CHAP. XIX. JERUSALEM DELIVERED. DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSY- RIAN ARMY AND DEATH OF SENNACHERIB. (Compare Isa.
Vers. 1—4. When Hezekiah had heard from his counsellors the report of Kabshakeh's words, he rent his clothes with horror at his daring mockery of the living God (ver. 4), put on mourning clothes as a sign of the trouble of his soul and went into the temple, and at the same time sent Eliakim and Shebna with the oldest of the priests in mourning costume to the prophet Isaiah, to entreat him to intercede with the Lord in these desperate circumstances.1 The order of the words: Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, is unusual (cf. ch. xiv. 25, xx. 1; 1 Kings xvi. 7, etc.), and is therefore altered in Isaiah into Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet. — Yer. 3. "A day of distress, and of chastisement, and of rejection is this day." n?Din: the divine chastisement, nvsj: contemptuous treatment, or rejection of the people on the part of God (compare Y&), Deut. xxxii. 19, Jer. xiv. 21, Lam. ii. 6). " For children have come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth." A figure denoting extreme danger, the most desperate circumstances. If the woman in travail has not strength to bring forth the child which has come to the mouth of the womb, both the life of the child and that of the mother are exposed to the greatest danger; and this was the condition of the people here (see the similar figure in Hos. xiii. 13). For fTO instead of rn?, see Ges. § 69, 2 Anm. — Ver. 4. Perhaps Jehovah thy God will hear the blasphemies of the living God on the part of Eabshakeh. VW\: hear, equivalent to observe, take notice of, and in this case punish. *n Dsr6tf: the living God, in contrast to the gods of the heathen, who are only lifeless idols (cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 26, 36). rpairn is not to be taken in connection with *T}n?, as if it stood for D*?*n?j " and to scold with words" (Luth,
1 " But the most wise king did not meet his blasphemies with weapons, but with prayer, and tears, and sackcloth, and entreated the prophet Isaiah to be his ambassador." — Theodoret.
Ges., etc.), but is a per/, rel. or a progressive perfect (Ewald, §234, a), and the continuation of V®&: "and will chastise (punish, sc. him) for the words which He has heard." 'an ^^) ' " therefore lift up prayer (to heaven) for the (still) existing remnant, sc. of the people of God;" nearly all Judah having come into the power of Sennacherib since the carrying away of the ten tribes.
Vers. 5-7. Isaiah replied with this comforting promise: Hezekiah was not to be afraid of the blasphemous words of the Assyrian king; the Lord would frighten him with a report, so that he would return to his own land, and there would He cause him to fall by the sword. 'N "^9 *3|?, the servants or young men of the Assyrian king, is a derogatory epithet applied to the officials of Assyria. " Behold, I put a spirit into him, so that he shall hear a report and return into his own land." njnoKJ does not refer to the report of the destruction of his army (ver. 35), as Thenius supposes, for Sennacherib did not hear of this through the medium of an army, but was with the army himself at the time when it was smitten by the angel of the Lord; it refers to the report mentioned in ver. 9. For even if he made one last attempt to secure the surrender of Jerusalem immediately upon hearing this report, yet after the failure of this attempt to shake the firmness of Hezekiah his courage must have failed him, and the thought of return must have suggested itself, so that this was only accelerated by the blow which fell upon the army. For, as 0. v. Gerlach has correctly observed, " the destruction of the army would hardly have produced any decisive effect without the approach of Tirhakah, since the great power of the Assyrian king, especially in relation to the small kingdom of Judah, was not broken thereby. But at the prayer of the king the Lord added this miracle to the other, which His providence had already brought to pass. — For the fulfilment of the prophecy of Sennacherib's death, see ver. 37.
Vers. 8-13. In the meantime Babshakeh had returned to his king at Libnah (see at ch. viii. 22), to which he had gone from Lachish, probably after having taken that fortress. — Ver. 9. There Sennacherib heard that Tirhakah was advancing to make war against him. Tirhakah, Qapaicd (LXX.), king of Cush, is the Tapa/cos of Manetho, the successor of Sevechus (Shebek II.), the third king of the twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) dynasty, described by Strabo (xv. 687), who calls him TedpKoav, as a great conqueror. His name is spelt Tahalqa or Taharqo upon the monuments, and on the Pylon of the great temple at Medinet-Abu he is represented in the form of a king, cutting down enemies of conquered lands (Egypt, Syria, and Tepopa, an unknown land) before the god Ammon (see Brugsch, hist. d'Egypte, i. pp. 244, 245).1 — On hearing the report of the advance of Tirhakah, Sennacherib sent ambassadors again to Hezekiah with a letter (ver. 14), in which he summoned him once more to give up his confidence in his God, and his assurance that Jerusalem would not be delivered into the hands of the king of Assyria, since the gods of no other nation had been able to save their lands and cities from the kings of Assyria who had preceded him. The letter contained nothing more, therefore, than a repetition of the arguments already adduced by Eabshakeh (ch. xviii. 1 9 sqq.), though a larger number of the lands conquered by the Assyrians are given, for the purpose of strengthening the impression intended to be made upon Hezekiah of the irresistible character of the Assyrian arms. — To offer a successful resistance to Tirhakah and overcome him, Sennacherib wanted above all things a firm footing in Judah; and for this the possession of Jerusalem was of the greatest importance, since it would both cover his back and secure his retreat. Fortifications like Lachish and Libnah could be quickly taken by a violent assault. But
1 According to Jul. Afric. (in Syncell. i. p. 139, ed. Dind.) he reigned eighteen years, according to Euseb. (in Syncell. p. 140) twenty years. Both statements are incorrect; for, according to an Apis-stele published by Mariette, the birth of an Apis who died in the twentieth year of Psammetichus fell in the twenty-sixth year of Tirhakah, so that the reign of Tirhakah may be supposed to have lasted twenty-eight years (see Brugsch, I.e. p. 247). But the chronological conclusions respecting the date of his reign are very uncertain. Whereas M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. Ass. p. 72) fixes his expedition against Sennacherib in the thirty-seventh asr. Nab., i.e. 710 B.C., and the commencement of his reign over Egypt in 45 ser. Nab., i.e. 702 B.C., and assumes that he marched against Sennacherib before he was king of Egypt, which is apparently favoured by the epithet king of Cush, not of Egypt; Brugsch (I.e. p. 292) has given the year 693 B.C. as the commencement of his reign. It is obvious that this statement is irreconcilable with the 0. T. chronology, since the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, in which Sennacherib invaded Judah, corresponds to the year 714 or 713 B.C. These diversities simply confirm our remark (p. 411), that the chronological data as to the kings of Egypt before Psammetichus cannot lay any claim to historical certainty. For an attempt to solve this discrepancy see M. v. Niebuhr, pp. 458 sqq.
it was very different with Jerusalem. Salmanasar had stood before Samaria for three years before he was able to conquer it; and Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem for two years before the city was starved out and it was possible to take it (ch. xxv. 1 sqq.). But as Tirhakah was approaching, Sennacherib had no time now for so tedious a siege. He therefore endeavoured to induce Hezekiah to surrender the city quietly by a boastful description of his own power. Instead of npp'i aspji (yer. 9), we have in Isaiah iw»\ V®®*}, " when he heard this he sent," which is probably the more original, and indicates that when. Sennacherib received the intelligence he sent at once (Drechsler). — Ver. 10. W& S>K: " let not thy God deceive thee," i.e. do not allow yourself to be deceived by your confidence in your God. lbVQf to say, i.e. to think or believe, that Jerusalem will not be given, etc. To shatter this confidence, Sennacherib reminds him of the deeds of the Assyrian kings. DJpnnnp, to ban them, i.e. by smiting them with the ban. The verb ^1!^} is chosen with emphasis, to express the unsparing destruction.?¥3n nri«l; and thou shouldst be saved? — a question implying a strong negative. — Ver. 12. " Have the gods of the nations delivered them? " Enk is not a pronoun used in anticipation of the object, which follows in 'til |Tia (Thenius), but refers to nfonK!T7| in ver. 11, a specification of which is given in the following enumeration. Gozan may be the province of Gauzanitis in Mesopotamia, but it may just as well be the country of Gauzania on the other side of the Tigris (see at ch. xvii. 6). The combination with Haran does not force us to the first assumption, since the list is not a geographical but a historical one. — Haran (Charari), i.e. the Carrae of the Greeks and Eomans, where Abraham's father Terah died, a place in northern Mesopotamia (see at Gen. xi. 31), is probably not merely the city here, but the country in which the city stood. — Eezeph (*!£)), the cities of this name in his Geographical Lexicon, is probably the most celebrated of the cities of that name, the Rusapha of Syria, called 'Pnadcpa inPtol. v. 1 5, in Palmyrene, on the road from Racca to Emesa, a day's journey from the Euphrates (cf. Ges. Thcs. p. 1308). — " The sons of Eden, which (were) in Telassar" were evidently a tribe whose chief settlement was in Telassar. By n.J> we might understand the TVfW* of Amos i. 5, a city in a pleasant region of Syria, called TLapaZeicro*; by Ptol. (v. 15), since there is still a village called Ehden in that locality (cf. Burckhardt, Syr. p. 66, and v. Schubert, Eeise, iii. p. 366), if we could only discover Telassar in the neighbourhood, and if the village of Ehden could be identified with Uapaheicros and the Eden of the Bible, as is done even by Gesenius on Burckhardt, p. 492, and Thes.
p. 195; but this Ehden is spelt jj&\ in Arabic, and is not to be associated with flU (see Kob. Bill. Res. pp. 586, 587). Moreover the Thelscce near Damascus (in the Itin. Ant. p. 196, ed. Wess.) is too unlike Telassar to come into consideration. There is more to be said in favour of the identification of our H? with the Assyrian Eden, which is mentioned in Ezek. xxvii. 23 along with Haran and Calneh as an important place for trade, although its position cannot be more certainly defined; and neither the comparison with the tract of land called v,v^
Maadon, which Assemani (Biblioth. or. ii. p. 224) places in Mesopotamia, towards the Tigris, in the present province of Diarbekr (Ges., Win.), nor the conjecture of Knobel that the tribe-name Eden may very probably have been preserved in the large but very dilapidated village of Adana or Adna, some distance to the north of Bagdad (Ker Porter, Journey, ii. p. 355, and Ritter, Erdk. ix. p. 493), can be established as even a probability. "^*v^, Telassar, is also quite unknown. The name applies very well to Thelser on the eastern side of the Tigris {Tab. Pent. xi. e), where even the later Targums on Gen. x. 12 have placed it, interpreting Nimrod's Resen by "ip?^ ^P?^ though Knobel opposes this on the ground that a place in Assyria proper is unsuitable in such a passage as this, where the Assyrian feats of war outside Assyria itself are enumerated. Movers (Phoniz. ii. 3, p. 251) conjectures that the place referred to is Thelassar in Terodon, a leading emporium for Arabian wares on the Persian Gulf, and supposes that Terodon has sprung from Teledon with the Persian pronunciation of the fyi, which is very frequent in the names of Mesopotamian cities. This conjecture is at any rate a more natural one than that of Knobel on Isa. xxxvii. 12, that the place mentioned in Assemani (Bib. or. iii 2, p. 870), ^^v Jj, Tel on the Szarszar, to the west of the present Bagdad, is intended. — With regard to the places named in ver. 13, see at ch. xviii. 34.
