The Expositor's Bible Part 29

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of G.o.d, The Holy City where dwells the Most High.

G.o.d is in the midst of her; therefore shall she not be shaken: G.o.d shall help her, and that right early.

Heathens raged and kingdoms trembled: He lifted His voice--the earth melted away.

Jehovah of Hosts is with us; Elohim of Jacob is our refuge."[495]

It was no doubt the spirit of renewed confidence which led Hezekiah to undertake his one military enterprise--the chastis.e.m.e.nt of the long-troublesome Philistines. He was entirely successful. He not only won back the cities which his father had lost,[496] but he also dispossessed them of their own cities, even unto Gaza, which was their southernmost possession--"from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city."[497] There can be no doubt that this act involved an almost open defiance of the a.s.syrian King; but if Hezekiah dreamed of independence, it was essential for him to be free from the raids and the menace of a neighbour so dangerous as Philistia, and so inveterately hostile. It is not improbable that he may have devoted to this war the money which would otherwise have gone to pay the tribute to Shalmaneser or Sargon, which had been continued since the date of the appeal of Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser II. When Sargon applied for the tribute Hezekiah refused it, and even omitted to send the customary present.

It is clear that in this line of conduct the king was following the exhortations of Isaiah. It showed no small firmness of character that he was able to choose a decided course amid the chaos of contending counsels. Nothing but a most heroic courage could have enabled him, at any period of his reign, to defy that dark cloud of a.s.syrian war which ever loomed on the horizon, and from which but little sufficed to elicit the destructive lightning-flash.

There were three permanent parties in the Court of Hezekiah, each incessantly trying to sway the king to its own counsels, and each representing those counsels as indispensable to the happiness, and even to the existence, of the State.

I. There was the a.s.syrian party, urging with natural vehemence that the fierce northern king was as irresistible in power as he was terrible in vengeance. The fearful cruelties which had been committed at Beth-Arbel, the devastation and misery of the Trans-Jordanic tribes, the obliteration and deportation of the heavily afflicted districts of Zebulon, Naphtali, and the way of the sea in Galilee of the nations, the already inevitable and imminent destruction of Samaria and her king and the whole Northern Kingdom, together with that certain deportation of its inhabitants of which the fatal policy had been established by Tiglath-Pileser, would const.i.tute weighty arguments against resistance. Such considerations would appeal powerfully to the panic of the despondent section of the community, which was only actuated, as most men are, by considerations of ordinary political expediency. The foul apparition of the Ninevites, which for five centuries afflicted the nations, is now only visible to us in the bas-reliefs and inscriptions unearthed from their burnt palaces. There they live before us in their own sculptures, with their "thickset, sensual figures," and the expression of calm and settled ferocity on their faces, exhibiting a frightful nonchalance as they look on at the infliction of diabolical atrocities upon their vanquished enemies. But in the eighth century before Christ they were visible to all the eastern world in the exuberance of the most brutal parts of the nature of man. Men had heard how, a century earlier, a.s.surn.a.z.ipal boasted that he had "dyed the mountains of the Nairi with blood like wool"; how he had flayed captive kings alive, and dressed pillars with their skins; how he had walled up others alive, or impaled them on stakes; how he had burnt boys and girls alive, put out eyes, cut off hands, feet, ears, and noses, pulled out the tongues of his enemies, and "at the command of a.s.sur his G.o.d" had flung their limbs to vultures and eagles, to dogs and bears. The Jews, too, must have realised with a vividness which is to us impossible the cruel nature of the usurper Sargon. He is represented on his monuments as putting out with his own hands the eyes of his miserable captives; while, to prevent them from flinching when the spear which he holds in his hand is plunged into their eye-sockets, a hook is inserted through their nose and lips and held fast with a bridle. Can we not imagine the pathos with which this party would depict such horrors to the tremblers of Judah? Would they not bewail the fanaticism which led the prophets to seduce their king into the suicidal policy of defying such a power? To these men the sole path of national safety lay in continuing to be quiet va.s.sals and faithful tributaries of these destroyers of cities and treaders-down of foes.

