire. Whether they have any relation to obelisks, and what is their exact significance, is uncertain; but they had become objects of just suspicion in the universal tendency to idolatry, and in the deepening conviction that the second commandment required a far more rigid adherence than it had hitherto received.

"And cut down the groves"--or rather the Asherim, the wooden, and probably in some instances phallic, emblems of the nature-G.o.ddess Asherah, the G.o.ddess of fertility.[485] She is sometimes identified with Astarte, the G.o.ddess of the moon and of love; but there is no sufficient ground for the identification. Some, indeed, doubt whether Asherah is the name of a G.o.ddess at all. They suppose that the word only means a consecrated pole or pillar, emblematic of the sacred tree.[486]

Then comes the startling addition, "And brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: _for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it_." This addition is all the more singular because the Hebrew tense implies habitual worship. The story of the brazen serpent of the wilderness is told in Num. xxi. 9; but not an allusion to it occurs anywhere, till now--some eight centuries later--we are told that up to this time the children of Israel had been in the habit of burning incense to it! Comparing Num. xxi. 4, with x.x.xiii. 42, we find that the scene of the serpent-plague of the Exodus was either Zalmonah ("the place of the image") or Punon, which Bochart connects with Phainoi, a place mentioned as famous for copper-mines.[487] Moses, for unknown reasons, chose it as an innocent and potent symbol; but obviously in later days it subserved, or was mingled with, the tendency to ophiolatry, which has been fatally common in all ages in many heathen lands. It is indeed most difficult to understand a state of things in which the children of Israel habitually _burned incense_ to this venerable relic, nor can we imagine that this was done without the cognisance and connivance of the priests. Ewald makes the conjecture that the brazen _Saraph_ had been left at Zalmonah, and was an occasional object of Israelite adoration in pilgrimage for the purpose. There is, however, nothing more extraordinary in the prevalence of serpent-worship among the Jews than in the fact that, "in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, we" (the Jews), "and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, burnt incense unto the Queen of Heaven."[488] If this were the case, the serpent may have been brought to Jerusalem in the idolatrous reign of Ahaz. It shows an intensity of reforming zeal, and an inspired insight into the reality of things, that Hezekiah should not have hesitated to smash to pieces so interesting a relic of the oldest history of his people, rather than see it abused to idolatrous purposes.[489] Certainly, in conduct so heroic, and hatred of idolatry so strong, the Puritans might well find sufficient authority for removing from Westminster Abbey the images of the Virgin, which, in their opinion, had been worshipped, and before which lamps had been perpetually burned. If we can imagine an English king breaking to pieces the shrine of the Confessor in the Abbey, or a French king destroying the sacred ampulla of Rheims or the _goupillon_ of St.

Eligius, on the ground that many regarded them with superst.i.tious reverence, we may measure the effect produced by this startling act of Puritan zeal on the part of Hezekiah.

"And he called it _Nehushtan_." If this rendering--in which our A.V. and R.V. follow the LXX. and the Vulgate--be correct, Hezekiah justified the iconoclasm by a brilliant play of words.[490] The Hebrew words for "a serpent" (_nachash_) and for bra.s.s (_nechosheth_) are closely akin to each other; and the king showed his just estimate of the relic which had been so shamefully abused by contemptuously designating it--as it was in itself and apart from its sacred historic a.s.sociations--"nehushtan," a thing of bra.s.s. The rendering, however, is uncertain, for the phrase may be impersonal--"one" or "they" called it Nehushtan[491]--in which case the a.s.sonance had lost any ironic connotation.[492]

For this act of purity of worship, and for other reasons, the historian calls Hezekiah the best of all the kings of Judah, superior alike to all his predecessors and all his successors. He regarded him as coming up to the Deuteronomic ideal, and says that therefore "the Lord was with him, and he prospered whithersoever he went forth."

The date of this great reformation is rendered uncertain by the impossibility of ascertaining the exact order of Isaiah's prophecies.

The most probable view is that it was gradual, and some of the king's most effective measures may not have been carried out till after the deliverance from a.s.syria. It is clear, however, that the wisdom of Hezekiah and his counsellors began from the first to uplift Judah from the degradation and decrepitude to which it had sunk under the reign of Ahaz. The boy-king found a wretched state of affairs at his accession.

His father had bequeathed to him "an empty treasury, a ruined peasantry, an unprotected frontier, and a shattered army";[493] but although he was still the va.s.sal of a.s.syria, he reverted to the ideas of his great-grandfather Uzziah. He strengthened the city, and enabled it to stand a siege by improving the water-supply. Of these labours we have, in all probability, a most interesting confirmation in the inscription by Hezekiah's engineers, discovered in 1880, on the rocky walls of the subterranean tunnel (_siloh_) between the spring of Gihon and the Pool of Siloam.[494] He encouraged agriculture, the storage of produce, and the proper tendance of flocks and herds, so that he acquired wealth which dimly reminded men of the days of Solomon.

There is little doubt that he early meditated revolt from a.s.syria; for renewed faithfulness to Jehovah had elevated the moral tone, and therefore the courage and hopefulness, of the whole people. The Forty-Sixth Psalm, whatever may be its date, expresses the invincible spirit of a nation which in its penitence and self-purification began to feel itself irresistible, and could sing:--

"G.o.d is our hope and strength, A very present help in trouble.

Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved, Though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.