Vers. 14—19. Hezekiah! s prayer. — Ver. 14. Hezekiah took the letter, read it, went into the temple and spread it out before Jehovah, to lay open its contents before God. The contents of the letter are given in vers. 10—13 in the form of the message which the ambassadors delivered to Hezekiah from their king, because the ambassadors communicated to Hezekiah by word of mouth the essential contents of the writing which they conveyed, and simply handed him the letter as a confirmation of their words. En.?9, like litterce, means a letter; hence the singular suffix attached to VifeHDJ, whereas in the case of D^i?^, which stands nearer, the suffix follows the number of the noun to which it refers. The spreading out of the letter before God was an embodiment of the wish, which sprang from a child-like and believing trust, that the Lord would notice and punish that defiance of the living God which it contained. What Hezekiah meant by this action he expressed in the following prayer. — Ver. 15. In opposition to the delusion of the Assyrians, he describes Jehovah, the God of Israel, as the only God of all the kingdoms of the earth, since He was the Creator of heaven and earth. D^^n zw (see at 1 Sam. iv. 4 and Ex. xxv. 22) indicates the covenant-relation into which Jehovah, the almighty Creator and Euler of the whole world, had entered towards Israel. As the covenant God who was enthroned above the cherubim the Lord was bound to help His people, if they turned to Him with faith in the time of their distress and entreated His assistance; and as the only God of all the world He had the power to help. In Isaiah, rriN3¥, which is very rare in historical prose, but very common in prophetical addresses, is added to the name HjiT, and thus Jehovah at the very outset is addressed as the God of the universe. On the meaning of rriioy, see at 1 Sam. i. 3. On D^an mn nm, see 2 Sam. vii. 28 and 1 Kings xviii. 39. — Ver. 16. The accumulation of the words, " bow down Thine ear, Jehovah, and hear; open, Jehovah, Thine eyes and see, and hear the words," etc., indicates the earnestness and importunity of the prayer. The plural T?.\V by the side of the singular i\)]K is the correct reading, since the expression " to incline the ear" is constantly met with (Ps. xvii. 6, xxxi. 3, xlv. 11, etc.); and even in the plural, " incline ye your ear " (Ps. lxxviii. 1; Isa. Iv. 3), and on the other hand " to open the eyes " (Job xxvii. 1 9; Prov. xx. 13; Zech. xii. 4; Dan. ix. 18), because a man always opens both eyes to see anything, whereas he turns one ear to a person speaking. The lyjf of Isaiah is also plural, though written defectively, as the Masora has already observed. The suffix in ^n^, which is wanting in Isaiah, belongs to 1&?K, and refers with this to *£f] in the sense of speech: the speech which Sennacherib had made in his letter. — Vers. 17, 18. After the challenge, to observe the blasphemies of Sennacherib, Hezekiah mentions the fact that the Assyrians have really devastated all lands, and therefore that it is not without ground that they boast of their mighty power; but he finds the explanation of this in the impotence and nothingness of the gods of the heathen. BJ*?N, truly, indeed — the kings of Asshur have devastated the nations and their land. Instead of this we find in Isaiah: " they have devastated all lands and their (own) land " — which is evidently the more difficult and also the more original reading, and has been altered in our account, because the thought that the Assyrians had devastated their own land by making war upon other lands, that is to say, had depopulated it and thereby laid it waste, was not easy to understand. u And have cast their gods into the fire, for they are not gods, but works of human hands, wood and stone, and have thus destroyed them." Hezekiah does not mention this as a sign of the recklessness of the Assyrians (Knobel), but, because Sennacherib had boasted that the gods of no nation had been able to resist him (vers. 12, 13), to put this fact in the right light, and attach thereto the prayer that Jehovah, by granting deliverance, would make known to all the kingdoms of the earth that He alone was God. Instead of unjl we have in Isaiah PJW, the inf. absol.; in this connection the more difficult and more genuine reading. This also applies to the omission of DwK (ver. 196) in Isa. xxxvii. 20, since the use of Jehovah as a predicate, " that Thou alone art Jehovah," is very rare, and has therefore been misunderstood even by Gesenius. By the introduction of Elohim, the thought " that Thou Jehovah art God alone " is simplified.
Vers. 20-34. The divine promise. — Vers. 20, 21. When Hezekiah had prayed, the prophet Isaiah received a divine revelation with regard to the hearing of this prayer, which he sent, i.e. caused to be handed over, to the king. WE^ (ver. 21) is omitted in Isaiah, so that '151 rppann ikw is to be taken in the sense of " with regard to that which thou hast prayed to me," whilst ^V?? (I have heard) elucidates the thought and simplifies the construction. The word of the Lord announced to the king, (1) the shameful retreat of Sennacherib as a just retribution for his mockery of the living God (vers. 21-28; Isa. xxxvii. 22-29); (2) the confirmation of this assurance through the indication of a sign by which Hezekiah was to recognise the deliverance of Jerusalem (vers. 29-31; Isa. xxxvii. 30-32), and through the distinct promise, that the Assyrian would neither come into the city nor besiege it, because the Lord was sheltering it (vers. 32—34; Isa. xxxvii. 33-35). In the first part the words are addressed with poetic vivacity directly to Sennacherib, and scourge his haughty boastings by pointing to the ridicule and scorn which would follow him on his departure from the land. — Ver. 21. " The virgin daughter Zion despises thee, the daughter Jerusalem shakes the head behind thee." By daughter Zion, daughter Jerusalem, we are not to understand the inhabitants of Zion, or of Jerusalem, as though r»zi stood for D^3 or ^3 (Ges., Hitzig, and others); but the city itself with its inhabitants is pictorially personified as a daughter and virgin, and the construct state PSV"^3 is to be taken, like rrjs "in:, as in apposition: " daughter Zion," not daughter of Zion (vid. Ges. § 116, 5; Ewald, § 287, e). Even in the case of TOrQ the construct state expresses simply the relation of apposition. Zion is called a " virgin " as being an inviolable city to the Assyrians, i.e. one which they cannot conquer. Shaking the head is a gesture denoting derision and pleasure at another's misfortune (cf. Ps. xxii. 8, cix. 25, etc.). "Behind thee," i.e. after thee as thou goest away, is placed first as a pictorial feature for the sake of emphasis. — Vers. 22, 23. This derision falls upon the Assyrian, for having blasphemed the Lord God by his foolish boasting about his irresistible power. " Whom hast thou despised and blasphemed, and against whom hast thou lifted up the voice? and thou liftest up thine eyes against the Holy One of Israel." Lifting up the voice refers to the tone of threatening assumption, in which Kabshakeh and Sennacherib had spoken. Lifting up the eyes on high, i.e. to the heavens, signifies simply looking up to the sky (cf. Isa. xl. 26), not " directing proud looks against God" (Ges.). Still less is DiiD to be taken adverbially in the sense of haughtily, as Thenius and Knobel suppose. The bad sense of proud arrogance lies in the words which follow, " against the Holy One of Israel," or in the case of Isaiah, where ^ stands for bv, in the context, viz. the parallelism of the members. God is called the Holy One of Israel as He who manifests His holiness in and upon Israel. This title of the Deity is one of the peculiarities of Isaiah's range of thought, although it originated with Asaph (Ps. lxxviii. 41; see at Isa. i. 4). This insult to the holy God consisted in the fact that Sennacherib had said through his servants (vers. 23, 24): "With my chariots upon chariots I have ascended the height of the mountains, the uttermost part of Lebanon, so that I felled the tallness of its cedars, the choice of its cypresses, and came to the shelter of its border, to the forest of its orchard. I have dug and drunk strange water, so that I dried up all the rivers of Egypt with the sole of my feet." The words put into the mouth of the Assyrian are expressive of the feeling which underlay all his blasphemies (Drechsler). The two verses are kept quite uniform, the second hemistich in both cases expressing the result of the first, that is to say, what the Assyrian intended still further to perform after having accomplished what is stated in the first hemistich. When he has ascended the heights of Lebanon, he devastates the glorious trees of the mountain. Consequently in ver. 24 the drying up of the Nile of Egypt is to be taken as the result of the digging of wells in the parched desert; in other words, it is to be interpreted as descriptive of the devastation of Egypt, whose whole fertility depended upon its being watered by the Nile and its canals. We cannot therefore take these verses exactly as Drechsler does; that is to say, we cannot assume that the Assyrian is speaking in the first hemistichs of both verses of what he (not necessarily Sennacherib himself, but one of his predecessors) has actually performed. For even if the ascent of the uttermost heights of Lebanon had been performed by one of the kings of Assyria, there is no historical evidence whatever that Sennacherib or one of his predecessors had already forced his way into Egypt. The words are therefore to be understood in a figurative sense, as an individualizing picture of the conquests which the Assyrians had already accomplished, and those which they were still intending to effect; and this assumption does not necessarily exhibit Sennacherib " as a mere braggart, who boastfully heaps up in ridiculous hyperbole an enumeration of the things which he means to perform" (Drechsler). For if the Assyrian had not ascended with the whole multitude of his war-chariots to the loftiest summits of
Lebanon, to fell its cedars and its cypresses, Lebanon had set no bounds to his plans of conquest, so that Sennacherib might very well represent his forcing his way into Canaan as an ascent of the lofty peaks of this mountain range. Lebanon is mentioned, partly as a range of mountains that was quite inaccessible to war-chariots, and partly as the northern defence of the land of Canaan, through the conquest of which one made himself lord of the land. And so far as Lebanon is used synecdochically for the land of which it formed the defence, the hewing down of its cedars and cypresses, those glorious witnesses of the creation of God, denotes the devastation of the whole land, with all its glorious works of nature and of human hands. The chief strength of the early Asiatic conquerors consisted in the multitude of their war- chariots: they are therefore brought into consideration simply as signs of vast military resources; the fact that they could only be used on level ground being therefore disregarded. The Chcthib 2D"J s3D"i, " my chariots upon chariots," is used poetically for an innumerable multitude of chariots, as *3fa 313 for an innumerable host of locusts (Nan. iii. 17), and is more original than the Keri %3T[ 2\ the multitude of my chariots, which simply follows Isaiah. The " height of the mountains " is more precisely defined by the emphatic Pw *0?^:!, the uttermost sides, i.e. the loftiest heights, of Lebanon, just as ""3 TOi* in Isa. xiv. 1 5 and Ezek. xxxii. 23 are the uttermost depths of Sheol. riDip VPK, his tallest cedars. VSfB "rinnn his most select or finest cypresses. n*J(3 [ipD, for which Isaiah has the more usual tiSiD ia?p, " the height of his end," is the loftiest point of Lebanon on which a man can rest, not a lodging built on the highest point of Lebanon (Cler., Vitr., Bos.). ft&T? 1R, the forest of his orchard, i.e. the forest resembling an orchard. The reference is to the celebrated cedar-forest between the loftiest peaks of Lebanon at the village of Bjerreh (see at 1 Kings v. 20). — Ver. 24 refers to the intended conquest of Egypt.- Just as Lebanon could not stop the expeditions of the Assyrians, or keep them back from the conquest of the land of Canaan, so the desert of et Tih, which separated Egypt from Asia, notwithstanding its want of water (cf. Herod, iii. 5; Eob. Pal. i. p. 262), was no hindrance to him, which could prevent his forcing his way through it and laying Egypt waste. The digging of water is, of course, not merely " a reopening of the wells that had been choked with rubbish, and the cisterns that had been covered up before the approaching enemy " (Thenius), but the digging of wells in the waterless desert onr DV3, strange water, is not merely water belonging to others, but water not belonging to this soil (Drechsler), i.e. water supplied by a region which had none at other times. By the perfects the thing is represented as already done, as exposed to no doubt whatever; we must bear in mind, however, that the desert of et Tih is not expressly named, but the expression is couched in such general terms, that we may also assume that it includes what the Assyrian had really effected in his expeditions through similar regions. The drying up of the rivers with the soles of the feet is a hyperbolical expression denoting the omnipotence with which the Assyrian rules over the eartL Just as he digs water in the desert where no water is to be had, so does he annihilate it where mighty rivers exist.1 *"W are the arms and canals of the Yeor, i.e. of the Nile. "tfSD, a rhetorical epithet for Egypt, used not only here, but also in Isa. xix. 6 and Mic. vii. 12. — Vers. 25 sqq. To this foolish boasting the prophet opposes the divine purpose which had been formed long ago., and according to which the Assyrian, without knowing it or being willing to acknowledge it, had acted simply as the instrument of the Lord, who had given him the power to destroy, but who would soon restrain his ranting against Him, the true God. — Ver. 25. "Hast thou not heard? Long ago have I done this, from the days of olden time have I formed it! Now have I brought it to pass, that fortified cities should be to be destroyed into waste heaps." Ver. 26. "And their inhabitants, short of hand, were dismayed and put to shame; they were herb of the field and green of the turf, grass of the roofs and blighted corn before the stalk." Ver. 2 7. " And thy sitting and thy going out and thy coming I know, and thy raging against me." Ver. 28. " Because of thy raging against me and thy safety, which rise up into my ears, I put my ring into thy
1 Compare the similar boasting of Alarich, already quoted by earlier commentators, in Claudian, de hello Geth. v. 526 sqq.:
cum cesserit omnis Obsequiis natura meis? subsidere nostris Sub pedibus montes, arescere vidimus amnes.
