All this is applicable to Aramaeans alone. As soon as Eezin had conquered this important seaport town, it was a very natural thing to establish an Aramaean colony there, which obtained possession of the trade of the town, and remained there till the time when the annals of the kings were composed (for it is to this that the expression n-ir\ Disrny refers), even after the kingdom of Eezin had long been destroyed by the Assyrians, since Elath and the Aramaeans settled there were not affected by that blow.1 As soon as the Edomites had been released by Eezin from the control of Judah, to which they had been brought back by Amaziah and Uzziah (ch. xiv. 7, 22), they began plundering Judah again (2 Chron. xxviii. 1 7); and even the Philistines took possession of several cities in the lowland, to avenge themselves for the humiliation they had sustained at the hand of Uzziah (2 Chron. xxviii. 18). — Ver. 7. In this distress Ahaz turned to Tiglath-pileser, without regarding either the word of Isaiah in ch. vii. 4 sqq., which promised salvation, or the prophet's warning against an alliance with Assyria, and by sending the gold and silver which were found in the treasures of the temple and palace, purchased his assistance against Eezin and Pekah. Whether this occurred immediately after the invasion of the land by the allied kings, or not till after they had defeated the Judaean army and advanced against Jerusalem, it is impossible to discover either from this verse or from 2 Chron. xxviii. 16; but probably it was after the first great victory gained by the foe, with which Isa. vii. and viii. agree. — On D*»ip for D*piJ see Ewald, § 151, b. — Ver. 9. Tiglath-pileser then marched against Damascus, took the city, slew Eezin, and led the inhabitants away to Kir, as Amos had prophesied (Amos i. 3-5). ">*[?, Kir, from which, according to Amos ix. 7, the Aramaeans had emigrated to Syria, is no doubt a district by the river Kur (Kvpos, Kvppos), which taking its rise in Armenia, unites with the Araxes and flows into the Caspian Sea, although from the length of the river Kur it is impossible to define precisely the locality in which they were
1 If we only observe that 0*0118 has not the article, and therefore the words merely indicate the march of an Aramaean colony to Elath, it is evident that 0*01*18 would be unsuitable; for when the D*""!*.!"1.* had been driven from the city which the Syrians had conquered, it was certainly not some Edomites but the Edomites who took possession again. Hence Winer, Caspari, and others are quite right in deciding that D*D*."1N is the only correct reading.
placed; and the statement of Josephus (Ant. ix. 13, 3), that the Damascenes were transported et? rr)v aveo MwStav, is somewhat indefinite, and moreover has hardly been derived from early historical sources (see M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, p. 158). Nothing is said here concerning Tiglath-pileser's invasion of the kingdom of Israel, because this has already been mentioned at ch. xv. 2 9 in the history of Pekah.
Vers. 10—18. Ahaz paid Tiglath-pileser a visit in Damascus, " to present to him his thanks and congratulations, and possibly also to prevent a visit from Tiglath-pileser to himself, which would not have been very welcome" (Thenius). The form pKW! is neither to be altered into P^En nor regarded as a copyist's error for P'^B"1/!, as we have several words in this chapter that are formed with the dull Syriac w-sound. The visit of Ahaz to Damascus is simply mentioned on account of what follows, namely, that Ahaz saw an altar there, which pleased him so much that he sent a picture and model of it " according to all the workmanship thereof," i.e. its style of architecture, to Urijah the priest (see Isa. viii. 2), and had an altar made like it for the temple, upon which, on his return to Jerusalem, he ordered all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, and drink-offerings to be presented. The allusion here is to the offerings which he commanded to be presented for his prosperous return to Jerusalem. — Vers. 14 sqq. Soon after this Ahaz went still further, and had " the copper altar before Jehovah," i.e. the altar of burnt-offering in the midst of the court before the entrance into the Holy Place, removed " from the front of the (temple-) house, from (the spot) between the altar (the new one built by Urijah) and the house of Jehovah (i.e. the temple-house), and placed at the north side of the altar." 3*"#n does not mean removit, caused to be taken away, but admovit, and is properly to be connected with '&n T}*PV, notwithstanding the fact that inx jrw is inserted between for the sake of greater clearness, as Maurer has already pointed out.1 On the use of the article with nattsn in the construct state, see Ewald, § 290, d. — Ver.
1 There is nothing in the text to support the view of Thenius, that Urijah had the brazen altar of burnt-offeriDg erected by Solomon moved farther forwards, nearer to the temple-house, and the new one put in its place, whence it was afterwards shifted by Ahaz and the new one moved a little farther to the eouth, that is to say, that he placed the two altars close to one another, so that they now occupied the centre of the court.
15. He also commanded that the daily morning and evening sacrifice, and the special offerings of the king and the people, should be presented upon the new altar, and thereby put a stop to the use of the Solomonian altar, " about which he would consider." The Chethib *W5 is not to be altered; the pron. mff. stands before the noun, as is frequently the case in the more diffuse popular speech. The new altar is called "the great altar," probably because it was somewhat larger than that of Solomon, "»»?•]: used for the burning of the sacrifices. 3-iyn nrap is not merely the meat-offering offered in the evening' but the whole of the evening sacrifice, consisting of a burnt-offering and a meat-offering, as in 1 Kings xviii. 29, 36. -igab VfTW, the brazen altar " will be to me for deliberation," i.e. I will reflect upon it, and then make further arrangements. On "ii?a in this sense see Prov. xx. 25. In the opinion of Ahaz, the altar which had been built after the model of that of Damascus was not to be an idolatrous altar, but an altar of Jehovah. The reason for this arbitrary removal of the altar of Solomon, which had been sanctified by the Lord Himself at the dedication of the temple by fire from heaven, was, in all probability, chiefly that the Damascene altar pleased Ahaz better; and the innovation was a sin against Jehovah, inasmuch as God Himself had prescribed the form for His sanctuary (cf. Ex. xxv. 40, xxvi. 30; 1 Chron. xxviii. 19), so that any altar planned by 'man and built according to a heathen model was practically the same as an idolatrous altar. — The account of this altar is omitted from the Chronicles; but in ver. 23 we have this statement instead: " Ahaz offered sacrifice to the gods of Damascus, who smote him, saying, The gods of the kings of Aram helped them; I will sacrifice to them that they may help me: and they were the ruin of him and of all Israel." Thenius and Bertheau find in this account an alteration of our account of the copying of the Damascene altar introduced by the chronicler as favouring his design, namely, to give as glaring a description as possible of the ungodliness of Ahaz. But they are mistaken. For even if the notice in the Chronicles had really sprung from this alone, the chronicler would have been able from the standpoint of the Mosaic law to designate the offering of sacrifice upon the altar built after the model of an idolatrous Syrian altar as sacrificing to these gods. But it is a question whether the chronicler had in his mind merely the sacrifices offered upon that altar in the temple-court, and not rather sacrifices which Ahaz offered upon some bamah to the gods of Syria, when he was defeated and oppressed by the Syrians, for the purpose of procuring their assistance. As Ahaz offered his son in sacrifice to Moloch according to ver. 3, he might just as well have offered sacrifice to the gods of the Syrians. — Vers. 17, 18. Ahaz also laid his hand upon the other costly vessels of the court of the temple. He broke off the panels of the Solomonian stands, which were ornamented with artistic carving, and removed the basins from the stands, and took the brazen sea from the brazen oxen upon which they stood, and placed it upon a stone pavement. The \ before "tfsirmij can only have crept into the text through a copyist's error, and the singular must be taken distributively: he removed from them (the stands) every single basin. B*?3K nsttnD (without the article) is not the stone pavement of the court of the temple, but a pedestal made of stones (fidais \l61vt), LXX.) for the brazen sea. The reason why, or the object with which Ahaz mutilated these sacred vessels, is not given. The opinion expressed by Ewald, Thenius, and others, that Ahaz made a present to Tiglath-pileser with the artistically wrought panels of the stands, the basins, and the oxen of the brazen sea, is not only improbable in itself, since you would naturally suppose that if Ahaz had wished to make a " valuable and very welcome present" to the Assyrian king, he would have chosen some perfect stands with their basins for this purpose, and not merely the panels and basins; but it has not the smallest support in the biblical text, — on the contrary, it has the context against it. For, in the first place, if the objects named had been sent to Tiglath-pileser, this would certainly have been mentioned, as well as the sending of the temple and palace treasures. And, again, the mutilation of these vessels is placed between the erection of the new altar which was constructed after the Damascene model, and other measures which Ahaz adopted as a protection against the king of Assyria (ver. 18). Now if Ahaz, on his return from visiting Tiglath-pileser at Damascus, had thought it necessary to send another valuable present to that king in order to secure his permanent friendship, he would hardly have adopted the measures described in the next verse. — Ver. 18. "The covered Sabbath-stand, which they had built in the house (temple), and the outer entrance of the king he turned (i.e. removed) into the house of Jehovah before the king of Assyria." r)2$n y&n (Keri ^n, from ^20, to cover) is no doubt a covered place, stand or hall in the court of the temple, to be used by the king whenever he visited the temple with his retinue on the Sabbath or on feastdays; and "the outer entrance of the king" is probably the special ascent into the temple for the king mentioned in 1 Kings x. 5. In what the removal of it consisted it is impossible to determine, from the want of information as to its original character. According to Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 621) and Thenius, 2DH nvv ]V3 means, " he altered (these places), i.e. he robbed them of their ornaments, in the house of Jehovah." This is quite arbitrary. For even if njTP rva could mean u in the house of Jehovah " in this connection, 2D71 does not mean to disfigure, and still less " to deprive of ornaments." In ch. xxiii. 34 and xxiv. 17 it signifies to alter the name, not to disfigure it. Again, "w#N ^9 VfBD, " for fear of the king of Assyria," cannot mean, in this connection, " to make presents to the king of Assyria." And with this explanation, which is grammatically impossible, the inference drawn from it, namely, that Ahaz sent the ornaments of the king's stand and king's ascent to the king of Assyria along with the vessels mentioned in ver. 17, also falls to the ground If the alterations which Ahaz made in the stands and the brazen sea had any close connection with his relation to Tiglath-pileser, which cannot be proved, Ahaz must have been impelled by fear to make them, not that he might send them as presents to him, but that he might hide them from him if he came to Jerusalem, to which 2 Chron. xxviii. 20, 21 seems to refer. It is also perfectly conceivable, as Ziillich (Die Cherubimwagen, p. 56) conjectures, that Ahaz merely broke off the panels from the stands and removed the oxen from the brazen sea, that he might use these artistic works to decorate some other place, possibly his palace. — Whether these artistic works were restored or not at the time of Hezekiah's reformation or in that of Josiah, we have no accounts to show. All that can be gathered from ch. xxv. 13, 14, Jer. Iii. 17, and xxvii. 19, is, that the stands and the brazen sea were still in existence in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and that on the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldseans they were broken in pieces and carried away to Babylonia as brass. The brazen oxen are also specially mentioned in Jer.
lii. 20, which is not the case in the parallel passage 2 Kings xxv. 13; though this does not warrant the conclusion that they were no longer in existence at that time. — Vers. 19, 20. Conclusion of the reign of Ahaz. According to 2 Chron. xxviii. 2 7, he was buried in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.