II. Then there was the Egyptian party, headed probably by the powerful Shebna, the chancellor.[498] His foreign name, the fact that his father is not mentioned, and the question of Isaiah--"What hast thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here?"--seem to indicate that he was by birth a foreigner, perhaps a Syrian.[499] The prophet, indignant at his powerful interference with domestic politics, threatens him, in words of tremendous energy, with exile and degradation.[500] He lost his place of chancellor, and we next find him in the inferior, though still honourable, office of secretary (_sopher_, 2 Kings xviii. 18), while Eliakim had been promoted to his vacant place (Isa. xxii. 21). Perhaps he may have afterwards repented, and the doom have been lightened.[501] Circ.u.mstances at any rate reduced him from the scornful spirit which seems to have marked his earlier opposition to the prophetic counsels, and perhaps the powerful warning and menace of Isaiah may have exercised an influence on his mind.

III. The third party, if it could even be called a party, was that of Isaiah and a few of the faithful, aided no doubt by the influence of the prophecies of Micah. Their att.i.tude to both the other parties was antagonistic.

i. As regards the a.s.syrian, they did not attempt to minimise the danger. They represented the peril from the kingdom of Nineveh as G.o.d's appointed scourge for the transgressions of Judah, as it had been for the transgressions of Israel.

Thus Micah sees in imagination the terrible march of the invader by Gath, Akko, Beth-le-Aphrah, Maroth, Lachish, and Adullam. He plays with bitter anguish on the name of each town as an omen of humiliation and ruin, and calls on Zion to make herself bald for the children of her delight, and to enlarge her baldness as the vultures, because they are gone into captivity.[502] He turns fiercely on the greedy grandees, the false prophets, the blood-stained princes, the hireling priests, the bribe-taking soothsayers, who were responsible for the guilt which should draw down the vengeance. He ends with the fearful prophecy--which struck a chill into men's hearts a century later, and had an important influence on Jewish history--"Therefore, because of you shall Zion be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become ruins, and the hill of the Temple as heights in the wood";--though there should be an ultimate deliverance from Migdal-Eder, and a remnant should be saved.[503]

Similar to Micah's, and possibly not uninfluenced by it, is Isaiah's imaginary picture of the march of a.s.syria, which must have been full of terror to the poor inhabitants of Jerusalem.[504]

"He is come to Aiath!

He is pa.s.sed through Migron!

At Michmash he layeth up his baggage: They are gone over the pa.s.s: 'Geba,' they cry, 'is our lodging.'

Ramah trembleth: Gibeah of Saul is fled!

Raise thy shrill cries, O daughter of Gallim!

Hearken, O Laishah! Answer her, O Anathoth!

Madmenah is in wild flight (?).

The inhabitants of Gebim gather their stuff to flee.

This very day shall he halt at n.o.b.

He shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, The hill of Jerusalem."

Yet Isaiah, and the little band of prophets, in spite of their perils, did _not_ share the views of the a.s.syrian party or counsel submission.

On the contrary, even as they contemplate in imagination this terrific march of Sargon, they threaten a.s.syria. The a.s.syrian might smite Judah, but G.o.d should smite the a.s.syrians. He boasts that he will rifle the riches of the people as one robs the eggs of a trembling bird, which does not dare to cheep or move the wing.[505] But Isaiah tells him that he is but the axe boasting against the hewer, and the wooden staff lifting itself up against its wielder. Burning should be scattered over his glory. The Lord of hosts should lop his boughs with terror, and a mighty one should hew down the crashing forest of his haughty Lebanon.

ii. Still more indignant were the true prophets against those who trusted in an alliance with Egypt. From first to last Isaiah warned Ahaz, and warned Hezekiah, that no reliance was to be placed on Egyptian promises--that Egypt was but like the reed of his own Nile.

He mocked the hopes placed on Egyptian intervention as being no less sure of disannulment than a covenant with death and an agreement with Sheol. This rebellious reliance on the shadow of Egypt was but the weaving of an unrighteous web, and the adding of sin to sin. It should lead to nothing but shame and confusion, and the Jewish amba.s.sadors to Zoan and Egypt should only have to blush for a people that could neither help nor profit. And then branding Egypt with the old insulting name of Rahab, or "Bl.u.s.terer," he says,--

"Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose.

Therefore have I called her 'Rahab, that sitteth still.'"

Indolent braggart--that was the only designation which she deserved!