nose, and my bridle into thy lips, and bring thee back by the way by which thou hast come." The words are still addressed to the Assyrian, of whom the Lord inquires whether he does not know that the destructive deeds performed by him had been determined very long before. " Hast thou not heard?" namely, what follows, what the Lord had long ago made known through His prophets in Judah (cf. Isa. vii. 7-9, xvL 17-20, viii. 1-4 and 7, etc.). P^n7??, from distant time have I done it, etc., refers to the divine ordering and governing of the events of the universe, which God has purposed and established from the very beginning of time. The pronoun ^nK, and the suffixes attached to (WW and ivnioan, d0 not refer with vague generality to the substance of vers. 23 and 24, i.e. to the boastings of the Assyrians quoted there (Drechsler), but to T\Smb ^r\'\) i.e. to the conquests and devastations which the Assyrian had really effected. The \ before JTnw introduces the apodosis, as is frequently the case after a preceding definition of time (cf. Ges. § 155, a), *nrn T\Smb, "that it may be to destroy" (rtftrnp, a contraction of Tfimm, Keri and Isaiah, from AMP; see Ewald, § 73, c, and 245, b), i.e. that it shall be destroyed, — according to a turn which is very common in Isaiah, like "iy?r rvn, it is to burn = it shall be burned (cf. Isa. v. 5, vi. 13, xliv. 15, and Ewald, § 237, c). The rendering given by Ges., Knob., Then., and others, " that thou mayest be for destruction," is at variance with this usage. — Ver. 26 is closely connected, so far as the sense is concerned, with the last clause of ver. 25, but in form it is only loosely attached: " and their inhabitants were," instead of " that their inhabitants might be." 1J *}$?, of short hand, i.e. without power to offer a successful resistance (cf. Num. xi. 23, and Isa. 1. 2, lix. 1). — They were herbage of the field, etc., just as perishable as the herbage, grass, etc., which quickly fade away (cf. Ps. xxxvii. 2, xc. 5, 6; Isa. xl. 6). The grass of the roofs fades still more quickly, because it cannot strike deep roots (cf. Ps. cxxix. 6). Blighted corn before the stalk, i.e. corn which is blighted and withered up, before it shoots up into a stalk. In Isaiah we have no^ instead of ^?"1.^, with a change of the labials, probably for the purpose of preserving an assonance with noj^ which must not therefore be altered into no'iB*. The thought in the two verses is this: The Assyrian does not owe his victories and conquests to his irresistible might, but purely to the fact that God had long ago resolved to deliver the nations into his hands, so that it was possible to overcome them without their heing able to offer any resistance. This the Assyrian had not perceived, but in his daring pride had exalted himself above the living God. This conduct of his the Lord was well acquainted with, and He would humble him for it. Sitting and going out and coming denote all the actions of a man, like sitting down and rising up in Ps. cxxxix. 2. Instead of rising up, we generally find going out and coming in (cf. Deut. xxviii. 6 and Ps. cxxi. 8). ^"Vin, thy raging, commotio furibunda, quce ex ira nascitur sitperbice mixta (Vitr.). We must repeat)Vl before *JJJKB> j and *ytfQ njy is to be taken in a relative sense: on account of thy self-security, which has come to my ears. |JNB> is the security of the ungodly which springs from the feeling of great superiority in power. The figurative words, " L put my ring into thy nose," are taken from the custom of restraining wild animals, such as lions (Ezek. xix. 4) and other wild beasts (Ezek. xxix. 4 and Isa. xxx. 2 8), in this manner. For " the bridle in the lips " of ungovernable horses, see Ps. xxxii. 9. To lead a person back by the way by which he had come, i.e. to lead him back disappointed, without having reached the goal that he set before him.
To confirm what he had said, the prophet gave to Hezekiah a sign (vers. 2 9 sqq.): " Eat this year what groweth in the fallow, and in the second year what groweth wild, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof." That the words are not addressed to the king of Assyria as in ver. 28, but to Hezekiah, is evident from their contents. This sudden change in the person addressed may be explained from the fact that from ver. 29 the words contain a perfectly fresh train of thought. For niKn sjp-n? see Ex. iii. 12, 1 Sam. ii. 34 and xiv. 10; also Jer. xliv. 29. In all these passages /liK, arf/jLelov, is not a (supernatural) wonder, a DBto as in 1 Kings xiii. 3, but consists simply in the prediction of natural events, which serve as credentials to a prediction, whereas in Isa. vii. 14 and xxxviii. 7 a miracle is given as an rritf. The inf. abs. btex is not used for the pret. (Ges., Then., and others), but for the imperf. or fut.: " one will eat." n^LI, the (present) year. rPSD signifies the corn which springs up and grows from the grains that have been shaken out the previous year (Lev. xxv. 5, 11). B^no (in iSa. D*nB>) is explained by Abulw. as signifying the corn which springs up again from the roots of what has been sown. The etymology of the word is uncertain, so that it is impossible to decide which of the two forms is the original one. For the fact itself compare the evidence adduced in the Comm. on Lev. xxv. 7, that in Palestine and other lands two or three harvests can be reaped from one sowing. — The signs mentioned do not enable us to determine with certainty how long the Assyrians were in the land. All that can be clearly gathered from the words, " in this and the following year will they live upon that which has sprung up without any sowing," is that for two years, i.e. in two successive autumns, the fields could not be cultivated because the enemy had occupied the land and laid it waste. But whether the occupation lasted two years, or only a year and a little over, depends upon the time of the year at which the Assyrians entered the land. If the invasion of Judah took place in autumn, shortly before the time for sowing, and the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian forces occurred a year after about the same time, the sowing of two successive years would be prevented, and the population of Judah would be compelled to live for two years upon what had sprung up without sowing. Consequently both the prophecy of Isaiah and the fulfilment recorded in vers. 35, 36 would fall in the autumn, when the Assyrians had ruled for a whole year in the land; so that the prophet was able to say: in this year and in the second (i.e. the next) will they eat after-growth and wild growth; inasmuch as when he said this, the first year had not quite expired. Even if the overthrow of the Assyrians took place immediately afterwards (cf. ver. 35), with the extent to which they had carried out the desolation of the land, many of the inhabitants having been slain or taken prisoners, and many others having been put to flight, it would be utterly impossible in the same year to cultivate the fields and sow them, and the people would be obliged to live in the second or following year upon what had grown wild, until the harvest of the second year, when the land could be properly cultivated, or rather till the third year, when it could be reaped again.1
The sign is followed in vers. 30, 31 by the distinct promise
1 There is no necessity, therefore, to explain the sign here given, either by the assumption of a sabbatical year, with or without a year of jubilee following, or by supposing that the Assyrians did not depart immediately after the catastrophe described in ver. 35, but remained till after they had attempted an expedition into Egypt, or indeed by any other artificial hypothesis.
of the deliverance of Judah and Jerusalem, for which Isaiah uses the sign itself as a type. " And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah will again strike roots downwards and bear fruit upwards; for from Jerusalem will go forth a remnant, and that which is escaped from Mount Zion; the zeal of Jehovah will do this." Ens? *\®l> to add roots, i.e. to strike fresh roots. The meaning is, that Judah will not succumb to this judgment. The remnant of the nation that has escaped from destruction by the Assyrians will once more grow and flourish vigorously; for from Jerusalem will a rescued remnant go forth. '"HJyS denotes those who have escaped destruction by the judgment (cf. Isa. iv. 2, x. 20, etc.). The deliverance was attached to Jerusalem or to Mount Zion, not so much because the power of the Assyrians was to be destroyed before the gates of Jerusalem, as because of the greater importance which Jerusalem and Mount Zion, as the centre of the kingdom of God, the seat of the God-King, possessed in relation to the covenantnation, so that, according to Isa. ii. 3, it was thence that the Messianic salvation was also to proceed. This deliverance is traced to the zeal of the Lord on behalf of His people and against His foes (see at Ex. xx. 5), like the coming of the Messiah in Isa. ix. 6 to establish an everlasting kingdom of peace and righteousness. The deliverance of Judah out of the power of Asshur was a prelude and type of the deliverance of the people of God by the Messiah out of the power of all that was ungodly. The nisav of Isaiah is omitted after nSn\ just as in ver. 1 5; though here it is supplied by the Masora as Keri. — In vers. 32—34 Isaiah concludes by announcing that Sennacherib will not come to Jerusalem, nor even shoot at the city and besiege it, but will return disappointed, because the Lord will defend and save the city for the sake of His promise. The result of the whole prophecy is introduced with \j?: therefore, because this is how the matter stands, viz. as explained in what precedes.?|7B"7K, with regard to the king, as in ver. 20. }}D naOTj^ n?, " he will not attack it with a shield," i.e. will not advance with shields to make an attack upon it. D^i? with a double accusative, as in Ps. xxi. 4. It only occurs here in a hostile sense: to come against, as in Ps. xviii. 19, i.e. to advance against a city, to storm it. The four clauses of the verse stand in a graduated relation to one another: not to take, not even to shoot at and attack, yea, not even to besiege the city, will he come. In ver. 33a we have ver. 28b taken up again, and ver. 32a is repeated in ver. 336 for the purpose of strengthening the promise. Instead of PIS Nto"1 we have in Isaiah ^3 K3: " by which he has come." The perfect is actually more exact, and the imperfect may be explained from the fact that Sennacherib was at that very time advancing against Jerusalem. In ver. 34 we have?& *nfa| instead of the?J? *ni3| of Isaiah;?V is more correct than?8. " For my sake," as Hezekiah had prayed in ver. 1 9; and " for my servant David's sake," because Jehovah, as the unchangeably true One, must fulfil the promise which He gave to David (see at 1 Kings xi. 13).