CHAP. XVII. REIGN OF HOSHEA AND DESTRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL. THE PEOPLE CARRIED AWAY TO ASSYRIA AND MEDIA. TRANSPORTATION OF HEATHEN COLONISTS TO SAMARIA.
Vers. 1-6. Eeign of Hoshea King of Israel, — Ver. 1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz began Hoshea to reign. As Hoshea conspired against Pekah, according to ch. xv. 30, in the fourth year of Ahaz, and after murdering him made himself king, whereas according to the verse before us it was not till the twelfth year of Ahaz that he really became king, his possession of the throne must have been contested for eight years. The earlier commentators and almost all the chronologists have therefore justly assumed that there was an eight years' anarchy between the death of Pekah and the commencement of Hoshea's reign. This assumption merits the preference above all the attempts made to remove the discrepancy by alterations of the text, since there is nothing at all surprising in the existence of anarchy at a time when the kingdom was in a state of the greatest inward disturbance and decay. Hoshea reigned nine years, and " did that which was evil in the eyes of Jehovah, though not like the kings of Israel before him " (ver. 2). We are not told in what- Hoshea was better than his predecessors, nor can it be determined with any certainty, although the assumption that he allowed his subjects to visit the temple at Jerusalem is a very probable one, inasmuch as, according to 2 Chron. xxx. 10 sqq., Hezekiah invited to the feast of the Passover, held at Jerusalem, the Israelites from Ephraim and Manasseh as far as to Zebulun, and some individuals from these tribes accepted his invitation. But although Hoshea was better than his predecessors, the judgment of destruction burst upon the sinful kingdom and people in his reign, because he had not truly turned to the Lord; a fact which has been frequently repeated in the history of the world, namely, that the last rulers of a decaying kingdom have not been so bad as their forefathers. " God is accustomed to defer the punishment of the elders in the greatness of His long-suffering, to see whether their descendants will come to repentance; but if this be not the case, although they may not be so bad, the anger of God proceeds at length to visit iniquity (cf. Ex. xx. 5)." Seb. Schmidt. — Ver. 3. " Against him came up Salmanasar king of Assyria, and Hoshea became subject to him and rendered him tribute " (n™*?, as in 1 Kings v. 1). lpwppB>, Saka/juavacradp (LXX.), Salmanasar, according to the more recent researches respecting Assyria, is not only the same person as the Shalman mentioned in Hos. x. 14, but the same as the Sargon of Isa. xx. 1, whose name is spelt Sargina upon the monuments, and who is described in the inscriptions on his palace at Khorsabad as ruler over many subjugated lands, among which Samirina (Samaria?) also occurs (vid. Brandis ub. d. Gewinn, pp. 48 sqq. and 53; M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Ass. pp. 129, 130; andM. Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. i. pp. 687 sqq.). The occasion of this expedition of Salmanasar appears to have been simply the endeavour to continue the conquests of his predecessor Tiglath-pileser. There is no ground whatever for Maurer's assumption, that he had been asked to come to the help of a rival of Hoshea; and the opinion that he came because Hoshea had refused the tribute which had been paid to Assyria from the time of Menahem downwards, is at variance with the fact that in ch. xv. 29 Tiglath-pileser is simply said to have taken a portion of the territory of Israel; but there is no allusion to any payment of tribute or feudal obligation on the part of Pekah. Salmanasar was the first to make king Hoshea subject and tributary. This took place at the commencement of Hoshea's reign, as is evident from the fact that Hoshea paid the tribute for several years, and in the sixth year of his reign refused any further payment. — Ver. 4. The king of Assyria found a conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to So the king of Egypt, and did not pay the tribute to the king of Assyria, as year by year. The Egyptian king Kto, So, possibly to be pronounced njD, Seveh, is no doubt one of the two Shebeks of the twenty-fifth dynasty, belonging to the Ethiopian tribe; but whether he was the second king of this dynasty, Sabataka (Brugsch, hist. dEgypte, i. p. 244), the Sevechus of Manetho, who is said to have ascended the throne, according to Wilkinson, in the year 728, as Vitringa (Isa. ii. p. 318), Gesenius, Ewald, and others suppose, or the first king of this Ethiopian dynasty, Sabaho the father of Sevechus, which is the opinion of Usher and Marsham, whom M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. pp. 458 sqq. and 463) and M. Duncker (i. p. 693) have followed in recent times, cannot possibly be decided in the present state of Egyptological research.1 — As soon as Salmanasar received intelligence of the conduct of Hoshea, which is called *^P, conspiracy, as being rebellion against his acknowledged superior, he had him arrested and put into prison in chains, and then overran the whole land, advanced against Samaria and besieged that city for three years, and captured it in the ninth year of Hoshea. These words are not to be understood as signifying that Hoshea had been taken prisoner before the siege of Samaria and thrown into prison, because in that case it is impossible to see how Salmanasar could have obtained possession of his person.2 We must rather assume, as many commentators have done, from K. Levi ben Gersom down to Maurer and Thenius, that it was not till the conquest of his capital Samaria that Hoshea fell into the hands of the Assyrians and was cast into a prison; so that the explanation to be given of the introduction of this circum-
1 It is true that M. Duncker says, " Synchronism gives Sabakon, who reigned from 726 to 714; " but he observes in the note at pp. 713 sqq. that the Egyptian chronology has only been firmly established as far back as the commencement of the reign of Psammetichus at the beginning of the year 664 B.C., that the length of the preceding dodekarchy is differently given by Diodorus Sic. and Manetho, and that the date at which Tarakos (Tirhaka), who succeeded Sevechus, ascended the throne is so very differently defined, that it is impossible for the present to come to any certain conclusion on the matter. Compare with this what M. v. Niebuhr (pp. 458 sqq.) adduces in proof of the difficulty of determining the commencement and length of the reign of Tirhaka, and the manner in which he proposes to solve the difficulties that arise from this in relation to the synchronism between the Egyptian and the Biblical chronology.
2 The supposition of the older commentators, that Hoshea fought a battle with Salmanasar before the siege of Samaria, and was taken prisoner in that battle, is not only very improbable, because this would hardly be passed over in our account, but has very little probability in itself. For u it is more probable that Hoshea betook himself to Samaria when threatened by the hostile army, and relied upon the help of the Egyptians, than that he went to meet Salmanasar and fought with him in the open field " (Maurer). There is still less probability in Ewald's view {Gesch. iii. p. 611), that " Salmanasar marched with unexpected rapidity against Hoshea, summoned him before him that he might hear his defence, and then, when he came, took him prisoner, and threw him into prison in chains, probably into a prison on the border of the stance before the siege and conquest of Samaria must be, that the historian first of all related the eventual result of Hoshea's rebellion against Salmanasar so far as Hoshea himself was concerned, and then proceeded to describe in greater detail the course of the affair in relation to his kingdom and capital. This does not necessitate our giving to the word ^IVV^ the meaning " he assigned him a limit " (Thenius); but we may adhere to the meaning which has been philologically established, namely, arrest or incarcerate (Jer. xxxiii. 1, xxxvi. 5, etc.).?Vl) may be given thus: " he overran, that is to say, the entire land." The three years of the siege of Samaria were not full years, for, according to ch. xviii. 9, 10, it began in the seventh year of Hoshea, and the city was taken in the ninth year, although it is also given there as three years. — Ver. 6. The ninth year of Hoshea corresponds to the sixth year of Hezekiah and the year 722 or 721 B.C., in which the kingdom of the ten tribes was destroyed.
Ver. 6b. The Israelites carried into exile. — After the taking of Samaria, Salmanasar led Israel into captivity to Assyria, and assigned to those who were led away dwelling-places in Chalach and on the Chabor, or the river Gozan, and in cities of Media. According to these clear words of the text, the places to which the ten tribes were banished are not to be sought for in Mesopotamia, but in provinces of Assyria and Media, npn is neither the city of np3 built by Mmrod (Gen. x. 11), nor the Cholwan of Abulfeda and the Syriac writers, a city five days' journey to the north of Bagdad, from which the district bordering on the Zagrus probably received the name of XaXcovhis or KaXcovlris, but the province KaXa^vrj of Strabo (xi. 8, 4; 14, 12, and xvi. 1, 1), called KaXaKivrj by Ptolem?eus (vi. 1), on the eastern side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh on the border of Armenia, "fan is not the "03 in Upper Mesopotamia (Ezek. i. 3, iii. 15, etc.), which flows into the land;" to which he adds this explanatory remark: " there is no other way in which we can understand the brief words in ch. xvii. 4 as compared with ch. xviii. 9-11.... For if Hoshea had defended himself to the utmost, Salmanasar would not have had him arrested and incarcerated afterwards, but would have put him to death at once, as was the case with the king of Damascus." But Hoshea would certainly not have been so infatuated, after breaking away from Assyria and forming an alliance with So of Egypt, as to go at a simple summons from Salmanasar and present himself before him, since he could certainly have expected nothing but death or imprisonment as the result.
(Chabur) by Abulfeda and Edrisi, Xaftdopas by Ptolemaeus, 'Afiopias (Aboras) by Strabo and others, as Michaelis, Gesenius, Winer, and even Bitter assume; for the epithet " river of Gozan" is not decisive in favour of this, since Gozan is not necessarily to be identified with the district of Gauzanitis, now Kaushan, situated between the rivers of Chaboras and Saokoras, and mentioned in Ptol. v. 18, 4, inasmuch as Strabo (xvi. 1, 1, p. 736) also mentions a province called Xa&vrj above Nineveh towards Armenia, between Calachene and Adiabene. Here in northern Assyria we also find both a mountain called Xaficopas, according to Ptol. vi. 1, on the boundary of Assyria and Media, and the river Chabor, called by Yakut in the Moshtarik,^l>~
<uuuu^\]l (Khabur Chasaniw), to distinguish it from the Mesopotamian Chaboras or Chebar. According to Marasz. i. pp. 333 sq., and Yakut, Mosht. p. 150, this Khabur springs from the the mountains of Armenia, Adserbeidjan, Diarbekr, and Mosul (Marasz. i. p. 522), and is frequently mentioned in Assemani as a tributary of the Tigris. It still bears the ancient name Khabur, taking its rise in the neighbourhood of the upper Zdb near Amadijeh, and emptying itself into the Tigris a few hours below Jezirah (cf. Wichelhaus, pp. 471, 472; Asah. Grant, Die Nestorianer, v. Preiswerk, pp. 110 sqq.; and Eitter, Erdk. ix. pp. 716 and 1030). This is the river that we are to understand by ^^n. It is a question in dispute, whether the following words tjfa "1J1U are in apposition to "fan?: " by the Chabor the river of Gozan," or are to be taken by themselves as indicating a peculiar district " by the river Gozan." Now, however the absence of the prep. 3, and even of the copula 1, on the one hand, and the words of Yakut, " Khabur, a river of Chasania" on the other, may seem to favour the former view, we must decide in favour of the latter, for the simple reason that in 1 Chron. v. 26 IJia "iro is separated from "^3n by Ifjni. The absence of the preposition a or of the copula 1 before 'J ina in the passage before us may be accounted for from the assumption that the first two names, in Chalah and on the Khabur, are more closely connected, and also the two which follow, " on the river Gozan and in the cities of Media."