Intrigue and braggadocio--smoke and lukewarm water,--this was all which could be expected from _her_![506]

Such teaching was eminently distasteful to the worldly politicians, who regarded faith in Jehovah's intervention as no better than ridiculous fanaticism, and forgot G.o.d's wisdom in the inflated self-satisfaction of their own. The priests--luxurious, drunken, scornful--were naturally with them. Men were fine and stylish, and in their religious criticisms could not express too lofty a contempt for any one who, like Isaiah, was too sincere to care for the mere polishing of phrases, and too much in earnest to shrink from reiteration. In their self-indulgent banquets these sleek, smug euphemists made themselves very merry over Isaiah's simplicity, reiteration, and directness of expression. With hiccoughing insolence they asked whether they were to be treated like weaned babes; and then wagging their heads, as their successors did at Christ upon the cross, they indulged themselves in a mimicry, which they regarded as witty, of Isaiah's style and manner. With him they said it is all,--

"Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav, Quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav, Z'eir sham, Z'eir sham!"--

which may be imitated thus:--With him it is always "Bit and bit, bid and bid, for-bid and for-bid, for_bid_ and for_bid_, a lit-tle bit here, a lit-tle bit there."[507] Monosyllable is heaped on monosyllable; and no doubt the speakers tipsily adopted the tones of fond mothers addressing their babes and weanlings. Using the Hebrew words, one of these shameless roysterers would say, "_Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav, quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav, Z'eir sham, Z'eir sham_,--that is how that simpleton Isaiah speaks." And then doubtless a drunken laugh would go round the table, and half a dozen of them would be saying thus, "_Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav_," at once. They derided Isaiah just as the philosophers of Athens derided St. Paul--as a mere _spermologos_, "a seed-p.e.c.k.e.r!"[508] or "picker-up of learning's crumbs." Is all this petty monosyllabism fit teaching for persons like us? Are we to be taught by copybooks? Do we need the censorship of this Old Morality?

On whom, full of the fire of G.o.d, Isaiah turned, and told these scornful tipsters, who lorded it over G.o.d's heritage in Jerusalem, that, since they disdained his stammerings, G.o.d would teach them by men of strange lips and alien tongue. They might mimic the style of the a.s.syrians also if they liked; but they should fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.[509]

It must not be forgotten that the struggle of the prophets against these parties was far more severe than we might suppose. The politicians of expediency had supporters among the leading princes. The priests--whom the prophets so constantly and sternly denounce--adhered to them; and, as usual, the women were all of the priestly party (comp. Isa. x.x.xii.

9-20). The king, indeed, was inclined to side with his prophet, but the king was terribly overshadowed by a powerful and worldly aristocracy, of which the influence was almost always on the side of luxury, idolatry, and oppression.

iii. But what had Isaiah to offer in the place of the policy of these worldly and sacerdotal advisers of the king? It was the simple command "Trust in the Lord." It was the threefold message "G.o.d is high; G.o.d is near; G.o.d is Love."[510] Had he not told Ahaz not to fear the "stumps of two smouldering torches," when Rezin and Pekah seemed awfully dangerous to Judah? So he tells them now that, though their sins had necessitated the rushing stroke of a.s.syrian judgment, Zion should not be utterly destroyed. In Isaiah "the calmness requisite for sagacity rose from faith." Mr. Bagehot might have appealed to Isaiah's whole policy in ill.u.s.tration of what he has so well described as the military and political benefits of religion. Monotheism is of advantage to men not only "by reason of the high concentration of steady feeling which it produces, but also for the mental calmness and sagacity which surely springs from a pure and vivid conviction that the Lord reigneth."[511] Isaiah's whole conviction might have been summed up in the name of the king himself: "Jehovah maketh strong."

King Hezekiah, apparently not a man of much personal force, though of sincere piety, was naturally distracted by the counsels of these three parties: and who can judge him severely if, beset with such terrific dangers, he occasionally wavered, now to one side, now to the other?

On the whole, it is clear that he was wise and faithful, and deserves the high eulogy that his faith failed not. Naturally he had not within his soul that burning light of inspiration which made Isaiah so sure that, even though clouds and darkness might lower on every side, G.o.d was an eternal Sun, which flamed for ever in the zenith, even when not visible to any eye save that of Faith.