Vers. 35-37. TJie fulfilment of the divine promise. — Ver. 35. " It came to pass in that night, that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the army of the Assyrian 185,000 men; and when they (those that were left, including the king) rose up in the morning, behold there were they all (i.e. all who had perished) dead corpses," i.e. they had died in their sleep. E^no is added to strengthen D^"0S: lifeless corpses, wnn r6)p3 is in all probability the night following the day on which Isaiah had foretold to Hezekiah the deliverance of Jerusalem. Where the Assyrian army was posted at the time when this terrible stroke fell upon it is not stated, since the account is restricted to the principal fact. One portion of it was probably still before Jerusalem; the remainder were either in front of Libnah (ver. 8), or marching against Jerusalem. From the fact that Sennacherib's second embassy (vers. 9 sqq.) was not accompanied by a body of troops, it by no means follows that the large army which had come with the first embassy (ch. xviii. 17) had withdrawn again, or had even removed to Libnah on the return of Kabshakeh to his king (ch. xix. 8). The very opposite may be inferred with much greater justice from ch. xix. 32. And the smiting of 185,000 men by an angel of the Lord by no means presupposes that the whole of Sennacherib's army was concentrated at one spot. The blow could certainly fall upon the Assyrians wherever they were standing or were encamped. The " angel of the Lord " is the same angel that smote as JVnpsn the first-born of Egypt (Ex. xii. 23, compared with vers. 12 and 13), and inflicted the pestilence upon Israel after the numbering of the people by David (2 Sam. xxiv. 15, 16). The last passage renders the conjecture a very probable one, that the slaying of the Assyrians was also effected by a terrible pestilence. But the number of the persons slain — 185,000 in a single night — so immensely surpasses the effects even of the most terrible plagues, that this fact cannot be interpreted naturally; and the deniers of miracle have therefore felt obliged to do violence to the text, and to pronounce either the statement that it was " the same night " or the number of the slain a mythical exaggeration.1— Ver. 36. This divine judgment compelled Sennacherib to retreat without delay, and to return to Nineveh, as Isaiah, 28 and 32, had predicted. The heaping up of the verbs: " he decamped, departed, and returned," expresses the hurry of the march home. n),^3 ^H} " he sate, i.e. remained, in Nineveh," implies not merely that Sennacherib lived for some time after his return, but also that he did not undertake any fresh expedition against Judah. On Nineveh see at Gen. x. 11. — Yer. 37 contains an account of Sennacherib's death. When he was worshipping in the temple of his god Msroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer slew him, and fled into the land of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon became king in his stead. With regard to?P9?, Nisroch, all that seems to be firmly established is that he was an eagle-deity,.and represented by the eagle- or vultureheaded human figure with wings, which is frequently depicted upon the Assyrian monuments, " not only in colossal proportions upon the walls and watching the portals of the rooms, but also constantly in the groups upon the embroidered robes. When it
1 The assertion of Thenius, that vers. 35-37 are borrowed from a different source from ch. xviii. 13-19, 34 and xx. 1-19, rests upon purely arbitrary suppositions and groundless assumptions, and is only made in the interest of the mythical interpretation of the miracle. And his conclusion, that "since the catastrophe was evidently (?) occasioned by the sudden breaking out of a pestilence, the scene of it was no doubt the pestilential Egypt," is just as unfounded,— as if Egypt were the only land in which a pestilence could suddenly have broken out. — The account given by Herodotus (ii. 141), that on the prayer of king Sethon, a priest of Vulcan, the deity promised him victory over the great advancing army of Sennacherib, and that during the night mice spread among the enemy {i.e. in the Assyrian camp at Pelusium), and ate up the quivers and bows, and the leather straps of the shields, so that the next morning they were obliged to flee without their weapons, and many were cut down, is simply a legendary imitation of our account, i.e. an Egyptian variation of the defeat of Sennacherib in Judah. The eating up of the Assyrian weapons by mice is merely the explanation given to Herodotus by the Egyptian priests of the hieroglyphical legend on the standing figure of Sethos at Memphis, from which we cannot even gather the historical fact that Sennacherib really advanced as far as Pelusium.
is introduced in this way, we see it constantly fighting with other mythical animals, such as human-headed oxen or lions; and in these conflicts it always appears to be victorious," from which we may infer that it was a type of the supreme deity (see Layard's Nineveh and its Remains). The eagle was worshipped as a god by the Arabs (Pococke, Specim. pp. 94, 199), was regarded as sacred to Melkarth by the Phoenicians (Nonmts, Dionys. xl. 495, 528), and, according to a statement of Philo, Bybl. (in Euseb. Proepar. evang. i. 1 0), that Zoroaster taught that the supreme deity was represented with an eagle's head, it was also a symbol of Ormuzd among the Persians; consequently Movers (Phoniz. i. pp. 68, 506, 507) regards Nisroch as the supreme deity of the Assyrians. It is not improbable that it was also connected with the constellation of the eagle (see Ideler, Ur sprung der Sternnamen, p. 416). On the other hand, the current interpretation of the name from "HM ("120, Chald.;
ok or ach} is very doubtful, not merely on account of the D in T^p?, but chiefly because this name does not occur in Assyrian, but simply Asar, Assar, and Asarah as the name of a deity which is met with in many Assyrian proper names. The last is also adopted by the LXX., who (ed. Aldin. Compl.) have rendered tjid: by 'Aaapd% in Isaiah, and Eaopd^ (cod. Vatic.) in 2 Kings, by the side of which the various readings Meaepd^ in our text (cod. Vat.) and Naaapdx in Isaiah are evidently secondary readings emended from the Hebrew, since Josephus (Ant. x. 1, 5) has the form 'Apaaicrjs, which is merely somewhat " Grsecized." The meaning of these names is still in obscurity, even if there should be some foundation for the assumption that Assar belongs to the same root as the name of the people and land, Asslmr. The connection between the form Nisroch and Asarah is also still obscure. Compare the collection which J. G. Miiller has made of the different conjectures concerning this deity in the Art. Nisroch in Herzog's Cycl. — Adrammelech, according to cli. xvii. 31, was the name of a deity of Sepharvaim, which was here borne by the king's son. "Wf*P$ Sharezer, is said to mean " prince of fire," and was probably also borrowed from a deity. VJ3 (Isa.) is wanting in our text, but is supplied by the Masora in the Kcri. The u land of Ararat " was a portion of the high land of Armenia; according to Moses v. Chorene, the central portion of it with the mountains of the same name (see at Gen. viii. 4). The slaying of Sennacherib is also confirmed by Alex. Polyhistor, or rather Berosus (in Euseb. Chron. Armen. i. p. 43), who simply names, however, a son Ardumusanus as having committed the murder, and merely mentions a second Asordanius as viceroy of Babylon.1 The identity of the latter with Esarhaddon is beyond all doubt. The name frniDK, Esar-cha-don, consisting of two parts with the guttural inserted, the usual termination in Assyrian and Babylonian, Assar-ach, is spelt 'AaopSdv in the LXX., 2a%ep8ov6s in Tobit — probably formed from Aaep-^-Bovoaop by a transposition of the letters, — by Josephus AaaapaxoBSas, by Berosus (in the armen. Euseb.) Asordanes, by Abyden. ibid. Axerdis, in the Canon Ptol. AaapaZivos, and lastly in Ezra iv. 10 mutilated into "^aptf, Osnappar (Chald.), and in the LXX. 5 Aaaevacfxip; upon the Assyrian monuments, according to Oppert, Assur-akh-iddin (cf. M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Ass. p. 38). The length of his reign is uncertain. The statements of Berosus, that he was first of all viceroy of Babylon, and then for eight years king of Assyria, and that of the Canon Ptol, that he reigned for thirteen years in Babylon, are decidedly incorrect. Brandis (Eerum Assyr. tempora emend, p. 41) conjectures that he reigned twenty-eight years, but in his work TJeber den histor. Gewinn, pp. 73, 74, he suggests seventeen years. M. v. Niebuhr (ut sup. p. 77), on the other hand, reckons his reign at twentyfour years.
Vers. 1-11. Hezekiah's Illness and Eecovery. — Compare the parallel account in Isa. xxxviii. with Hezekiah's psalm of thanksgiving for his recovery (vers. 9-20 of Isaiah). — Ver. 1. " In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death." By the expression " in those days " the illness of Hezekiah is merely assigned in a general manner to the same time as the events previously described. That it did not occur after the departure
1 With regard to the statement of Abydenus in Euseb. I. c. p. 53, that Sennacherib was followed by Nergilus, who was slain by his son Adrameles, who again was murdered by his brother Axerdis, and its connection with Berosus and the biblical account, see M. v. Niebuhr, Geschichte Assurs, pp. 361 sqq. Nergilus is probably the same person as Sharezer, and Axerdis as Esarhaddon.