The river Gozan or of Gozan is therefore distinct from "fan (Khabur), and to be sought for in the district in which Tav~ %aviay the city of Media mentioned by Ptol. (vi. 2), was situated. In all probability it is the river which is called Kisil (the red) Ozan at the present day, the Mardos of the Greeks, which takes its rise to the south-east of the Lake Urumiah and flows into the Caspian Sea, and which is supposed to have formed the northern boundary of Media.1 The last locality mentioned agrees with this, viz. " and in the cities of Media," in which Thenius proposes to read TfJ, mountains, after the LXX., instead of >m)V, cities, though without the least necessity.
Vers. 7-23. The causes which occasioned this catastrophe. — To the account of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, and of the transportation of its inhabitants into exile in Assyria, the prophetic historian appends a review of the causes which led to this termination of the greater portion of the covenantnation, and finds them in the obstinate apostasy of Israel from the Lord its God, and in its incorrigible adherence to idolatry. Ver. 7. *3 W, " and it came to pass when " (not because, or that): compare Gen. vi. 1, xxvi. 8, xxvii. 1, xliv. 24, Ex. i. 21, Judg. i. 28, vi. 7, etc. The apodosis does not follow till ver. 18, as vers. 7—17 simply contain a further explanation of Israel's sin. To show the magnitude of the sin, the writer recalls to mind the great benefit conferred in the redemption from Egypt, whereby the Lord had laid His people under strong obligation to adhere faithfully to Him. The words refer to the first commandment (Ex. xx. 2, 3; Deut. v. 6, 7). It
1 The explanation given in the text of the geographical names, receives some confirmation from the Jewish tradition, which describes northern Assyria, and indeed the mountainous region or the district on the border of Assyria and Media towards Armenia, as the place to which the ten tribes were banished (yid. Wichelhaus ut sup. pp. 474 sqq.). Not only Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 612), but also M. v. Niebuhr {Gesch. Ass. p. 159), has decided in favour of this view; the latter with this remark: u According to the present state of the investigations, Chalah and Chabor are no doubt to be sought for on the slope of the Gordysean mountains in the Kalachene of Strabo, the Kalakine of Ptolemseus, and on the tributary of the Tigris, which is still called Chabur, therefore quite close to Nineveh. The Yudhi mountains in this region possibly bear this name with some allusion to the colony." But with reference to the river Gozan, Niebuhr is doubtful whether we are to understand by this the Kisil 0^^.n or the waters in the district of Gauzanitis by the Khebar, and gives the preference to the latter as the simpler of the two, though it is difficult to see in what respect it is simpler than the other.
is from this that the " fearing of other gods " is taken, whereas njns T nnnp recall Ex. xviii. 10. — Ver. 8. The apostasy of Israel manifested itself in two directions: 1. in their walking in the statutes of the nations who were cut off from before them, instead of in the statutes of Jehovah, as God had commanded (cf. Lev. xviii. 4, 5, and 26, xx. 22, 23, etc.; and for the formula 'til vfrnSt] ie>k D^ian, which occurs repeatedly in our books — e.g. ch. xvi. 3, xxi. 2, and 1 Kings xiv. 24 and xxi. 26 — compare Deut. xi. 23 and xviii. 12); and 2. in their walking in the statutes which the kings of Israel had made, i.e. the worship of the calves. W 155^: it is evident from the parallel passage, ver. 196, that the subject here stands before the relative. — Ver. 9. Ds"J?"i warn: " they covered words which were not right concerning Jehovah their God," i.e. they sought to conceal the true nature of Jehovah by arbitrary perversions of the word of God. This is the explanation correctly given by Hengstenberg {Dissert, vol. i. p. 210, transl.); whereas the interpretation proposed by Thenius, " they trifled with things which were not right against Jehovah," is as much at variance with the usage of the language as that of Gesenius (thes. p. 505), per fide egerunt res... in Jehovam, since Nsn with?V simply means to cover over a thing (cf. Isa. iv. 5). This covering of words over Jehovah showed itself in the fact that they built rrion (altars on high places), and by worshipping God in ways of their own invention concealed the nature of the revealed God, and made Jehovah like the idols. " In all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city." D'nviJ T\yo is a tower built for the protection of the flocks in the steppes (2 Chron. xxvi. 10), and is mentioned here as the smallest and most solitary place of human abode in antithesis to the large and fortified city. Such bamoth were the houses of high places and altars built for the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, beside which no others are mentioned by name in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which restricts itself to the principal facts, although there certainly must have been others. — Ver. 10. They set up for themselves monuments and asherim on every high hill, etc., — a practice condemned in 1 Kings xiv. 16, 23, as early as the time of Jeroboam. In this description of their idolatry, the historian, however, had in his mind not only the ten tribes, but also Judah, as is evident from ver. 13, " Jehovah testified against Israel and Judah through His prophets," and also from ver. 19. — Ver. 11. "And burned incense there upon all the high places, like the nations which Jehovah drove out before them." TOil, lit. to lead into exile, is applied here to the expulsion and destruction of the Canaanites, with special reference to the banishment of the Israelites. — Ver. 12. They served the clods, i.e. worshipped clods or masses of stone as gods (D vp|, see at 1 Kings xv. 1 2), notwithstanding the command of God in Ex. xx. 3 sqq., xxiii. 13, Lev. xxvi. 1, etc. — Vers. 13 sqq. And the Lord was not satisfied with the prohibitions of the law, but bore witness against the idolatry and image- worship of Israel and Judah through all His prophets, who exhorted them to turn from their evil way and obey His commandments. But it was all in vain; they were stiff-necked like their fathers. Judah is mentioned as well as Israel, although the historian is simply describing the causes of Israel's rejection to indicate beforehand that Judah was already preparing the same fate for itself, as is still more plainly expressed in vers. 19, 20; not, as Thenius supposes, because he is speaking here of that which took place before the division of the kingdom. The Chcthib mh"^ urarta is not to be read rnh-^31 ^2^2 (Houbig., Then., Ew. § 156, e), but after the LXX. Tirrrfe W3ri|, " through all His prophets, every seer," so that ntrrba is in apposition to 1IP3CT39, and serves to bring out the meaning with greater force, so as to express the idea, " prophets of every kind, that the Lord had sent." This reading is more rhetorical than the other, and is recommended by the fact that in what follows the copula 1 is omitted before vripn also on rhetorical grounds. 'W ^nrw "IBM: " and according to what I demanded of you through my servants the prophets." To the law of Moses there was added the divine warning through the prophets. Dsnjrnx *B>j£ has sprung from Deut. x. 16. The stiff-necked fathers are the Israelites in the time of Moses. — Ver. 15. "They followed vanity and became vain:" verbatim as in Jer. ii. 5. A description of the worthlessness of their whole life and aim with regard to the most important thing, namely, their relation to God. Whatever man sets before him as the object of his life apart from God is?27\ (cf. Deut. xxxii. 21) and idolatry, and leads to worthlessness, to spiritual and moral corruption (Rom. i. 21). "And (walked) after the nations who surrounded them," i.e. the heathen living near them. The concluding words of the verse have the ring of
Lev. xviii. 3. — Vers. 16 and 17. The climax of their apostasy: u They made themselves molten images, two (golden) calves " (1 Kings xii. 28), which are called ^dd after Ex. xxxii. 4, 8, and Deut. ix. 12, 16, " and Asherah," i.e. idols of Astarte (for the fact, see 1 Kings xvi. 33), "and worshipped all the host of heaven (sun, moon, and stars), and served Baal " — in the time of Ahab and his family (1 Kings xvi. 32). The worshipping of all the host of heaven is not specially mentioned in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, but occurs first of all in Judah in the time of Manasseh (ch. xxi. 3). The fact that the host of heaven is mentioned between Asherah and Baal shows that the historian refers to the Baal and Astarte worship, and has borrowed the expression from Deut. iv. 19 and xvii. 3, to show the character of this worship, since both Baal and Astarte were deities of a sidereal nature. The first half of ver. 17 rests upon Deut. xviii. 10, where the worship of Moloch is forbidden along with soothsaying and augury. There is no allusion to this worship in the history of the kingdom of the ten tribes, although it certainly existed in the time of Ahab. The second half of ver. 1 7 also refers to the conduct of Ahab (see at 1 Kings xxi 20). — Vers. 18 sqq. This conduct excited the anger of God, so that He removed them from His face, and only left the tribe (i.e. the kingdom) of Judah (see above, p. 179), although Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord and walked in the statutes of Israel, and therefore had deserved rejection. Ver. 19 contains a parenthesis occasioned by B3P pi 'til (ver. 18b). The statutes of Israel in which Judah walked are not merely the worship of Baal under the Ahab dynasty, so as to refer only to Joram, Ahaziah, and Ahaz (according to ch. viii. 18, 27, and xvi. 3), but also the worship on the high places and worship of idols, which were practised under many of the kings of Judah. — Ver. 20. DKD»J is a continuation of njpj *8K£3 m ver. 18, but so that what follows also refers to the parenthesis in ver. 19. "Then the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel," not merely the ten tribes, but all the nation, and humbled them till He thrust them from His face. DNft differs from WBD "H c^'"1- The latter denotes driving into exile; the former, simply that kind of rejection which consisted in chastisement and deliverance into the hand of plunderers, that is to say, penal judgments by which the Lord sought to lead Israel and Judah to turn to Him and to His commandments, and to preserve them from being driven among the heathen. B*d"b> *i^ ffij as in Judg. ii. 14. — Ver. 21. 131 V}Pr »?: "for He (Jehovah) rent' Israel from the house of David." This view is apparently more correct than that Israel rent the kingdom from the house of David, not only because it presupposes too harsh an ellipsis to supply rD70Brrn&* but also because we never meet with the thought that Israel rent the kingdom from the house of David, and in 1 Kings xi. 31 it is simply stated that Jehovah rent the kingdom from Solomon; and to this our verse refers, whilst the following words 'til i2yEsl recall 1 Kings xii. 20. The *3 is explanatory: the Lord delivered up His people to the plunderers, for He rent Israel from the house of David as a punishment for the idolatry of Solomon, and the Israelites made Jeroboam king, who turned Israel away from Jehovah, etc. The Chethib KT1 is to be read KW, the ffiphil of tf}3 = HTJ, " he caused to depart away from the Lord." The Keri rn*^ Hiphil of rnj, he drove away, turned from the Lord (cf. Deut. xiii. 11), is not unusual, but it is an unnecessary gloss. — Vers. 22, 23. The sons of Israel (the ten tribes) walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, till the Lord removed them from His face, thrust them out of the land of the Lord, as He had threatened them through all His prophets, namely, from the time of Jeroboam onwards (compare 1 Kings xiv. 15, 16, and also Hos. i. 6, ix. 16, Amos iii. 11, 12, v. 27, Isa. xxviii. etc.). The banishment to Assyria (see ver. 6) lasted " unto this day," i.e. till the time when our books were written.1