FOOTNOTES:

[480] The first of these dates is highly uncertain, as is the entire chronology of this reign. I follow Kittel.

[481] 2 Chron. x.x.xi. 2-21.

[482] Josiah did this many years later (2 Kings xxiii. 13).

[483] Gen. x.x.xv. 14. See Spencer, _De legg. Hebr._, i. 444; Bochart, _Canaan_, ii. 2.

[484] Exod. xxiv. 4. Comp. Deut. vii. 5, xii. 3, xvi. 22; Lev. xxvi.

1; 2 Chron. xiv. 3, x.x.xi. 1; Jer. xliii. 13; Hos. x. 2; Mic. v. 13 (where the A.V. often has "statue" or "image"). Comp. Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. 24; Arn.o.b., _c. Gent._, i. 39.

[485] The rendering "grove" in the A.V. is borrowed from the ??s?? of the LXX., and the _lucus_ of the Vulgate. On the connection of the Asherah with the sacred tree of the a.s.syrian, see my article on "Grove" in Smith's _Dict. of the Bible_; and Fergusson, _Nineveh and Persepolis Restored_, 299-304. On the worship of Asherah, see 1 Kings xv. 13; 2 Kings xxi. 3-7, xxiii. 4; 2 Chron. xv. 16; Judg. iii. 5-7, vi. 25, xviii. 18. Baudissin in _Herzog Realencykl._, _s.v._ We may well be startled by the prevalence of idolatry in Jerusalem revealed in Isa. x. 11, xxvii. 9, xxix. 11, x.x.x. 9, 22, etc.

[486] See Wellhausen, _Hist._, 235; Stade, _Gesch. d. V. I._, 460; W.

R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 171; Cheyne, _Isaiah_, ii. 303; Renan, _Hist. du Peuple d'Israel_, i. 230 (Prof. Driver, _Bibl.

Dict._, i. 258, 2nd edition).

[487] _Hierozoicon_, ii. 3, -- 13.

[488] Jer. xliv. 17. In the collection of antiquities of Baron Ustinoff at Jaffa are five or six dragon-headed serpents, with ears of copper and hollow inside. They are ancient, and were perhaps used as talismanic copies of Nehushtan.

[489] If this was a genuine relic, it must have been nearly eight hundred years old. It is never mentioned elsewhere.

[490] ??????????, "a brazen thing." The king certainly showed a horror of sacerdotal imposture and religious materialism. Yet Renan argues, from Isa. x. 11, xxvii. 9, x.x.x. 9, 22, that he must have had a certain amount of tolerance. See _Hist. du Peuple d'Israel_, iii. 30.

[491] 2 Kings xviii. 4. _Vayyikra_ is like the English indefinite plural. The impersonal rendering (as in other pa.s.sages) is adopted in the Targum of Jonathan, the Pes.h.i.to, etc., and by Luther, Bunsen, Ewald, and most moderns.

[492] This relic is still shown in the Church of St. Ambrose at Milan.

It used to be the popular notion that it would hiss at the end of the world. The history of the Milan "relic" is that a Milanese envoy to the court of the Emperor John Zimisces at Constantinople chose it from the imperial treasures, being a.s.sured that it was made of the same metal that Hezekiah had broken up (Sigonius, _Hist. Regn. Ital._, vii.). It is probably a symbol used by some ophite sect. See Dean Plumptre, _Dict. of Bibl._, _s.v._ "Serpent."

[493] 2 Kings xvi. 8; Driver, _Isaiah_, 68.

[494] The diverting of the water-courses enabled him to bring the water into the city by a subterranean tunnel. The Saracens took a similar precaution (Gul. Tyr., viii. 7). See Appendix II., where the inscription is given; and compare 2 Chron. x.x.xii. 30. Apparently it carried the water of Gihon to the south-east gate, where were the king's gardens.

Ecclus. xlviii. 17: "Ezekias fortified his city, and brought in water into the midst thereof: he digged the hard rock with iron, and made wells for water." For "water" the MSS. read "Gog," a corruption probably for ??????, "a conduit" (Geiger) or "Gihon" (Fritzsche).

[495] Psalm xlvi. 1-11.