of the Assyrians, but at the commencement of the invasion of Sennacherib, i.e. in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, is evident from ver. 6, namely, both from the fact that in answer to his prayer fifteen years more of life were promised him, and that he nevertheless reigned only twenty-nine years (ch. xviii. 2), and also from the fact that God promised to deliver him out of the hand of the Assyrians and to defend Jerusalem. The widespread notion that his sickness was an attack of plague, and was connected with the pestilence which had broken out in the Assyrian camp, is thereby deprived of its chief support, apart from the fact that the epithet?1)f (ver. 7), which is applied to the sickness, does not indicate pestilence. Isaiah then called upon him to set his house in order, "^x* IV: set thy house in order, lit. command or order with regard to thy house, not declare thy (last) will to thy family (Ges., Knob.), for rov is construed with the accus. pers. in the sense of commanding anything, whereas here p is synonymous with?K (2 Sam. xvii. 23). " For thou wilt die and not live;" i.e. thy sickness is to death, namely, without the miraculous help of God. Sickness to death in the very prime of life (Hezekiah was then in the fortieth year of his age) appeared to the godly men of the Old Testament a sign of divine displeasure. Hezekiah was therefore greatly agitated by this announcement, and sought for consolation and help in prayer. He turned his face to the wall, sc. of the room, not of the temple (Chald.). i.e. away from those who were standing round, to be able to pray more collectedly. — Ver. 3. In his prayer he appealed to his walking before the Lord in truth and with a thoroughly devoted heart, and to his acting in a manner that was well-pleasing to God, in perfect accordance with the legal standpoint of the Old Testament, which demanded of the godly righteousness of life according to the law. This did not imply by any means a self-righteous trust in his own virtue; for walking before God with a thoroughly devoted heart was impossible without faith. u And Hezekiah wept violently," not merely at the fact that he was to die without having an heir to the throne, since Manasseh was not born till three years afterwards (Joseph., Ephr. Syr., etc.), but also because he was to die in the very midst of his life, since God had promised long life to the righteous. — Vers. 4 sqq. This prayer of the godly king was answered immediately. Isaiah had not gone out of the midst of the city, when the word of the Lord came to him to return to the king, and tell him that the Lord would cure him in three days and add fifteen years to his life, and that He would also deliver him from the power of the Assyrians and defend Jerusalem. PDbVin THJn, the middle city, i.e. the central portion of the city, namely, the Zion city, in which the royal citadel stood. The Keri 'nn "wn, the central court, not of the temple, but of the royal citadel, which is adopted in all the ancient versions, is nothing more than an interpretation of the *vy as denoting the royal castle, after the analogy of ch. x. 25. The distinct assurance added to the promise " I will heal thee," viz. " on the third day thou wilt go into the house of the Lord," was intended as a pledge to the king of the promised cure. The announcement that God would add fifteen years to his life is not put into the prophet's mouth ex eventu (Knobel and others); for the opinion that distinct statements as to time are at variance with the nature of prophecy is merely based upon an a priori denial of the supernatural character of prophecy. The words, " and I will deliver thee out of the hand of the Assyrians," imply most distinctly that the Assyrian had only occupied the land and threatened Jerusalem, and had not yet withdrawn. The explanation given by Vitringa and others, that the words contain simply a promise of deliverance out of the hand of the oppressor for the next fifteen years, puts a meaning into them which they do not contain, as is clearly shown by Isa. xxxvii. 20, where this thought is expressed in a totally different manner. 'VJ1 VJJTOU *nto: as in ch. xix. 34, where the prophet repeated this divine promise in consequence of the attempt of Sennacherib to get Jerusalem into his power. — Ver. 7. Isaiah ordered a lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and Hezekiah recovered (WJ: he revived again). It is of course assumed as self-evident, that Isaiah returned to the king in consequence of a divine revelation, and communicated to him the word of the Lord which he had received.1 B^n ran is a mass consisting of compressed figs,
1 The account is still more abridged in the text of Isaiah. In ver. 4 the precise time of the prayer is omitted; in ver. 5 the words, " behold, I will cure thee, on the third day thou shalt go into the house of the Lord;" and in ver. 6 the words, " for mine own sake and my servant David's sake." The four verses 8-11, which treat of the miraculous signs, are also very much contracted in Isaiah (vers. 7 and 8); and vers. 7 and 8 of our text are only given at the close of Hezekiah's psalm of praise in that of Isaiah (vers. 21 and 22).
which the ancients were in the habit of applying, according to many testimonies (see Celsii Hierob. ii. p. 373), in the case of plague-boils and abscesses of other kinds, because the fig hiafyopei aic\7]pia<; (Dioscor.) and ulcera aperit (Plin.), and which is still used for softening ulcers, PH^ an abscess, is never used in connection with plague or plague-boils, but only to denote the abscesses caused by leprosy (Job ii. 7, 8), and other abscesses of an inflammatory kind (Ex. ix. 9 sqq.). In the case of Hezekiah it is probably a carbuncle that is intended.
After the allusion to the cure and recovery of Hezekiah, we have an account in vers. 8 sqq. of the sign by which Isaiah confirmed the promise given to the king of the prolongation of his life. In the order of time the contents of ver. 7 follow ver. 11, since the prophet in all probability first of all disclosed the divine promise to the king, and then gave him the sign, and after that appointed the remedy and had it applied. At the same time, it is also quite possible that he first of all directed the lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and then made known to him the divine promise, and guaranteed it by the sign. In this case *nj merely anticipates the order of events. The sign which Isaiah gave to the king, at his request, consisted in the miraculous movement of the shadow backward upon the sundial of Ahaz. — Ver. 9.?*J} "H^n: " the shadow is gone ten degrees, if it should go back ten degrees? " The rendering, visne umbram solarii decern gradibus progredi an... regredi, which Maurer still gives after the Vulgate, vis an ut ascendat... an ut reirrtatur, cannot be grammatically reconciled with the perfect v.7}, and is merely a conjecture founded upon the answer of Hezekiah.1 According to this answer, " it is easy for the shadow to decline (i.e. to go farther down) ten degrees; no (sc. that shall not be a sign to me), but if the shadow turn ten degrees backward," Isaiah seems to have given the king a choice as to the sign, namely, whether the shadow should go ten degrees forward or backward. But this does not necessarily follow from the words quoted. Hezekiah may have understood the prophet's words 'til JjBl ^n hypothetically: " has the shadow gone (advanced) ten degrees, whether it should," etc.; and may have
1 Hitzig and Knohel would therefore read r6n, though without furnishing any proofs that the inf. abs. is used for the future in the first clause of a double question, especially if the n interrog. is wanting, and there is no special emphasis upon the verbal idea.
replied, the advance of the shadow would not be a sure sign to hini, but only its going back. — Ver. 11. Isaiah then prayed to the Lord, and the Lord " turned back the shadow (caused it to go back) upon the sun-dial, where it had gone down, on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward." Tnx nipyo cannot be understood, as it has been by the LXX., Joseph., Syr., as referring to a flight of steps at the palace of Ahaz, which was so arranged that the shadow of an object standing near indicated the hours, but is no doubt a gnomon, a sun-dial which Ahaz may have received from Babylonia, where sun-dials were discovered (Herod, ii. 109). Nothing further can be inferred from the words with regard to its construction, since the ancients had different kinds of sun-dials (cf. Martini Abhandlung von den Sonnenuhren der Alten, Lpz. 1777). The word nifw, steps in the literal sense, is transferred to the scala, which the shadow had to traverse both up and down upon the disk of the sun-dial, and is used both -to denote the separate degrees of this scala, and also for the sum-total of these scala, i.e. for the sun-dial itself, without there being any necessity to assume that it was an obelisk-like pillar erected upon an elevated place with steps running round it (Knobel), or a long portable scale of twice ten steps with a gnomon (Gumpach, Alttestl. Studien, pp. 181 sqq.). All that follows from the descent of the shadow is that the dial of the gnomon was placed in a vertical direction; and the fact that the shadow went ten degrees down or backward, simply presupposes that the gnomon had at least twenty degrees, and therefore that the degrees indicated smaller portions of time than hours. If, then, it is stated in ver. 86 of Isaiah that the sun went back ten degrees, whereas the going back of the shadow had been previously mentioned in agreement with our text, it is self-evident that the sun stands for the shining of the sun which was visible upon the dial-plate, and which made the shadow recede. We are not, of course, to suppose that the sun in the sky and the shadow on the sun-dial went back at the same time, as Knobel assumes. So far as the miracle is concerned, the words of the text do not require that we should assume that the sun receded, or the rotation of the earth was reversed, as Eph. Syr. and others supposed, but simply affirm that there was a miraculous movement backward of the shadow upon the dial, which might be accounted for from a miraculous refraction of the rays of the sun, effected by God at the prophet's prayer, of which slight analoga are met with in the ordinary course of nature.1 This miraculous sign was selected as a significant one in itself, to confirm the promise of a fresh extension of life which had been given to Hezekiah by the grace of God in opposition to the natural course of things. The retrograde movement of the shadow upon the sun-dial indicated that Hezekiah's life, which had already arrived at its close by natural means, was to be put back by a miracle of divine omnipotence, so that it might continue for another series of years.
Vers. 12—19. The Babylonian embassy, and Hezekiah's imprudence (cf. Isa. xxxix.). — Ver. 12. " At that time Berodach Baladan, king of Babel, sent a letter and a present to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah was sick." By Wnn nya the arrival of these ambassadors is merely assigned in the most general manner to the period following Hezekiah's recovery. But from the object of their mission, it is evident that they did not arrive in Jerusalem till after the overthrow and departure of Sennacherib, and therefore at least half a year after Hezekiah's recovery. The ostensible reason given is, that Berodach Baladan had heard of Hezekiah's illness, and therefore sent to congratulate him on his recovery; but in 2 Chron. xxxii. 3 1 the further reason is mentioned, that he wished to inquire concerning the miracle upon the sun-dial. But, as Josephus has shown, the true object, no doubt, was to make sure of Hezekiah's friendship in anticipation of his intended revolt from the Assyrian rule. Berodach Baladan, for Merodach Baladan (Isa.), with the labial changed, is the same person as the Marodach Baladan who reigned in Babylon for six months, according to Alex. Polyhistor, or rather Berosus (Euseb. Chron. armen. i. pp. 42, 43), and was slain by Elibus, and also the same as the Mardokempad who reigned, according to the Can. Ptol., from 26 to 38 air. Nab., i.e. from 721 to 709 B.C. The first part of the name, TpD, occurs in Jer. 1. 2 in connection with Bel as the name of a Babylonian idol; and the whole name is found on a cylinder
1 As, for example, the phenomenon quoted by several commentators, which was observed at Metz in Lothringen in the year 1703 by the prior of the convent there, P. Komuald, and other persons, viz. that the shadow of a sundial went back an hour and a half. — The natural explanation of the miracle which is given by Thenius, who attributes it to an eclipse of the sun, needs no refutation. — B'or the different opinions of the earlier theologians, see Carpzov, Apparat. crit. p. 351 sqq.
(in the British Museum) which contains the first expeditions of Sennacherib against Babylon and Media, and upon the inscriptions at Khorsabad spelt either McrodaJc-pal-dsana (according to Brandis, Ueber der Gcwinn, pp. 44 and 53) or Marduh hal iddin (according to Oppert).1 Instead of V®f *? we have V®®*} in Isaiah, which is not so clear, though it is probably more original; whereas the clause in Isaiah, ptnjl r6n ^ u that he had been sick and had become strengthened, i.e. well again," is simply an elucidation of the }nsP?n nbn *3 of our text, in which the recovery is implied in the pluperfect " had been sick." — In ver. 13 VW?] is apparently a copyist's error for ncb'sl of Isaiah, which many of the codd. and ancient versions have even in our text. At the same time, the construction of VSV with bv is also found in ch. xxii. 13. — DpY^, concerning them, i.e. the ambassadors who had brought the letter and the present. In his delight at the honour paid to him by this embassy, Hezekiah showed the ambassadors all his treasure-house, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the costly oil, and all his arsenal, etc. The literal meaning of rib: rvn is probably spice-house (Aquila, Symm., Vulg.), nb: being a contraction of riNDJ in Gen.