1 As the Hebrew *iy, like the German bis, is not always used in an exclusive sense, but is frequently abstracted from what lies behind the terminus ad quern mentioned, it by no means follows from the words, " the Lord rejected Israel... to this day" that the ten tribes returned to their own country after the time when our books were written, viz. about the middle of the sixth century B.C. And it is just as impossible to prove the opposite view, which is very widely spread, namely, that they are living as a body in banishment even at the present day. It is well known how often the long-lost ten tribes have been discovered, in the numerous Jewish communities of southern Arabia, in India, more especially in Malabar, in China, Turkistan, and Cashmir, or in Afghanistan (see Ritter's Erdkunde, x. p. 246), and even in America itself; and now Dr. Asahel Grant {Die Nestorianer oder die zelin Stamme) thinks that he has found them in the independent Nestorians and the Jews living among them; whereas others, such as Witsius (Aixottpv*. c. iv. sqq.), J. D. Michaelis (de exsilio decern tribuum, comm. iii.), and last of all Robinson in the work quoted by Ritter, I. c. p. 245 {The Nestorians, etc., New York, 1841), have endeavoured to prove that the ten tribes became partly mixed
Vers. 24-41. The Samaritans and their Worship. — After the transportation of the Israelites, the king of Assyria brought colonists from different provinces of his kingdom into the cities of Samaria. The king of Assyria is not Salmanasar, for it is evident from ver. 25 that a considerable period intervened between the carrying away of the Israelites and the sending of colonists into the depopulated land. It is true that Salmanasar only is mentioned in what precedes, but the section vers. 24-41 is not so closely connected with the first portion of the chapter, that the same king of Assyria must necessarily be spoken of in both. According to Ezra iv. 2, it was Esarhaddon who removed the heathen settlers to Samaria. It is true that the attempt has been made to reconcile tins with the assumption that the king up with the Judseans during the Babylonian captivity, and partly attached themselves to the exiles who were led back to Palestine by Zerubbabel and Ezra; that a portion again became broken up at a still later period by mixing with the rest of the Jews, who were scattered throughout all the world after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and a further portion a long time ago by conversion to Christianity, so that every attempt to discover the remnants of the ten tribes anywhere must be altogether futile. This view is in general the correct one, though its supporters have mixed up the sound arguments with many that are untenable. For example, the predictions quoted by Ritter (p. 250), probably after Robinson (viz. Jer. 1. 4, 5, 17, 19, and Ezek. xxxvii. 11 sqq.), and also the prophetic declarations cited by TVitsius (v. §§ 11-14: viz. Isa. xiv. 1, Mic. ii. 12, Jer. iii. 12, xxx. 3, 4, xxxiii. 7, 8), prove very little, because for the most part they refer to Messianic times and are to be understood spiritually. So much, however, may certainly be gathered from the books of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, that the Judseans whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive were not all placed in the province of Babylonia, but were also dispersed in the different districts that constituted first the Assyrian, then the Chaldsean, and afterwards the Persian empire on the other side of the Euphrates, so that with the cessation of that division which had been so strictly maintained to suit the policy of the Israelitish kings, the ancient separation would also disappear, and their common mournful lot of dispersion among the heathen would of necessity bring about a closer union among all the descendants of Jiacob; just as we find that the kings of Persia knew of no difference between Jews and Israelites, and in the time of Xerxes the grand vizier Haman wanted to exterminate all the Jews (not the Judseans merely, but all the Hebrews). Moreover, the edict of Cyrus (Ezra i. 1-4), " who among you of all his people," and that of Artaxerxes (Ezra vii. 13), " whoever in my kingdom is willing of the people of Israel," gave permission to all the Israelites of the twelve tribes to return to Palestine. And who could maintain with any show of reason, that no one belonging to the ten tribes availed himself of this permission? And though Grant argues, on the other side, that with regard to the 50,000 whom Cyrus eent away to their home it is expressly stated that they were of those "whom of Assyria mentioned in our veTse is Salmanasar, by the conjecture that one portion of these colonists was settled there by Salmanasar, another by Esarhaddon; and it has also been assumed that in this expedition Esarhaddon carried away the last remnant of the ten tribes, namely, all who had fled into the mountains and inaccessible corners of the land, and to some extent also in Judaea, during Salmanasar's invasion, and had then collected together in the land again after the Assyrians had withdrawn. But there is not the smallest intimation anywhere of a second transplantation of heathen colonists to Samaria, any more than of a second removal of the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind in the land after the time of Salmanasar. The prediction in Isa. vii. 8, that in sixty-five years more
Nebuchadnezzar had earried away into Babylon" (Ezra ii. 1), with which ch. i. 5 may also be compared, " then rose up the heads of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites, etc.; " these words apply to the majority of those who returned, and undoubtedly prove that the ten tribes as such did not return to Palestine, but they by no means prove that a considerable number of members of the remaining tribes may not have attached themselves to the large number of citizens of the kingdom of Judah who returned. And not only Light! oot (Hor. hebr. in Ep. 1 ad Cor. Addenda ad c. 14, Opp. ii. p. 929) and Witsius (p. 346), but the Rabbins long before them in Seder Olam rab. c. 29, p. 86, have inferred from the fact that the number of persons and families given separately in Ezra ii. only amounts to 30,360, whereas in ver. 64 the total number of persons who returned is said to have been 42,360 heads, besides 7337 men-servants and maid-servants, that this excess above the families of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, who are mentioned by name, may have come from the ten tribes. Moreover, those who returned did regard themselves as the representatives of the twelve tribes; for at the dedication of the new temple (Ezra vi. 17) they offered " sin-offerings for all Israel, according to the number of the twelve tribes." And those who returned with Ezra did the same. As a thanksgiving for their safe return to their fatherland, they offered in sacrifice " twelve oxen for all Israel, ninetysix rams, seventy-seven sheep, and twelve he-goats for a sin-offering, all as a burnt-offering for Jehovah " (Ezra viii. 35). There ie no doubt that the overwhelming majority of those who returned with Zerubbabel and Ezra belonged to the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi; which may be explained very simply from the fact, that as they had been a much shorter time in exile, they had retained a much stronger longing for the home given by the Lord to their fathers than the tribes that were carried away 180 years before. But that they also followed in great numbers at a future time, after those who had returned before had risen to a state of greater ecclesiastical and civil prosperity in their own home, is an inference that must be drawn from the fact that in the time of Christ and His apostles, Galilee, and in part also Persea, was very densely populated by Israelites; and this population cannot be traced back either to the Jews who returned to Jerusalem and Judaea
Ephraim was to be destroyed, so that it would "be no longer a people, even if it referred to the transplantation of the heathen colonists to Samaria by Esarhaddon, as Usher, Heugstenberg, and others suppose, would by no means necessitate the carrying away of the last remnant of the Israelites by this kingy but simply the occupation of the land by heathen settlers, with whom the last remains of the Ephraimites intermingled, so that Ephraim ceased to be a people. As long as the land of Israel was merely laid waste and deprived of the greater portion of its Israelitish population, there always remained the possibility that the exiles might one day return to their native land and once more form one people with those who were left behind, and so long might Israel be still regarded as a nation; just as the Judaeans, when under Zerubbabel and Ezra, or to the small number of Israelites who were left behind in the land when the Assyrian deportation took place. On the other hand, even the arguments adduced by Grant in support of his view, viz. (1) that we have not the slightest historical evidence that the ten tribes ever left Assyria again, (2) that on the return from the Babylonian captivity they did not come back with the rest, prove as argumenta a silentio but very little, and lose their force still more if the assumptions upon which they are based — namely, that the ten tribes who were transported to Assyria and Media had no intercourse whatever with the Jews who were led away to Babylon, but kept themselves unmixed and quite apart from the Judseans, and that as they did not return with Zerubbabel and Ezra, they did not return to their native land at any later period — are, as we have shown above, untenable. Consequently the further arguments of Grant, (3) that according to Josephus {Ant. xi. 5, 2) the ten tribes were still in the land of their captivity in the first century, and according to Jerome (Comm. on the Prophets) in the fifth; and (4) that in the present day they are still in the country of the ancient Assyrians, since the Nestorians, both according to their own statement and according to the testimony of the Jews there, are Beni Yisrael, and that of the ten tribes, and are also proved to be Israelites by many of the customs and usages which they have preserved {Die Nestor, pp. 113 sqq.); prove nothing more than that there may still be descendants of the Israelites who were banished thither among the Jews and Nestorians living in northern Assyria by the Uramiah-lake, and by no means that the Jews living there are the unmixed descendants of the ten tribes. The statements made by the Jews lose all their importance from the fact, that Jews of other lands maintain just the same concerning themselves. And the Mosaic manners and customs of the Nestorians prove nothing more than that they are of Jewish origin. In general, the Israelites and Jews who have come into heathen lands from the time of Salmanasar and Nebuchadnezzar onwards, and have settled there, have become so mixed up with the Jews who were scattered in all quarters of the globe from the time of Alexander the Great, and more especially since the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans, that the last traces of the old division into tribes have entirely disappeared.
in exile in Babylon, did not cease to be a people, because they looked forward with certain hope to a return to their fatherland after a banishment of seventy years. But after heathen colonists had been transplanted into the land, with whom the remainder of the Israelites who were left in the land became fused, so that there arose a mixed Samaritan people of a predominantly heathen character, it was impossible to speak any longer of a people of Ephraim in the land of Israel. This transplantation of colonists out of Babel, Cutha, etc., into the cities of Samaria might therefore be regarded as the point of time at which the nation of Ephraim was entirely dissolved, without any removal of the last remnant of the Israelites having taken place. We must indeed assume this if the ten tribes were deported to the very last man, and the Samaritans were in their origin a purely heathen people without any admixture of Israelitish blood, as Hengstenberg assumes and has endeavoured to prove. But the very opposite of this is unmistakeably apparent from 2 Chron. xxxiv. 6, 9, according to which there were not a few Israelites left in the depopulated land in the time of Josiah. (Compare Kalkar, Die Samaritaner ein Mischvolk, in Pelt's theol. Mitarbeiten, iii. 3, pp. 24 sqq.). — We therefore regard Esarhaddon as the Assyrian king who brought the colonists to Samaria. The object to K52 may be supplied from the context, more especially from 3K^J, which follows. He brought inhabitants from Babel, i.e. from the country, not the city of Babylon, from Cuthah, etc. The situation of Cuthah or Cuth (ver. 30) cannot be determined with certainty. M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. p. 166) follows JosephuS, who speaks of the Cuthseans in Ant. ix. 14, 3, and x. 9, 7, as a people dwelling in Persia and Media, and identifies them with the Kossceans, Kissians, Khushiya, Chuzi, who lived to the northeast of Susa, in the north-eastern portion of the present Khusistan; whereas Gesenius (thes. p. 674), Rosenmuller (bibl. Althk. i. 2, p. 29), and J. D. Michaelis (Supplem. ad Lex. hcbr. p. 1255)
have decided in favour of the Cutha (\\* g-, or JLfb) in the
Babylonian Irak, in the neighbourhood of the Nahr Malca, in support of which the fact may also be adduced, that, according to a communication from Spiegel (in the Auslande, 1864, No. 46, p. 1089), Cutha, a town not mentioned elsewhere, was situated by the wall in the north-east of Babylon, probably on the spot where the hill Ohaimir with its ruins stands. The greater number of colonists appear to have come from Catha, because the Samaritans are called D"DD by the Eabbins. KJ?, Avva, is almost always, and probably with correctness, regarded as being the same place as the njy (Ivvah) mentioned in ch. xviii. 34 and xix. 13, as the conjecture naturally suggests itself to every one that the Avvceans removed to Samaria by Esarhaddon were inhabitants of the kingdom of Avva destroyed by the Assyrian king, and the form njy is probably simply connected with the appellative explanation given to the word by the Masoretes. As Ivvdh is placed by the side of Henoch in ch. xviii. 34 and xix. 13, Avva can hardly be any other than the country of Hebeh, situated on the Euphrates between Anah and the Chabur (M. v. Niebuhr, p. 167). Hamath is Epiphania on the Orontes: see at 1 Kings viii. 65 and Num. xiii. 21. Sepharvaim is no doubt the Sippara (Snrcjxipa) of Ptolem. (v. 18, 7), the southernmost city of Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, above the JSTahr Malca, the ' HXiov7t6Xl<; ev 2nr7rdpoL<riv or 2 tirirap^voiv iro\i^i which Berosus and Abydenus mention (in Euseb. Prcepar. evang. ix. 12 and 41, and Chronic. Armen. i. pp. 33, 36, 49, 55) as belonging to the time of the flood. — f\"\tiw: this is the first time in which the name is evidently applied to the kingdom of Samaria. — Vers. 25-28. In the earliest period of their settlement in the cities of Samaria the new settlers were visited by lions, which may have multiplied greatly during the time that the land was lying waste. The settlers regarded this as a punishment from Jehovah, i.e. from the deity of the land, whom they did not worship, and therefore asked the king of Assyria for a priest to teach them the right, i.e. the proper, worship of the God of the land; whereupon the king sent them one of the priests who had been carried away, and he took up his abode in Bethel, and instructed the people in the worship of Jehovah. The author of our books also looked upon the lions as sent by Jehovah as a punishment, according to Lev. xxvi. 22, because the new settlers did not fear Him. ^"JN?: the lions which had taken up their abode there. DB> *3Bh TOJ]: that they (the priest with his companions) went away and dwelt there. There is no need therefore to alter the plural into the singular.
The priest sent by the Assyrian king was of course an lsraelitish priest of the calves, for he was one of those who had been carried away and settled in Bethel, the chief seat of Jeroboam's image -worship, and he also taught the colonists to fear or worship Jehovah after the manner of the land. This explains the state of divine worship in the land as described in vers. 29 sqq. " Every separate nation (^i3 '■il: see Ewald, § 313, a) made itself its own gods, and set them up in the houses of the high places (ntonn n^n •. see at 1 Kings xii. 31, and for the singular 1V3, Ewald, § 270, c) which the Samaritans (tfaiwn. not the colonists sent thither by Esarhaddon, but the former inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel, who are so called from the capital Samaria) had made (built); every nation in the cities where they dwelt." — Ver. 30. The people of Babel made themselves nm T\)2p} daughters9 booths. Selden (de Bits Syr. ii. 7), Miinter (Relig. der Babyl. pp. 74, 75), and others understand by these the temples consecrated to Mylitta or Astarte, the /cafidpai, or covered little carriages, or tents for prostitution (Herod, i. 199); but Beyer (Addit. ad Seld. p. 297) has very properly objected to this, that according to the context the reference is to idols or objects of idolatrous worship, which were set up in the riiE2 IV3. It is more natural to suppose that small tent-temples are meant, which were set up as idols in the houses of the high places along with the images which they contained, since according to ch. xxiii. 7 women wove 0^3, little temples, for the Asherah, and Ezekiel speaks of patch-work Bamoth, i.e. of small temples made of cloth. It is possible, however, that there is more truth than is generally supposed in the view held by the Rabbins, that Iltoa ni3p signifies an image of the " hen," or rather the constellation of " the clucking-hen " (GlucJchenne), the Pleiades, — simulacrum gallinw ccelestis in signo Tauri nidulantis, as a symholum Veneris ccelestis, as the other idols are all connected with animal symbolism. In any case the explanation given by Movers, involucra sen seer eta mulierum, female lingams, which were handed by the hierodulse to their paramours instead of the Mylitta-money (Phoniz. i. p. 596), is to be rejected, because it is at variance with the usage of speech and the context, and because the existence of female lingams has first of all to be proved. Eor the different views, see Ges. thes. p. 952, and Leyrer in Herzog's Cycl. — The Cuthasans made themselves as a god, ^"l}, Nergal, i.e., according to Winer, Gesenius, Stuhr, and others, the planet Mars, which the Zabians call *-v*-1rJ, Nerig, as the god of as older commentators identified Nergal with the sun-god Bel, deriving the name from TO, light, and 73, a fountain = fountain of light (Selden, ii. 8, and Beyer, Add. pp. 301 sqq.). But these views are both of them very uncertain. According to the Eabbins (Eashi, E. Salomo, Kimchi), Nergal was represented as a cock. This statement, which is ridiculed by Gesenius, Winer, and Thenius, is proved to be correct by the Assyrian monuments, which contain a number of animal deities, and among them the cock standing upon an altar, and also upon a gem a priest praying in front of a cock (see Layard's Nineveh). The pugnacious cock is found generally in the ancient ethnical religions in frequent connection with the gods of war (cf. J. G-. Miiller in Herzog's Cycl). W&WX, Ashima, the god of the people of Hamath, was worshipped, according to rabbinical statements, under the figure of a bald he-goat (see Selden, ii. 9). The suggested combination of the name with the Phoenician deity Esmun, the Persian Asuman, and the Zendic acmano, i.e. heaven, is very uncertain. — Ver. 31. Of the idols of the Avvceans, according to rabbinical accounts in Selden, I.e., Nibchaz had the form of a dog (T033, latrator, from n33), and Tartak that of an ass. Gesenius regards Tartak as a demon of the lower regions, because in Pehlwi tar — thdkh signifies deep darkness or hero of darkness, and Mbchaz as an evil demon, the TN3J of the Zabians, whom Norberg in his Onomast. cod. Nasar. p. 100, describes as horrendus rex infernalis: posito ipsius throno ad telluris, i.e. lucis et caliginis confinium, sed imo etcher ontis /undo pedibus substrato, according to Codex Adami, ii. 50, lin. 12. — ■ With regard to the gods of the Sepharvites, Adrammelech and Anammelech, it is evident from the offering of children in sacrifice to them that they were related to Moloch. The name?J?12T]K, which occurs as a personal name in ch. xix. 37 and Isa. xxxvii. 38, has been explained either from the Semitic TIK as meaning means " fire-king," and is supposed to refer to the sun (see Ges. on Isaiah, ii. p. 347). w®*V: is supposed by Hyde (de relig. vctt. Persarum, p. 131) to be the group of stars called Cepheus, which goe3 by the name of " the shepherd and flock " and " the herd-stars " in the Oriental astrognosis, and in this case wy might answer to the Arabic Jk£. = \WI. Movers, on the other hand (Phbniz. i.
double-shaped Moloch, and reads the Chethib DS"GD rb& as the singular DpBtpL1 '& the god of Sepharvaim. This double god, according to his explanation, was a sun-being, because Sepharvaim, of which he was ttoXlov^o^, is designated by Berosus as a city of the sun. This may be correct; but there is something very precarious in the further assumption, that " Adar-Melech is to be regarded as the sun's fire, and indeed, since Adar is Mars, that he is so far to be thought of as a destructive being," and that Anammelech is a contraction of ^D py, oculus Molechi, signifying the ever- watchful eye of Saturn; according to which Adrammelech is to be regarded as the solar Mars, Anammelech as the solar Saturn. The explanations given by Hitzig (on Isa. p. 437) and Benfey (die Monatsnamen, pp. 187, 188) are extremely doubtful.— Ver. 32. In addition to these idols, Jehovah also was worshipped in temples of the high places, according to the instructions of the Israelitish priest sent by the king of Assyria, vnn D*K"V: " and they were (also) worshipping Jehovah, and made themselves priests of the mass of the people " (DnftpD as in
I Kings xii. 31). Q\b &&$ vrw; "and they (the priests) were preparing them (sacrifices) in the houses of the high places/' — Ver. 3 3 sums up by way of conclusion the description of the various kinds of worship.
Vers. 34-41. This mixed cultus, composed of the worship of idols and the worship of Jehovah, they retained till the time when the books of the Kings were written. " Unto this day they do after the former customs." D^p&rjn n^a^'sn can only be the religious usages and ordinances which were introduced at the settlement of the new inhabitants, and which are described in vers. 28-33. The prophetic historian observes still further, that " they fear not Jehovah, and do not according to their statutes and their rights, nor according to the law and commandment which the Lord had laid down for the sons of Jacob, to whom He gave the name of Israel" (see 1 Kings xviii. 31), i.e. according to the Mosaic law. pnpn and Uto&WD,
II their statutes and their right," stands in antithesis to rnfoin n]V?™ which Jehovah gave to the children of Israel. If, then, the clause, " they do not according to their statutes and their right," is not to contain a glaring contradiction to the previous assertion, " unto this day they do after their first (former) rights," we must understand by DBBtroi Dnpn the statutes and the right of the ten tribes, i.e. the worship of Jehovah under the symbols of the calves, and must explain the inexactness of the expression " their statutes and their right" from the fact that the historian was thinking of the Israelites who had been left behind in the land, or of the remnant of the Israelitish population that had become mixed up with the heathen settlers (ch. xxiii. 19, 20; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 6, 9, 33). The meaning of the verse is therefore evidently the following: The inhabitants of Samaria retain to this day the cultus composed of the worship of idols and of Jehovah under the form of an image, and do not worship Jehovah either after the manner of the ten tribes or according to the precepts of the Mosaic law. Their worship is an amalgamation of the Jehovah image-worship and of heathen idolatry (cf. ver. 41). — To indicate the character of this worship still more clearly, and hold it up as a complete breach of the covenant and as utter apostasy from Jehovah, the historian describes still more fully, in vers. 35-39, how earnestly and emphatically the people of Israel had been prohibited from worshipping other gods, and urged to worship Jehovah alone, who had redeemed Israel out of Egypt and exalted it into His own nation. For ver. 3 5 compare Ex. xx. 5; for ver. 36, the exposition of ver. 7, also Ex. xxxii. 11, vi. 6, xx. 23; Deut. iv. 34, v. 15, etc. In ver. 37 the committal of the thorah to writing is presupposed. For ver. 39, see Deut. xiii. 5, xxiii. 15, etc. — Ver. 40. They did not hearken, however (the subject is, of course, the ten tribes), but they (the descendants of the Israelites who remained in the land) do after their former manner, ji^fcon DtJ?^P is their manner of worshipping God, which was a mixture of idolatry and of the image- worship of Jehovah, as in ver. 34. — In ver. 41 this is repeated once more, and the whole of these reflections are brought to a close with the additional statement, that their children and grandchildren do the same to tins day. — In the period following the Babylonian captivity the Samaritans relinquished actual idolatry, and by the adoption of the Mosaic book of the law were converted to monotheism. For the later history of the Samaritans, of whom a small handful have been preserved to the present day in the ancient Sichem, the present Nablus, see Theod. GuiL Joh. Juynboll, commentarii in historiam gentis Samaritance, Lugd. Bat. 1846, 4, and H. Fetermann, Samaria and the Samaritans, in Herzog's Cycl,
HI. —HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH FROM THE DE- STRUCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE TEN TRIBES TO THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.