The house received its name from the spices for the storing of which it was really intended, although it was also used for the storing of silver and gold. 3iBn \vv is not fine olive oil, but, according to the Eabbins and Movers (Phoniz. iii. p. 227), the valuable balsam oil which was obtained in the royal gardens; for olive oil, which was obtained in all Judaea, was not stored in the treasure-chambers along with gold, silver, and perfumes, but in special storehouses (1 Chron. xxvii. 28). frlpTOD"v33, in all his dominion, i.e. in all the district which he was able to govern or control — The existence of such treasures, of which, according to ver. 17, the ancestors of Hezekiah had collected a very large store, at so short a period after the departure of the Assyrians, is not at variance with ch. xviii. 15, 16, according
] Compare M. v. Niebuhr, GescJi. Ass. p. 40; and with regard to the chronological differences, on account of which many have called in question the identity of Merodach Baladan either with the Marndach-Baladan of Berosus or with the Mardokempad of the Can. Ptol., see the discussion of this point at pp. 75 sqq.
to which Hezekiah had sent to Sennacherib all the silver in his treasuries, and even the gold plate upon the temple doors. For, in the first place, it is not stated that there was much silver and gold in the treasure-house, but the silver and gold are simply mentioned along with the spices; and, secondly, Hezekiah may have kept back from Sennacherib many a valuable piece of silver or gold, and have taken off the gold plate from the temple doors, to show the ambassadors of Sennacherib, who came to receive the money demanded as compensation, that he was not in a condition to give anything more. Moreover a great deal may have flowed into the treasuries since the payment of that tribute, partly from the presents which Hezekiah received from many quarters after the overthrow of Sennacherib (2 Chron. xxxii 2 3), and partly from the booty that had been collected in the camp of the Assyrians after their hurried departure. And acrain, the treasures which the ancestors of Hezekiah had collected (ver. 17) may not have consisted of gold and silver exactly, but of different jewels and objects of art, which could not be applied to the payment of the tribute demanded by Sennacherib. And, lastly, " we must not overlook the fact, that it answered the purpose of the reporter to crowd together as much as possible, in order to show how anxious Hezekiah was to bring out and exhibit everything whatever that could contribute to the folly" (Drechsler). Hezekiah evidently wanted to show all his glory, because the arrival of the Babylonian ambassadors had flattered his vanity. — Vers. 1 4 sqq. Isaiah therefore announced to him the word of the Lord, that all his treasures would one day be carried to Babel, and some even of his sons would serve as chamberlains in the palace of the king of Babel. The sin of vanity was to be punished by the carrying away of that of which his heart was proud. Isaiah did not go to Hezekiah by his own impulse, but by the direction of God. His inquiries: " What have these men said, and whence do they come to thee? " were simply intended to lead the kingto give expression to the thoughts of his heart. In the answer, " From a distant land have they come, from Babel," his vanity at the great honour that had been paid him comes clearly to light. — Ver. 18. The words, " of thy sons, which shall proceed from thee, which thou shalt beget," do not necessarily refer to actual sons, but only to lineal descendants. The Chcthib n^, " will one take," is to be preferred to the Wj^ of Isaiah and the
Keri, as being the more difficult reading. D^ID* chamberlains, courtiers, not necessarily eunuchs, as in 1 Sam. viii. 15, etc. — For the fulfilment of this threat see Dan. i. 2. sqq. — Ver. 19. The first part of Hezekiah's reply, " Good is the word of Jehovah, which thou hast spoken," is an expression of submission to the will of the Lord, like Eli's answer in 1 Sam. iii. 18 (cf. 1 Kings ii. 38, 42) j1 the second part, which the repetition of "19^s- shows to have been spoken after a pause, and which was not addressed directly to Isaiah, " Is it not so (i.e. is it not purely goodness), if there are to be peace and truth in my days (during my life)? " is a candid acknowledgment of the grace and truth of the Lord.2 NvH is used, as is frequently the case, in the sense of a lively affirmation. Instead of DN fcopn We have in Isaiah *3, " for there will be peace and truth," by which this clause is attached more clearly to the first declaration as a reason for it: the word of the Lord is good, for the Lord proves His goodness and truth in the fact, that He will not inflict the merited punishment in my lifetime. " Peace and truth" are connected as in Jer. xxxiii. 6. rips does not mean continuance (Ges.), security (Knobel), but fides, faithfulness, — not human faithfulness, however, which preserves peace, and observes a tacit treaty (Hitzig), but the faithfulness of God, which preserves the promised grace to the
Vers. 20 and 21. Close of Hezekiah's reign. — On the basin (nana) and the aqueduct constructed by him, see at ch. xviii. 1 7.
Vers. 1-18. Eeign of Manasseh (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 1-20). — Ver. 1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, so that he was not born till after Hezekiah's dangerous illness (ch. xx. 1 sqq.). — Vers. 2 sqq. Having begun to reign at this early age, he did not choose his father's ways, but set up the idolatry of his father Ahab again, since the godless party in the
1 " He calls that good in which it is right to acquiesce, as having proceeded from Him who does nothing but what is not only most just, but tempered with the greatest goodness, even when He inflicts punishment." — Clericus.
a " He praises the moderation of the divine decree, because when God, in accordance with His justice, might have brought this calamity upon him in his own person, for His mercy's sake He was willing to spare him and to put off the evil to a future day."— Vitringa.
nation, at whose head chiefs, priests, and (false) prophets stood, and who would not hearken to the law of the Lord, and in the time of Hezekiah had sought help against Assyria not from Jehovah, but from the Egyptians (Isa. xxviii. 7, 14 sqq., xxx. 9 sqq.), had obtained control of the young and inexperienced king, and had persuaded him to introduce idolatry again. On ver. 2 cf. ch. viii 18 and xvi. 3. — Ver. 3. |3>1 3B»!, "he built again" the high places, which Hezekiah had destroyed (ch. xviii. 4), erected altars for Baal and an Asherah, like Ahab of Israel (1 Kings xvi. 32, 33). n"J?W is the image of Asherah mentioned in ver. 7, whereas in the Chronicles the thought is generalized by the plurals DyV3? and nftKWJ. To these two kinds of idolatry, the idolatrous bamoth and the (true) Baal- and Asherahworship, Manasseh added as a third kind the worship of all the host of heaven, which had not occurred among the Israelites before the Assyrian era, and was probably of Assyrian or ChaldaBan origin. This worship differed from the Syrophcenician starworship, in which sun and moon were worshipped under the names of Baal and Astarte as the bearers of the male and female powers of nature, and was pure star-worship, based upon the idea of the unchangeableness of the stars in contradistinction to the perishableness of everything earthly, according to which the stars were worshipped not merely as the originators of all rise and decay in nature, but also as the leaders and regulators of sublunary things (see Movers, Phdniz. i. pp. 65 and 161). This star-worship was a later development of the primary star- worship of Ssabism, in which the stars were worshipped without any image, in the open air or upon the housetops, by simple contemplation, the oldest and comparatively the purest form of the deification of nature, to which the earlier Arabians and the worshippers of the sun among the Ssabians (Zabians) were addicted (cf. Delitzsch on Job xxxi. 26, 27), and which is mentioned and forbidden in Deut. iv. 19 and xvii. 3. In this later form the sun had sacred chariots and horses as among the Persians (ch. xxiii. 11), and incense was offered to the stars, with the face turned towards the east, upon altars which were built either upon housetops, as in the case of the Nabataeans (Strabo, xvi. 784), or within the limits of the temple in the two courts (cf. Ezek viii. 16, also ch. xxi. 5, xxiii. 12, and 2 Chron. xxxiii. 5, Jer. xix. 13, Zeph. i. 5). This burning of incense took place not merely to the sun and moon, but also to the signs of the zodiac and to all the host of heaven, i.e. to all the stars (ch. xxiii. 5); by which we are no doubt to understand that the sun, moon, planets and other stars, were worshipped in conjunction with the zodiac, and with this were connected astrology, augury, and the casting of nativities, as in the case of the later so-called Chaldseans.1 This star-worship is more minutely described in vers. 4 and 5. The two verses are closely connected. The rinaTD n5^i of ver. 4 is resumed in '3?D £W in ver. 5, and the fvt ns32 of ver. 4 is more minutely denned in the '" wa nVivn W| of ver. 5. "In the two courts: " not merely in the outer court, but even in the court of the priests, which was set apart for the worship of Jehovah. — Ver. 6. He also offered his son in sacrifice to Moloch, like Ahaz (ch. xvi. 3), in the valley of Benhinnom (Chron. cf. ch. xxiii. 10), and practised soothsaying and witchcraft of every kind. On trn:i;?iy see Deut. xviii. 10 and Lev. xix. 26. nitf n&y, he made, i.e. appointed, put into office, a " necromancer.and wise people" (cf. Lev. xix. 31 and Deut. xviii. 11). — Ver. 7. Yea, he even placed the image of Asherah in the temple, i.e. in the Holy Place. In the description of his idolatry, which advances gradatim, this is introduced as the very worst crime. According to the express declaration of the Lord to David (2 Sam. vii. 13) and Solomon (1 Kings ix. 3 compared with ch. viii. 16), the temple was to serve as the dwelling-place of His name. — Ver. 8. The word of the Lord, " I will no more make the foot of Israel to move out of the land which I gave to their fathers," refers to the promise in 2 Sam. vii. 10: "I will appoint my people a place, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and be stirred up no more," which had been fulfilled by the building of the temple as the seat of the name of the Lord, in the manner indicated in pp. 85 sqq. The lasting fulfilment of this promise, however, was made to rest upon the condition of Israel's faithful adherence to the commandments of God (cf. 1 Kings ix. 6 sqq.). — Ver. 9. This condition was not observed
1 Movers (Phoniz. i. p. 65) correctly observes, that " in all the books of the Old Testament which are written before the Assyrian period there is no trace of any (?) star-worship; not that the Phoenician (Canaanitish) gods had not also a sidereal significance, but because this element was only a subordinate one, and the expressions, sun, moon, and stars, and all the host of heaven, which are not met with before, become for the first time common now," — although his proofs of the difference between the Assyrian star-worship and the Phoenician and Babylonian image-worship stand greatly in need of critical sifting.
by the Israelites; Manasseh seduced them, so that they did more evil than the Canaanites, whom Jehovah had destroyed before them. — Vers. 1.0-15. The Lord therefore announced through the prophets, to the rebellious and idolatrous nation, the destruction of Jerusalem and the deliverance of Judah into the hands of its enemies; but, as is added in 2 Chron, xxxiii. 10, they paid no heed to them. The prophets who foretold this terrible judgment are not named. According to 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18, their utterances were entered in the annals of the kings. Habakkuk was probably one of them, since he (Hab. i. 5) predicted the Chaldsean judgment as a fact which excited astonishment and appeared incredible. The Amorites are mentioned in ver. 1 1 instar omnium as the supporters of the Canaanitish ungodliness, as in 1 Kings xxi. 26, etc. — The phrase, " that whosoever heareth it, both his ears may tingle," denotes such a judgment as has never been heard of before, and excites alarm and horror (cf. 1 Sam. iii. 1 1 and Jer. xix. 3). The Keri nyriw is a correction, to bring the pronom. suff. into conformity with the noun njn so far as the gender is concerned, whereas in the Chethib vypb> the masculine suffix is used in the place of the feminine, as is frequently the case. — Ver. 13. "I stretch over Jerusalem the measure of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab." The measure (ii?) and the plummet (rbppv, lit. a level) were applied to what was being built (Zech.. i. 1 6), and also to what was being made level with the ground, i.e. completely thrown down (Amos vii. 7). From this sprang the figurative expressions, measure of desolation and plummet of devastation (Isa. xxxiv. 11). — The measure of Samaria therefore denotes the measure which was applied to the destruction of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab denotes the extermination of the royal house of Ahab. The meaning is: I shall destroy Jerusalem as I have destroyed Samaria, and exterminate its inhabitants like the house of Ahab. In the second hemistich the same thing is expressed, if possible, still more strongly: " I wipe away Jerusalem as one wipes the dish, and (having) wiped (it), turns it upon its upper side (SJV?)-" The wiping of a dish that has been used, and the turning over of the dish wiped, so as not to leave a single drop in it, are a figurative representation of the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the utter extermination of its inhabitants. — Ver. 14. With the destruction of Jerusalem the Lord forsakes the people of His possession, and gives it up to its enemies for a prey and spoil.