At the time when the kingdom of the ten tribes was destroyed, Judah found itself in a state of dependence upon the imperial power of Assyria, into which it had been brought by the ungodly policy of Ahaz. But three years before the expedition of Salmanasar against Samaria, the pious Hezekiah had ascended the throne of his ancestor David in Jerusalem, and had set on foot with strength and zeal the healing of Judah's wounds, by exterminating idolatry and by restoring the legal worship of Jehovah. As Hezekiah was devoted to the Lord his God with undivided heart and trusted firmly in Him, the Lord also acknowledged him and his undertakings. "When Sennacherib had overrun Judah with a powerful army after the revolt of Hezekiah, and had summoned the capital to surrender, the Lord heard the prayer of His faithful servant Hezekiah and saved Judah and Jerusalem from the threatening destruction bv the miraculous destruction of the forces of the proud Sennacherib (ch. xviii. and xix.), whereby the power of Assyria was so weakened that Judah had no longer much more to fear from it, although it did chastise Manasseh (2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 sqq.). Nevertheless this deliverance, through and in the time of Hezekiah, was merely a postponement of the judgment with which Judah had been threatened by the prophets (Isaiah and Micah), of the destruction of the kingdom and the banishment of its inhabitants. Apostasy from the living God and moral corruption had struck such deep and firm roots in the nation, that the idolatry, outwardly suppressed by Hezekiah, broke out again openly immediately after his death; and that in a still stronger degree, since his son and successor Manasseh not only restored all the abominations of idolatry which his father had rooted out, but even built altars to idols in the courts of the temple of Jehovah, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one end to the other (ch. xxi.), and thereby filled up the measure of sins, so that the Lord had to announce through His prophets to the godless king and people His decree to destroy Jerusalem and cast out the remaining portion of the people of His inheritance among the heathen, and to show the severity of His judgments in the fact that Manasseh was led away captive by the officers of the Assyrian king. And even though Manasseh himself renounced all gross idolatry and restored the legal worship in the temple after his release and return to Jerusalem, as the result of this chastisement, this alteration in the king's mind exerted no lasting influence upon the people generally, and was completely neutralized by his successor Amon, who did not walk in the way of Jehovah, but merely worshipped his father's idols. In this state of things even the God-fearing Josiah, with all the stringency with which he exterminated idolatry, more especially after the discovery of the book of the law, was unable to effect any true change of heart or sincere conversion of the people to their God, and could only wipe out the outward signs and traces of idolatry, and establish the external supremacy of the worship of Jehovah. The people, with their carnal security, imagined that they had done quite enough for God by restoring the outward and legal form of worship, and that they were now quite sure of the divine protection; and did not hearken to the voice of the prophets, who predicted the speedy coming of the judgments of God. Josiah had warded off the bursting forth of these judgments for thirty years, through his humiliation before God and the reforms which he introduced; but towards the end of his reign the Lord began to put away Judah from before His face for the sake of Manasseh's sins, and to reject the city which He had chosen that His name might dwell there (ch. xxii.-xxiii. 2 7). Necho king of Egypt advanced to extend his sway to the Euphrates and overthrow the Assyrian empire. Josiah marched to meet him, for the purpose of preventing the extension of his power into Syria. A battle was fought at Megiddo, the Judsean army was defeated, Josiah fell in the battle, and with him the last hope of the sinking state (ch. xxiii. 29, 30; 2 Chron. xxxv. 23, 24). In Jerusalem Jehoahaz was made king by the people; but after a reign of three months he was taken prisoner by Necho at lliblah in the land of Hamath, and led away to Egypt, where he died. Eliakim, the elder son of Josiah, was appointed by Necho as Egyptian vassal-king in Jerusalem, under the name of Jehoiakim. He was devoted to idolatry, and through his love of show (Jer. xxii. 13 sqq.) still further ruined the kingdom, which was already exhausted by the tribute to be paid to Egypt. In the fourth year of his reign Pharaoh-Necho succumbed at Carchemish to the Chaldsean power, which was rising under Nebuchadnezzar upon the ruins of the Assyrian kingdom. At the same time Jeremiah proclaimed to the incorrigible nation that the Lord of Sabaoth would deliver Judah with all the surrounding nations into the hand of His servant Nebuchadnezzar, that the land of Judah would be laid waste and the people serve the king of Babylon seventy years (Jer. xxv.). Nebuchadnezzar appeared in Judah immediately afterwards to follow up his victory over Necho, took Jerusalem, made Jehoiakim his subject, and carried away Daniel, with many of the leading young men, to Babylon (ch. xxiv. 1). But after some years Jehoiakim revolted; whereupon Nebuchadnezzar sent fresh troops against Jerusalem to besiege the city, and after defeating Jehoiachin, who had in the meantime followed his father upon the throne, led away into captivity to Babylon, along with the kernel of the nation, nobles, warriors, craftsmen, and smiths, and set upon the throne Mattaniah, the only remaining son of Josiah, under the name of Zedekiah (ch. xxiv. 2—17). But when he also formed an alliance with Pharaoh-Hophra in the ninth year of his reign, and revolted from the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar advanced immediately with all his forces, besieged Jerusalem, and having taken the city and destroyed it, put an end to the kingdom of Judah by slaying Zedekiah and his sons, and carrying away all the people that were left, with the exception of a very small remnant of cultivators of the soil (ch. xxiv. 18-xxv. 26), a hundred and thirty-four years after the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes.
Vers. 1—8. Length and character of Hezekiah's reign} — Vers. 1, 2. In the third year of Hoshea of Israel, Hezekiah became
1 On comparing the account of Hezekiah's reign given in our books (ch. xviii.-xx.) with that in 2 Chron. xxix.-xxxii., the different plans of these two historical works are at once apparent. The prophetic author of our books first of all describes quite briefly the character of the king's reign (ch. xviii. 1-8), and then gives an elaborate description of the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib and of his attempt to get Jerusalem into his power, together with the destruction of the proud Assyrian force and Sennacherib's king over Judah, when he was twenty-five years old. According to vers. 9 and 10, the fourth and sixth years of Hezekiah corresponded to the seventh and ninth of Hoshea; consequently his first year apparently ran parallel to the fourth of Hoshea, so that Josephus (Ant ix. 13, 1) represents him as having ascended the throne in the fourth year of Hoshea's reign. But there is no necessity for this alteration. If we assume that the commencement of his reign took place towards the close of the third year of Hoshea, the fourth and sixth years of his reign coincided for the most part with the sixth and ninth years of Hoshea's reign. The name njptn or *nji?jn (vers. 9, 13, etc.) is given in its complete form VJpjrp, " whom Jehovah strengthens," in 2 Chron. xxix. sqq. and Isa. i. 1; and n*i?tn? in Hos. i. 1 and Mic. i. 1. On his age when he ascended the throne, see the Comm. on ch. xvi. 2. The name of his mother, *3N, is a strongly contracted form of n*3X (2 Chron. xxix. 1). — Vers. 3 sqq. As ruler Hezekiah walked in the footsteps of his ancestor David. He removed the high places and the other objects of idolatrous worship, trusted in Jehovah, and adhered firmly to Him without wavering; therefore the Lord made all his undertakings prosper. ntoan, rriaran, and n^n (see at 1 Kings xiv. 23) embrace all the objects of idolatrous worship, which had been introduced into Jerusalem and Judah in the reigns of the former kings, hasty return to Nineveh and death (ch. xviii. 13-19, 37); and, finally, he also gives a circumstantial account of Hezekiah's illness and recovery, and also of the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem, and of Hezekiah's conduct on that occasion (ch. xx.). The chronicler, on the other hand, has fixed his chief attention upon the religious reformation carried out by Hezekiah, and therefore first of all describes most elaborately the purification of the temple from all idolatrous abominations, the restoration of the Jehovahcultus and the feast of passover, to which Hezekiah invited all the people, not only the subjects of his own kingdom, but the remnant of the ten tribes also (2 Chron. xxix.-xxxi.); and then simply gives in ch. xxxii. the most summary account of the attack made by Sennacherib upon Jerusalem and the destruction of his army, of the sickness and recovery of Hezekiah, and of his great riches, the Babylonian embassy being touched upon in only the most casual manner. The historical character of the elaborate accounts given in the Chronicles of Hezekiah's reform of worship and his celebration of the passover, which Theuius follows De Wette and Gramberg in throwing doubt upon, has been most successfully defended by Bertheau as well as others. — On the disputed question, in what year of Hezekiah's reign the solemn passover instituted by him fell, see the thorough discussion of it by C. P. Caspari (Beitrr. z. Einleit. in d. B. Jesaia, pp. 109 sqq.), and our Commentary on the Chronicles, which has yet to appear.
and more especially in that of Ahaz. The singular «Ti^«n is used in a collective sense = B*"}?PNfi (2 Chron. xxxi. 1). The only other idol that is specially mentioned is the brazen serpent which Moses made in the wilderness (Num. xxi. 8, 9), and which the people with their leaning to idolatry had turned in the course of time into an object of idolatrous worship. The words, " to this day were the children of Israel burning incense to it," do not mean that this took place without interruption from the time of Moses down to that of Hezekiah, but simply, that it occurred at intervals, and that the idolatry carried on with this idol lasted till the time of Hezekiah, namely, till this king broke in pieces the brazen serpent, because of the idolatry that was associated with it. For further remarks on the meaning of this symbol, see the Comm. on Num. xxL 8, 9. The people called (^"]i?^, one called) this serpent \*$™> i.e. a brazen thing. This epithet does not involve anything contemptuous, as the earlier commentators supposed, nor the idea of " Brassgod" (Ewald). — Ver. 5. The verdict, " after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah," refers to Hezekiah' s confidence in God (n9?), in which he had no equal, whereas in the case of Josiah his conscientious adherence to the Mosaic law is extolled in the same words (ch. xxiii. 25); so that there is no ground for saying that there is a contradiction between our verse and ch. xxiii. 25 (Thenius). — Ver. 6. '"a p3T: he adhered faithfully to Jehovah (P?^ as in 1 Kings xi. 2), and departed not from Him, i.e. he never gave himself up to idolatry. — Ver, 7. The Lord therefore gave him success in all his undertakings frs&t}, see at 1 Kings ii. 3), and even in his rebellion against the king of Assyria, whom he no longer served, i.e. to whom he paid no more tribute. It was through Ahaz that Judah had been brought into dependence upon Assyria; and Hezekiah released himself from this, by refusing to pay any more tribute, probably after the departure of Salmanasar from Palestine, and possibly not till after the death of that king. Sennacherib therefore made war upon Hezekiah to subjugate Judah to himself again (see vers. 13 sqq.). — Ver. 8. Hezekiah smote the Philistines to Gaza, and their territory from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city, i.e. all the towns from the least to the greatest (see at ch. xvii. 9). He thus chastised these enemies for their invasion of Judah in the time of Ahaz, wrested from them the cities which they had taken at that time (2 Chron.
xxviii. 1 8), and laid waste all their country to Gaza, i.e. Ghvzzeh, the i ost southerly of the chief cities of Philistia (see at Josh, xiii. 3). This probably took place after the defeat of Sennacherib (cf. 2 Ghron. xxxii. 22, 23).