WD? n^")^f: Judah is called the remnant of the people of God's inheritance with a reference to the rejection and leading away of the ten tribes, which have already taken place. On nBBte* T3 see Isa. xlii. 22, Jer. xxx. 16.
To this announcement of the judgment there is appended in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 sqq. the statement, that Jehovah caused Manasseh the king to be taken prisoner by the generals of the king of Assyria and led away to Babylon in chains; and that when he humbled himself before God there, and made supplication to Him, He brought him back to Jerusalem and placed him upon his throne again; whereupon Manasseh fortified the walls of Jerusalem still further, placed garrisons in the fortified cities, removed the idol from the temple, abolished from the city the idolatrous altars erected in Jerusalem and upon the templemountain, restored the altar of Jehovah, and commanded the people to offer sacrifice upon it. — This incident is omitted in our book, because the conversion of Manasseh was not followed by any lasting results so far as the kingdom was concerned; the abolition of outward idolatry in Jerusalem did not lead to the conversion of the people, and after the death of Manasseh even the idolatrous abominations that had been abolished were restored by Amon.1 — Ver. 16. Manasseh also sinned grievously by shedding innocent blood till Jerusalem was quite filled with it. HD7 ns^ from one edge to the other, see at ch. x. 21. This statement has been paraphrased by Josephus thus (Ant. x. 3, 1): Manasseh slew wdvras opta? tou? Sitca-lovs tovs iv toI? 'Eftpalois, and did not spare even the prophets, with the additional clause, which exaggerates the thing: koX rovrmv he riva? kcl& rjfiepav aTre<r<f)ai;€, (wore aifiari peiadai ra 'IepoaoXvfJui.2 — Vers. 17, 18. Manasseh was buried " in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzza." " His house " cannot be the royal palace built by Solomon, because the garden is also called the garden of Uzza,
1 The historical truth of these accounts, which Rosenmiiller, Winer, and Hitzig called in question after the example of Gramberg, has been defended by Ewald, Bertheau, and even by Thenius; and the latest attack which has been made upon it by Graf in the theol. Studien u. Krit. 1859, iii., has been met by E. Gerlach in the same magazine of 1861. For further remarks see the Commentary on the Chronicles.
2 The widespread Jewish and Christian legend, that Manasseh put to death the prophet Isaiah, and indeed had him sawn in sunder, to which there is an allusion in Heb. xi. 37, also belongs here. (See Delitzsch, Comm. on Isaiah, p. 5.)
evidently from the name of its former possessor. " His house " must therefore have been a summer palace belonging to Manasseh, the situation of which, however, it is impossible to determine more precisely. The arguments adduced by Thenius in support of the view that it was situated upon Ophel, opposite to Zion, are perfectly untenable. Eobinson (Pal. i. p. 394) conjectures that the garden of Uzza was upon Zion. The name NW (nty) occurs again in 2 Sam. vi. 8, 1 Chron. viii. 7, Ezra ii. 49, and Neh. vii. 51.
Vers. 19-26. Eeign of Amon (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 21-25). — Amon reigned only two years, and that in the spirit of his father, that is to say, worshipping all his idols. The city of Jotbah, from which his mother sprang, was, according to Jerome (in the Onom. s. v. Jethaba), urbs antiqua Judcece; but it is not further known. — Vers. 23, 24. His servants conspired against him and slew him in his palace; whereupon the people of the land, i.e. the population of Judah (H?? D^ = rnirp uv, 2 Chron. xxvi. 1), put the conspirators to death and made Josiah the son of Amon king, when he was only eight years old. — Ver. 26. Amon was buried "in his grave in the garden of Uzza," i.e. in the grave which he had had made in the garden of Uzza by the side of his father's grave. He had probably resided in this palace of his father. 13?., one buried him.
After a brief account of the length and spirit of the reign of the pious Josiah (vers. 1 and 2), we have a closely connected narrative, in ver. 3-xxiii. 24, of what he did for the restoration of the true worship of Jehovah and the extermination of idolatry; and the whole of the reform effected by him is placed in the eighteenth year of his reign, because it was in this year that the book of the law was discovered, through which the reformation of worship was carried to completion. It is evident that it was the historian's intention to combine together everything that Josiah did to this end, so as to form one grand picture, from the circumstance that he has not merely placed the chronological datum, " it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah," at the beginning, but has repeated it at the close (ch. xxiii 23). If we run over the several facts which are brought before us in this section, — the repairing of the temple (ch. xxii. 3—7); the discovery of the book of the law; the reading of the book to the king; the inquiry made of the prophetess Huldah, and her prophecy (vers. 8-2 0); the reading of the law to the assembled people in the temple, with the renewal of the covenant (ch. xxiii. 1-3); the eradication of idolatry not only from Jerusalem and Judah, but from Bethel also, and all the cities of Samaria (vers. 4-20); and, lastly, the passo^er (vers. 21-23), — there is hardly any need to remark, that all this cannot have taken place in the one eighteenth year of his reign, even if, with Usher (Annates ad a.m. 3381), we were to place the solemn passover at the close of the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, which is hardly suitable, and by no means follows from the circumstance that the chronological datum, " in the eighteenth year," stands at the commencement of the complete account of the reform of worship introduced by that king. For we may clearly infer that the several details of this account are not arranged chronologically, but according to the subject-matter, and that the historian has embraced the efforts of Josiah to restore the legal worship of Jehovah, which spread over several years, under the one point of view of a discovery of the law, and therefore within the eighteenth year of his reign, from the fact that he introduces the account of the repairing of the temple (ch. xxii. 3-7) in a period by itself, and makes it subordinate to the account of the discovery of the book of the law, and indeed only mentions it in a general manner, because it led to the finding of the book of the law. It is true that the other facts are attached to one another in the narrative by Vav consec.; but, on a closer inspection of the several details, there cannot be any doubt whatever that the intention is not to arrange them in their chronological order. The repairing of the temple must have commenced before the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, inasmuch as in that year, in which the incident occurred which led to the discovery of the book of the law (ch. xxii. 3-7), not only were the builders occupied with the repairs of the temple, but money had been brought by all the people to the house of God to carry on this work, and had been collected by the Levites who kept the door. Moreover, from the very nature of the case, we cannot conceive of the restoration of the temple, that had fallen to decay, without the removal of the idolatrous abominations found in the temple. And the assumption is an equally inconceivable one, that all the people entered into covenant with the Lord (ch. xxiii. 3), before any commencement had been made towards the abolition of the prevailing idolatry, or that the pious king had the book of the law read in the temple and entered into covenant with the Lord, so long as the Ashera was standing in the temple and the idolatrous altars erected by Manasseh in the courts, together with the horses and chariots dedicated to the sun. If the conclusion of a covenant in consequence of the public reading of the book of the law was to be an act in accordance with the law, the public memorials of idolatry must be destroyed at all events in the neighbourhood of the temple. And is it likely that the king, who had been so deeply moved by the curses of the law, would have undertaken so solemn a transaction in sight of the idolatrous altars and other abominations of idolatry in the house of Jehovah, and not rather have seen that this would be only a daring insult to Jehovah? These reasons are quite sufficient to prove that the extermination of idolatry had commenced before the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, and had simply been carried out with greater zeal throughout the whole kingdom after the discovery of the book of the law.
This view of our account is simply confirmed by a comparison with the parallel history in 2 Chron. xxxiv. and xxxv. According to 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3 sqq., Josiah began to seek the God of his father David in the eighth year of his reign, when he was still a youth, that is to say, not more than sixteen years old, and in the twelfth year of his reign began to purify Judah and Jerusalem from idolatry; and, according to vers. 8 sqq., in the eighteenth year of his reign, at the purification of the land and temple, and the renovation of the temple, the book of the law was found by the high priest, and handed over to the king and read before him (vers. 8-28), after which the renewal of the covenant took place, and all the abominations of idolatry that still remained in the land were swept away (vers. 29-33), and, lastly, a solemn passover was celebrated, of which we have an elaborate account in ch. xxxv. 1-10. Consequently the account given in the Chronicles is, on the whole, arranged with greater chronological precision, although even there, after the commencement of the extermination of idolatry has been mentioned, we have a brief and comprehensive statement of all that Josiah did to accomplish that result; so that after the renewal of the covenant (ch. xxxiv. 33) we have nothing more than a passing allusion, by way of summary, to the complete abolition of the abominations of idolatry throughout the whole land.
Vers. 1 and 2. Length and spirit of Josialis reign. — Josiah (for the name, see at 1 Kings xiii. 2), like Hezekiah, trode once more in the footsteps of his pious forefather David, adhering with the greatest constancy to the law of the Lord. He reigned thirty-one years. As a child he had probably received a pious training from his mother; and when he had ascended the throne, after the early death of his godless father, he was under the guidance of pious men who were faithfully devoted to the law of the Lord, and who turned his heart to the God of their fathers, as was the case with Joash in ch. xii 3, although there is no allusion to guardianship. His mother Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah, was of Boscath, a city in the plain of Judah, of which nothing further is known (see at Josh. xv. 39). The description of his character, " he turned not aside to the right hand and to the left," sc. from that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, is based upon Deut. v. 29, xvii. 11, 20, and xxviii. 14, and expresses an unwavering adherence to the law of the Lord.
Vers. 3—8. Repairing of the temple, and discovery of the booh of the law (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 8—18). — When Josiah sent Shaphan the secretary of state ("isto, see at 2 Sam. viii. 17) into the temple, in the eighteenth year of his reign, with instructions to Hilkiah the high priest to pay to the builders the money which had been collected from the people for repairing the temple by the Levites who kept the door, Hilkiah said to Shaphan, " I have found the book of the law." Vers. 3-8 form a long period. The apodosis to 'W1 \"H, " it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah — the king had sent Shaphan," etc., does not follow till ver. 8: " that Hilkiah said," etc. The principal fact which the historian wished to relate, was the discovery of the book of the law; and the repairing of the temple is simpty mentioned because it was when Shaphan was sent to Hilkiah about the payment of the money to the builders that the high priest informed the king's secretary of state of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple, and handed it over to him to take to the king,?\>ft\} TDV, in ver. 3, forms the commencement to the minor clauses inserted within the principal clause, and subordinate to it: " the king had sent Shaphan," etc. According to 2 Chron. xxxiv. 8, the king had deputed not only Shaphan the state-secretary, but also Maaseiah the governor of the city and Joach the chancellor, because the repairing of the temple was not a private affair of the king and the high priest, but concerned the city generally, and indeed the whole kingdom. In vers. 4, 5 there follows the charge given by the king to Shaphan: " Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may make up the money,... and hand it over to the workmen appointed over the house of Jehovah," etc. 0??!, from DEfi, Hiphil, signifies to finish or set right, i.e. not pay out (Ges., Dietr.), but make it up for the purpose of paying out, namely, collect it from the doorkeepers, count it, and bind it up in bags (see ch. xii. 11). zn] is therefore quite appropriate here, and there is no alteration of the text required. The door-keepers had probably put the money in a chest placed at the entrance, as was the case at the repairing of the temple in the time of Joash (ch. xii. 1 0). In ver. 5 the Keri VW is a bad alteration of the Chethib roJV, " and give (it) into the hand," which is perfectly correct. rDK?Bn "»fe>y might denote both the masters and the workmen (builders), and is therefore defined more precisely first of all by '" n*?3 ^VSff^» " who had the oversight at the house of Jehovah," i.e. the masters or inspectors of the building, and secondly by '* T\s22 "iK'K, who were (occupied) at the house of Jehovah, whilst in the Chronicles it is explained by '' '3 D'fc>]/ -\vx. The Keri '" n*3 is an alteration after ver. 9, whereas the combination ivaa D*!iJ?? is justified by the construction of *Pj?sn c. ace. pers. and 3 rei in Jer. xl. 5. The masters are the subject to WW; they were to pay the money as it was wanted, either to the workmen, or for the purchase of materials for repairing the dilapidations, as is more precisely defined in ver. 6. Compare ch. xii. 12, 13; and for ver. 7 compare ch. xii. 16. The names of the masters or inspectors are given in 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12. — The execution of the kings command is not specially mentioned, that the parenthesis may not be spun out any further. — Ver. 8. Hilkiah the high priest (cf. 1 Chron. v. 39) said, " I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah." rninn "ibd, the book of the law (not a lawbook or a roll of laws), cannot mean anything else, either grammatically or historically, than the Mosaic book of the law (the Pentateuch), which is so designated, as is generally admitted, in the Chronicles, and the hooks of Ezra and Nehemiah.1 The finding of the hook of the law in the temple presupposes that the copy deposited there had come to light. But it by no means follows from this, that before its discovery there were no copies in the hands of the priests and prophets. The book of the law that was found was simply the temple copy,2 deposited, according to Deut. xxxi. 26, by the side of the ark of the covenant, which had been lost under the idolatrous kings Manasseh and Anion, and came to light again now that the temple was being repaired. We cannot learn, either from the account before us, or from the words of the Chronicles (ch. xxxiv. 14), " when they were taking out the money brought into the house of Jehovah, Hilkiah found the book of the law of the Lord," in what part of the temple it had hitherto lain; and this is of no importance so far as the principal object of the history is concerned. Even the words of the Chronicles simply point out the occasion on which the book was discovered, and do not affirm that it had
1 Thenius has correctly observed, that " the expression shows very clearly, that the allusion is to something already known, not to anything that had come to light for the first time;" but he is greatly mistaken when, notwithstanding this, he supposes that what we are to understand by this is merely a collection of the commandments and ordinances of Moses, which had been worked up in the Pentateuch, and more especially in Deuteronomy. For there is not the smallest proof whatever that any such collection of commandments and ordinances of Moses, or, as Bertheau supposes, the collection of Mosaic law contained in the three middle books of the Pentateuch, or Deuteronomy ch. i.-xxviii. (according to Vaihinger, Reuss, and others), was ever called minn "12D, or that any such portions had had an independent existence, and had been deposited in the temple. These hypotheses are simply bound up with the attacks made upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and ought to be given up, since De "Wette, the great leader of the attack upon the genuineness of the Pentateuch, in § 162a of the later editions of his Introduction to the Old 2'estament, admits that the account before us contains the first certain trace of the existence of our present Pentateuch. The only loophole left to modern criticism, therefore, is that Hilkiah forged the book of the law discovered by him under the name of Moses, — a conclusion which can only be arrived at by distorting the words of the text in the most arbitrary manner, turning " find" into " forge," but which is obliged either to ignore or forcibly to set aside all the historical evidence of the previous existence of the whole of the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy.
2 Whether the original written by Moses' own hand, as Grotius inferred from the H^D T2 of the Chronicles, or a later copy of this, is a very superfluous question; for, as Havernick says, " even in the latter case it was to be regarded just in the same light as the autograph, having jnst the same claims, since the temple repaired by Josiah was the temple of Solomon still."
been lying in one of the treasure-chambers of the temple, as Josephus says. The expression WKipJJ does not imply that Shaphan read the whole book through immediately.
Vers. 9-14. The reading of the book of the law to the "king, and the inquiry made of the 'prophetess Huldah concerning it. — Vers. 9, 10. When Shaphan informed the king of the execution of his command, he also told him that Hilkiah had given him a book, and read it to the king. "Ui 3^n to brine* an answer, to give a report as to a commission that has been received, ^flil they poured out the money, i.e. out of the chest in which it was collected, into bags. *»Hnp3, " he read it to the king," is simplified in the Chronicles (ver. 18) by to frTip^ "he read therein." That 1118^ does not signify that the whole was read, is evident from a comparison of ch. xxiii. 2, where the reading of the whole is expressed by 'D *i3"rt3. Which passages or sections Shaphan read by himself (ver. 8), and which he read to the king, it is impossible to determine exactly. To the king he most likely read, among other things, the threats and curses of the law against those who transgressed it (Deut. xxviii.), and possibly also Lev. xxvi., because the reading made such an impression upon him, that in his anguish of soul he rent his clothes. Nor is it possible to decide anything with certainty, as to whether the king had hitherto been altogether unacquainted with the book of the law, and had merely a traditional knowledge of the law itself, or whether he had already had a copy of the law, but had not yet read it through, or had not read it with proper attention, which accounted for the passages that were read to him now making so deep and alarming an impression upon him. It is a well-known experience, that even books which have been read may, under peculiar circumstances, produce an impression such as has not been made before. But in all probability Josiah had not had in his possession any copy of the law, or even read it till now; although the thorough acquaintance with the law, which all the prophets display, places the existence of the Pentateuch in prophetical circles beyond the reach of doubt. — Ver. 1 1. In his alarm at the words of the book of the law that had been read to him, Josiah rent his clothes, and sent a deputation to the prophetess Huldah, to make inquiry of Jehovah through her concerning the things which he had heard from the law. The deputation consisted of the high priest Hilkiah, Ahikam the supporter of Jeremiah (Jer. xxvi. 24) and the father of
Gedaliah the governor (ch. xxv. 22; Jer. xxxix. 14, etc.), Achbor the son of Michaiah, Shaphan the state-secretary (ver. 3), and Asahiah the servant {i.e. an officer) of the king. — Ver. 13. From the commission, " Inquire ye of Jehovah for me and for the people and for all Judah (i.e. the whole kingdom) concerning the words of this book of the law that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord which has been kindled against us, because our fathers have not heard...," we may infer that the curses of the law upon the despisers of the commandments of God in Lev. xxvi., Deut. xxviii., and other passages, had been read to the king, '""n^ ^TJ means to inquire the will of the Lord, what He has determined concerning the king, his people, and the kingdom.?V V^f signifies here to hearken to anything, to observe it, for which 5$ is used elsewhere, ty 2^2, to prescribe for performance. ^ " prescribed for us,1' is quite appropriate, since the law was not only given to the fathers to obey, but also to the existing generation, — a fact which Thenius has overlooked with his conjecture V?y. To render the king's alarm and his fear of severe judgments from God intelligible, there is no need for the far-fetched and extremely precarious hypothesis, that just at that time the Scythians had invaded and devastated the land. — Ver. 14. Nothing further is known of the prophetess Huldah than what is mentioned here. All that we can infer from the fact that the king sent to her is, that she was highly distinguished on account of her prophetical gifts, and that none of the prophets of renown, such as Jeremiah and Zephaniah, were at that time in Jerusalem. Her father Shallum was keeper of the clothes, i.e. superintendent over either the priests' dresses that were kept in the temple (according to the Rabbins and Wits, de proph. in his Miscell. ss. i. p. 356, ed. 3), or the king's wardrobe. The names of his ancestors njpn and ornn are written nnpin and nion in the Chronicles. Huldah lived at Jerusalem FUlfB?, " in the second part" or district of the city, i.e. in the lower city, upon the hill "Aicpa (Rob. Pal. i. p. 391), which is called ruEfen in Zeph. i. 10, and fUBta Tyn in Neh. xi. 9, and dWrf 7ro\i<; in Joseph. Ant. xv. 11, 5.
Vers. 15-20. The reply of Huldah the prophetess. — Huldah confirmed the fear expressed by Josiah, that the wrath of the Lord was kindled against Jerusalem and its inhabitants on account of their idolatry, and proclaimed first of all (vers. 16, 17), that the Lord would bring upon Jerusalem and its inhabitants all the punishments with which the rebellious and idolaters are threatened in the book of the law; and secondly (vers. 18-20), to the king himself, that on account of his sincere repentance and humiliation in the sight of God, he would not live to see the predicted calamities, but would be gathered to his fathers in peace. The first part of her announcement applies " to the man who has sent you to me " (ver. 1 5), the second " to the king of Judah, who has sent to inquire of the Lord " (ver. 18). " The man" who had sent to her was indeed also the king; but Huldah intentionally made use of the general expression * the man," etc., to indicate that the word announced to him applied not merely to the king, but to every one who would hearken to the word, whereas the second portion of her reply had reference to the king alone. njn ti)p&nf in vers. 16, 19, and 20, is Jerusalem as the capital of the kingdom. In ver. 16, ^TT'rfe iddh is an explanatory apposition to HJH. Ver. 1 7. " With all the work of their hands," i.e. with the idols which they have made for themselves (cf. 1 Kings xvi. 7). The last clause in ver. 18, " the words which thou hast heard," is not to be connected with the preceding one, " thus saith the Lord," and bv or p to be supplied; but it belongs to the following sentence, and is placed at the head absolutely: as for the words, which thou hast heard — because thy heart has become soft, i.e. in despair at the punishment with which the sinners are threatened (cf. Deut. xx. 3; Isa. vii. 4), and thou hast humbled thyself, when thou didst hear, etc.; therefore, behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, etc. nispp nvrb} « that they (the city and inhabitants) may become a desolation and curse." These words, which are often used by the prophets, but which are not found connected like this except in Jer. xliv. 22, rest upon Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii., and show that these passages had been read to the king out of the book of the law. — Ver. 20. To gather to his fathers means merely to let him die, and is generally applied to a peaceful death upon a sick-bed, like the synonymous phrase, to lie with one's fathers; but it is also applied to a violent death by being slain in battle (1 Kings xxii. 40 and 34), so that there is no difficulty in reconciling this comforting assurance with the slaying of Josiah in battle (ch. xxiii. 29). Dw3, in peace, i.e. without living to witness the devastation of Jerusalem, as is evident from the words, " thine eyes will not see," etc.