In vers. 9-12 the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes by Salmanasar, which has already been related according to the annals of the kingdom of Israel in ch. xvii. 3-6, is related once more according to the annals of the kingdom of Judah, in which this catastrophe is also introduced as an event that was memorable in relation to all the covenant-nation.
Vers. 13—3*7. Sennacherib invades Judah and threatens Jerusalem.1— Sennacherib, 3*lfUD (Sancherlbh), 'Sevva^plfju (LXX.), SevaxtfpLftos (Joseph.), 2ava%dpLf3o<; (Herodot.), whose name has not yet been deciphered with certainty upon the Assyrian monuments or clearly explained (see J. Brandis iXber den hist or. Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der assyr. Inschriften, pp. 103 sqq., and M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, p. 37), was the successor of Salmanasar (Sargina according to the monuments). He is called fiaatkevs Apafticov re koI 'Aaavploov by Herodotus (ii. 141), and reigned, according to Berosus, eighteen years. He took all the fortified cities in Judah (DfeWJ, with the masculine suffix instead of the feminine: cf. Ewald, § 184, c). The!>3, all, is not to be pressed; for, beside the strongly fortified capital Jerusalem, he had not yet taken the fortified cities of Lachish and Libnah (ver. 1 7 and ch. xix. 8) at the time, when, according to vers. 14 sqq., he sent a division of his army against Jerusalem, and summoned Hezekiah to surrender that city. According to Herodotus (I.e.), the real object of his campaign was Egypt, which is also apparent from ch. xix. 2 4, and is confirmed by Isa. x. 24; for which reason Tirhaka marched against him (ch. xix. 8; cf. M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 171, 172). — Vers.. 14 sqq. On the report of Sennacherib's approach, Hezekiah made provision at once for the safety of Jerusalem. He had the city fortified more strongly, and the fountain of the
1 We have a parallel and elaborate account of this campaign of Sennacherib and his defeat (ch. xviii. 13-xix. 37), and also of Hezekiah's sickness and recovery and the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem (ch. xx. 1-19), in Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix., and a brief extract, with certain not unimportant supplements, in 2 Chron. xxxii. These three narratives, as is now generally admitted, are drawn independently of one another from a collection of the prophecies of Isaiah, which was received into the annals of the kingdom (2 Chron. xxxii. 32), and serve to confirm and complete one another.
upper Gihon and the brook near the city stopped up (see at ver. 1 7), to cut off the supply of water from the besiegers, as is stated in 2 Chron. xxxii. 2— 8, and confirmed bylsa. xxii. 8-11. In the meantime Sennacherib had pressed forward to Zachish, i.e. Um Lakis, in the plain of Judah, on the south-west of Jerusalem, seven hours to the west of Eleutheropolis on the road to Egypt (see at Josh. x. 3); so that Hezekiah, having doubts as to the possibility of a successful resistance, sent ambassadors to negotiate with him, and promised to pay him as much tribute as he might demand if he would withdraw. The confession " I have sinned" is not to be pressed, inasmuch as it was forced from Hezekiah by the pressure of distress. Since Asshur had made Judah tributary by faithless conduct on the part of Tiglathpileser towards Ahaz, there was nothing really wrong in the shaking off of this yoke by the refusal to pay any further tribute. But Hezekiah certainly did wrong, when, after taking the first step, he was alarmed at the disastrous consequences, and sought to purchase once more the peace which he himself had broken, by a fresh submission and renewal of the payment of tribute. This false step on the part of the pious king, which arose from a temporary weakness of faith, was nevertheless turned into a blessing through the pride of Sennacherib and the covenant-faithfulness of the Lord towards him and his kingdom. Sennacherib demanded the enormous sum of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold (more than two and a half million thalers, or £375,000); and Hezekiah not only gave him all the gold and silver found in the treasures of the temple and palace, but had the gold plates with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple (2 Chron. xxix. 3) removed, to send them to the king of Assyria. ntofcn, lit. the supports, i.e. the posts, of the doors.
These negotiations with Sennacherib on the part of Hezekiah are passed over both in the book of Isaiah and also in the Chronicles, because they had no further influence upon the future progress of the war. — Vers. 17 sqq. For though Sennacherib did indeed take the money, he did not depart, as he had no doubt promised, but, emboldened still further by this submissiveness, sent a detachment of his army against Jerusalem, and summoned Hezekiah to surrender the capital. " He sent Tartan, Kabsaris, and Rabshakeh." Rabshakeh only is mentioned in Isaiah, as the chief speaker in the negotiations which follow, although in Isa. xxxvii. 6 and 24 allusion is evidently made to the other two. Tartan had no doubt the chief command, since he is not only mentioned first here, but conducted the siege of Ashdod, according to Isa. xx. 1. The three names are probably only official names, or titles of the offices held by the persons mentioned. For Dncr:n means princeps eunuchorum, and npj^ chief cup-bearer. I^l^i is explained by Hitzig on Isa. xx. 1 as derived from the Persian
Jer. xxxix. 3 as " body-guard; " but this is hardly correct, as the other two titles are Semitic. These generals took up their station with their army "at the conduit of the upper pool, which ran by the road of the fuller's field," i.e. the conduit which flowed from the upper pool — according to 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, the basin of the upper Gihon {Birkct el Mamilla) — into the lower pool (Birket es Sultan: see at 1 Kings i. 33). According to Isa. vii. 3, this conduit was in existence as early as the time of Ahaz. The " end " of it is probably the locality in which the conduit began at the upper pool or Gihon, or where it first issued from it. This conduit which led from the upper Gihon into the lower, and which is called in 2 Chron. xxxii. 30" the outflow of the upper Gihon," Hezekiah stopped up, and conducted the water downwards, i.e. underground, towards the west into the city of David; that is to say, he conducted the water of the upper Gihon, which had previously flowed along the western side of the city outside the wall into the lower Gihon and so away down the valley of Ben-hinnom, into the city itself by means of a subterranean channel,1 that he might retain this water for the use of the city in the event of a siege of Jerusalem, and keep it from the besiegers. This water was probably collected in the cistern (hygan) which Hezekiah made, i.e. ordered to be constructed (ch. xx. 20), or the reservoir " between the two walls for the waters of the old pool," mentioned in Isa. xxii. 11, i.e. most probably the reservoir still existing at some distance to the east of the Joppa gate on the western side of the road which leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the so-called " pool of Hezekiah," which the natives call Birkct el Hamman,
1 We may get some idea of the works connected with this aqueduct from the description of the " sealed fountain " of the Solomon's pool a* Ain Saleh in Tobler, Topogr. v. Jerus. ii. pp. 857 sqq., Dritte Wander ung.
" Bathing-pool," because it supplies a bath in the neighbourhood, or B. el Batrak, " Patriarch's pool " (see Eobinson, Pal. i. p. 487, and Fresh Researches into the Topography of Jerusalem, pp. Ill sqq.), since this is still fed by a conduit from the Mamilla pool (see E. G. Schultz, Jerusalem, p. 31, and Tobler, Denkblatter, pp. 44 sqq.).i — Ver. 18. Hezekiah considered it beneath his dignity to negotiate personally with the generals of Sennacherib. He sent three of his leading ministers out to the front of the city: Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, the captain of the castle, who had only received the appointment to this office a short time before in Shebnds place (Isa. xxii. 20, 21); Shebna, who was still secretary of state ("IBD: see at 2 Sam. viii. 1 7); and Joach the son of Asaph, the chancellor p^TO: see at 2 Sam. viii. 16). Rabshakeh made a speech to these three (vers. 19-25), in which he tried to show that Hezekiah's confidence that he would be able to resist the might of the king of Assyria was perfectly vain, since neither Egypt (ver. 21), nor his God (ver. 22), nor his forces (ver. 23), would be able to defend him. — Ver. 19. " The great king:" the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian kings all assumed this title (cf. Ezek. xx vi. 7; Dan. ii. 3 7), because
1 The identity of the n3"0, which Hezekiah constructed as a reservoir for the overflow of the upper Gihon that was conducted into the city (ch. xx. 20), with the present "pool of Hezekiah " is indeed very probable, but not quite certain. For in very recent times, on digging the foundation for the Evangelical church built on the northern slope of Zion, they lighted upon a large well-preserved arched channel, which was partly cut in the rock, and, where this was not the case, built in level layers and coated within with a hard cement about an inch thick and covered with large stones (Robinson, New Inquiries as to the Topography of Jerusalem, p. 113, and Bill. Res. p. 318), and which might possibly be connected with the channel made by Hezekiah to conduct the water of the upper Gihon into the city, although this channel does not open into the pool of Hezekiah, and the walls, some remains of which are still preserved, may belong to a later age. The arguments adduced by Thenius in support of the assumption that the " lower " or "old pool" mentioned in Isa. xxii. 9 and 11 is different from the lower Gihon-pool, and to be sought for in the Tyropceon, are inconclusive. It by no means follows from the expression, " which lies by the road of the fuller's field," i.e. by the road which runs past the fullers field, that there was another upper pool in Jerusalem beside the upper pool (Gihon); but this additional clause simply serves to define more precisely the spot by the conduit mentioned where the Assyrian army took its stand; and it by no means follows from the words of Isa. xxii. 11, " a gathering of waters have ye made between the two walls for the waters of the old pool," that this gathering of waters was made in the Tyropoeon, and that this "old kings of conquered lands were subject to them as vassals (see at Isa. x. 8). " What is this confidence that thou cherishest?" i.e. how vain or worthless is this confidence! — Ver. 2 0. " Thou sayest... it is only a lip-word...: counsel and might for battle;" i.e. if thou speakest of counsel and might for battle, that is only 0?flBB> "*?**, a word that merely comes from the lips, not from the heart, the seat of the understanding, i.e. a foolish and inconsiderate saying (cf. Prov. xiv. 23; Job xi. 2). — £")*?£ is to be preferred to the **no? of Isaiah as the more original of the two. nny, now, sc. we will see on whom thou didst rely, when thou didst rebel against me. — Ver. 21. On Egypt? " that broken reed, which runs into the hand of any one who would lean upon it (thinking it whole), and pierces it through." This figure, which is repeated in Ezek. xxix. 6, 7, is so far suitably chosen, that the Nile, representing Egypt, is rich in reeds. What Eabshakeh says of Egypt here, Isaiah had already earnestly impressed upon his people (Isa. xxx. 3—5), to warn them against trusting in the support of Egypt, from which one party in the nation expected help against Assyria. — Ver. 22. Hezekiah (and Judah) had a stronger ground of confidence in Jehovah his God. Even this pool," as distinguished from the lower pool (ver. 9), was an upper pool, which was above the king's pool mentioned in Neh. iii. 15. For even if DTlDnn pa occurs in ch. xxv. 4, Jer. xxxix. 4, Hi. 7, in connection with a locality on the south-east side of the city, the Old Testament says nothing about two pools in the Tyropceon at the south-east corner of Jerusalem, but simply mentions a fountain gate, which probably derived its name from the present fountain of the Virgin, and the king's pool, also called Shelach in Neh. ii. 14, iii. 15, which was no doubt fed from that fountain like the present SUocim, and watered the royal gardens. (Compare Rob. Pal. i. pp. 565 sqq., and Bibl. Res. p. 189, and Tobler, Die Siloah-quelle u. der Oelberg, pp. 1 sqq.). The two walls, between which Hezekiah placed the reservoir, may very well be the northern wall of Zion and the one which surrounded the lower city (Acra) on the north-west, according to which the words in Isa. xxii. 11 would admirably suit the " pool of Hezekiah." Again, Hezekiah did not wait till the departure of Sennacherib before he built this conduit, whicli is also mentioned in Wisd. xlviii. 17, as Knobel supposes (on Isa. xxii. 11), but he made it when he first invaded Judah, before the appearance of the Assyrian troops in front of Jerusalem, when he made the defensive preparations noticed at ver. 14, as is evident from 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 4, compared with ver. 30, since the stopping up of the fountain outside the city, to withdraw the water from the Assyrians, is expressly mentioned in vers. 3, 4 among the measures of defence; and in the concluding notices concerning Hezekiah in ch. xx. 20, and 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, there is also a brief allusion to this work, without any precise indication of the time when he had executed it.
Eabshakeh tried to shake, availing himself very skilfully, from his heathen point of view, of the reform which Hezekiah had made in the worship, and representing the abolition of the altars on the high places as an infringement upon the reverence that ought to be shown to God. " And if ye say, We trust in Jehovah our God, (I say:) is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar (in the temple) in Jerusalem?" Instead of riDKn ^ according to which Eabshakeh turned to the deputies, we have in Isa. vii. 7 *»DKn *3t according to which the words are addressed to Hezekiah, as in ver. 20. npNfi is preferred by Thenius, Knobel, and others, because in what follows Hezekiah is addressed in the third person. But the very circumstance that TTOfitn is apparently more suitable favours the originality of "iBNfi, according to which the king is still addressed in the person of his ambassadors, and Eabshakeh only speaks directly to the ambassadors when this argument is answered. The attack upon the confidence which the Judseans placed in their God commences with Kin Ni7n. The opinion of Thenius, that the second clause of the verse is a continuation of the words supposed to be spoken by the Judaeans who trusted in God, and that the apodosis does not follow till ver. 23, is quite a mistake. The ambassadors of Hezekiah could not regard the high places and idolatrous altars that had been abolished as altars of Jehovah; and the apodosis could not commence with nnjn. — Vers. 23, 24. Still less could Hezekiah rely upon his military resources. *u 3"iynn: enter, I pray thee, (into contest) with my lord, and I will give thee 2000 horses, if thou canst set the horsemen upon them. The meaning, of course, is not that Hezekiah could not raise 2000 soldiers in all, but that he could not produce so many men who were able to fight as horsemen. " How then wilt thou turn back a single one of the smallest lieutenants of my lord?" vB \3B~riN ^[}, to repulse a person's face, means generally to turn away a person with his petition (1 Kings ii. 16, 17), here to repulse an assailant, inx nna is one pasha; although inN, which is grammatically subordinate to nns, is in the construct state, that the genitives which follow may be connected (for this subordination of "in** see Ewald, § 286, a), nna (see at 1 Kings x. 1 5), lit. under- vicegerent, i.e. administrator of a province under a satrap, in military states also a subordinate officer. noani; and so (with thy military force so small) thou trustest in Egypt 'U1 srn?, so far as war-chariots and horsemen are concerned. — Ver. 25. After Kabshakeh had thus, as he imagined, taken away every ground of confidence from Hezekiah, he added still further, that the Assyrian king himself had also not come without Jehovah, but had been summoned by Him to effect the destruction of Judah. It is possible that some report may have reached his ears of the predictions of the prophets, who had represented the Assyrian invasion as a judgment from the Lord, and these he used for his own purposes. Instead of by njn Dipsn, against this place, i.e. Jerusalem, we have nwn P.*J'"J by in Isaiah, — a reading which owes its origin simply to the endeavour to bring the two clauses into exact conformity to one another. Vers. 26-37. It was very conceivable that Kabshakeh's boasting might make an impression upon the people; the ambassadors of Hezekiah therefore interrupted him with the request that he would speak to them in Aramaean, as they understood that language, and not in Jewish, on account of the people who were standing upon the wall. n,J?"jK was the language spoken in Syria, Babylonia, and probably also in the province of Assyria, and may possibly have been Kabshakeh's mother-tongue, even if the court language of the Assyrian kings was an Aryan dialect. With the close affinity between the Aramaean and the Hebrew, the latter could not be unknown to Kabshakeh, so that he made use of it, just as the Aramaean language was intelligible to the ministers of Hezekiah, whereas the people in Jerusalem understood only n*Wi^ Jewish, i.e. the Hebrew language spoken in the kingdom of Judah. It is evident from the last clause of the verse that the negotiations were carried on in the neighbourhood of the city wall of Jerusalem. — Ver. 27. But Kabshakeh rejected this proposal with the scornful remark, that his commission was not to speak to Hezekiah and his ambassadors only, but rather to the people upon the wall. The variation of the preposition bv and b& in TpK ty, to thy lord (Hezekiah), and T^?, to thee (Eliakim as chief speaker), is avoided in the text of Isaiah, by is frequently used for btt} in the later usage of the language, in the sense of to or at. In the words "who sit upon the wall to eat their dung and drink their urine," Kabshakeh points to the horrors which a siege of Jerusalem would entail upon the inhabitants. For orpin = DiTfcon, excrementa sua, and O'WP, urinas suas, the Masoretes have substituted the euphemisms DriKiv, going forth, and mbr\ WD, water of their feet. — Vers. 28 sqq. Ttog5: not, he stood up, raised himself (Ges.), or came forward (Then.), but he stationed himself, assumed an attitude calculated for effect, and spoke to the people with a loud voice in the Jewish language, telling them to listen to the king of Assyria and not to be led astray by Hezekiah, i.e. to be persuaded to defend the city any longer, since neither Hezekiah nor Jehovah could defend them from the misrht of Sennacherib. tW"7K: let not Hezekiah deceive you, sc. by pretending to be able to defend or save Jerusalem. In VWD, " out of his (the Assyrian's) hand," the speaker ceases to speak in the name of his king. On the construction of the passive $3*1 with ^V?™, see Ewald, § 277, d, although in the instance before us he proposes to expunge the HK after Isa. xxxvi. 15. — Vers, 31 sqq. " Make peace with me and come out to me (sc. out of your walls, i.e. surrender to me), and ye shall eat every one his vine,... till I come and bring you into a land like your own land..." ro"j3 is used here to signify peace as the concentration of weal and blessing. The imperative WMfl expresses the consequence of what goes before (vid. Ewald, § 347, b). To eat his vine and fig-tree and to drink the water of his well is a figure denoting the quiet and undisturbed enjoyment of the fruits of his own possessions (cf. 1 Kings v. 5). Even in the event of their yielding, the Assyrian would transport the Jewish people into another land, according to the standing custom of Asiatic conquerors in ancient times (for proofs see Hengstenberg, Be rebus Tyriis, pp. 51, 52). To make the people contented with this thought, the boaster promised that the king of Assyria would carry them into a land which was quite as fruitful and glorious as the land of Canaan. The description of it as a land with corn and new wine, etc., recalls the picture of the land of Canaan in Deut. viii. 8 and xxxiii. 28. 1W n\t is the olive-tree which yields good oil, in distinction from the wild olive-tree. 'Ml Wn ■ and ye shall live and not die, i.e. no harm shall befall you from me (Thenius). This passage is abridged in Isa. xxxvi. 17. — Vers. 33 sqq. Even Jehovah could not deliver them any more than Hezekiah. As a proof of this, Kabshakeh enumerated a number of cities and lands which the king of Assyria had conquered, without their gods' being able to offer any resistance to his power. " Where are the gods of Hamath, etc., that they might have delivered Samaria out of my hand? " Instead of ^*n *? we have '*n ^ and that they might have, which loosens the connection somewhat more between this clause and the preceding one, and makes it more independent. " Where are they? " is equivalent to they are gone, have perished (cf. ch. xix. 18); and " that they might have delivered " is equivalent to they have not delivered. The subject to *hfn *3 is Diin »n*>K, which includes the God of Samaria. Sennacherib regards himself as being as it were one with his predecessors, as the representative of the might of Assyria, so that he attributes to himself the conquests of cities and lands which his ancestors had made. The cities and lands enumerated in ver. 34 have been mentioned already in ch. xvii. 24 as conquered territories, from which colonists had been transplanted to Samaria, with the exception of Arpad and Hena. ISIK, which is also mentioned in ch. xix. 13, Isa. x. 9, xxxvi. 19, xxxvii. 13, and Jer. xlix. 23, in connection with Hamath, was certainly situated in the neighbourhood of that city, and still exists, so far as the name is concerned, in the large village
Syria in the district of Azdz, which was seven hours to the north of Haleb, according to Abulf. Tab. Syr. ed. Kohler, p. 23, and Mebuhr, Reise, ii. p. 414 (see Eoediger, Addenda ad Ges. thes. p. 1 1 2). M\}, Hena, which is also combined with rIvvah in on the Euphrates, mentioned by Abulf., and TO is most likely the same as CT in ch. xvii. 24. The names TO] V)\} are omitted from the text of Isaiah in consequence of the abridgment of Rabshakeh's address. — Ver. 35 contains the conclusion drawn from the facts already adduced: " which of all the gods of the lands are they who have delivered their land out of my hand, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? " i.e. as not one of the gods of the lands named have been able to rescue his land from Assyria, Jehovah also will not be able to defend Jerusalem. — Vers. 36, 37. The people were quite silent at this address ("the people," Byn, to whom Rabshakeh had wished to address himself); for Hezekiah had forbidden them to make any answer, not only to prevent Eabshakeh from saying anything further, but that the ambassadors of Sennacherib might be left in complete uncertainty as to the impression made by their words. The deputies of Hezekiah returned to the king with their clothes rent as a sign of grief at the words of the Assyrian, by which not only Hezekiah, but still more Jehovah, had been blasphemed, and reported what they had heard.