to draw one's self together, to roll up; see ch. xiv. 23). nsp is written here with a double kametz, as well as in Zeph. ii. 14, according to codd. and Kimchi, W.B. (Targ. qdth, elsewhere q&q; Saad. and Abulwalid, quq: see at Ps. cii. 7). According to well-established tradition, it is the long-necked pelican, which lives upon fish (the name is derived either from Nip, to vomit, or, as the construct is ritfp, from a word riKjj, formed in imitation of the animal's cry). Yanshitph is rendered by the Targum qlppophln (Syr. kafufo), i.e. eared-owls, which are frequently mentioned in the Talmud as birds of ill omen (Rashi, or BeracJioth bib, chouette). As the parallel to qdv, we have \J3K (stones) here instead of ^ij^p, the level, in ch. xxviii. 17. It is used in the same sense, however, — namely, to signify the weight used in the plumb or level, which is suspended by a line. The level and the measure are commonly employed for the purpose of building up; but here Jehovah is represented as using these for the purpose of pulling down (a figure met with even before the time of Isaiah: vid. Amos vii. 7-9, cf. 2 Kings xxi. 13, Lam. ii. 8), inasmuch as He carries out this negative reverse of building with the same rigorous exactness as that with which a builder carries out his well-considered plan, and throws Edom back into a state of desolation and desert, resembling the disordered and shapeless chaos of creation (compare Jer. iv. 23, where tohu vdbhohu represents, as it does here, the state into which a land is reduced by fire). Wh has no dagesh lene; and this is one of the three passages in which the opening mute is without a dagesh, although the word not only follows, but is closely connected with, one which has a soft consonant as its final letter (the others are Ps. lxviii. 18 and Ezek. xxiii. 42). Thus the primeval kingdom with its early monarchy, which so long preceded that of Israel, is brought to an end (Gen. xxxvi. 31). n^n stands at the head as a kind of protasis. Edom was an elective monarchy; the hereditary nobility electing the new king. But this would be done no more. The electoral princes of Edom would come to nothing. Not a trace would be left of all that had built up the glory of Edom.
The allusion to the monarchy and the lofty electoral dignity leads the prophet on to the palaces and castles of the land. Starting with these, he carries out the picture of the ruins in vers. 13-15. " And the palaces of Edom break out into thorns, nettles and thistles in its castles; and it becomes the abode of ivild dogs, pasture for ostriches. And martens meet with jackals, and a wood-devil runs upon its fellow; yea, Lillth dwells there, and finds rest for itself There the arrow-snake makes its nest, and breeds and lays eggs, and broods in the shadow there; yea, there vultures gather together one to another" The feminine suffixes refer to Edom, as they did in the previous instance, as DilKTia or DVlK H.N. On the tannim, tsiyyim, and yiyylm, see at ch. xiii. 21, 22. It is doubtful whether chdtslr here corresponds to the Arabic word for an enclosure (= "^n), as Gesenius, Hitzig, and others suppose, as elsewhere to the Arabic for green, a green field, or garden vegetable. We take it in the latter sense, viz. a grassy place, such as was frequented by ostriches, which live upon plants and fruits. The word tsiyyim (steppe animals) we have rendered " martens," as the context requires a particular species of animals to be named. This is the interpretation given by Rashi (in loc.) and Kimchi in Jer. 1. 39 to the Targum word tamvdn. We do not render 'iyylm "wild cats" (chattulin), but "jackals," after the Arabic. fcOjp with?V_ we take in the sense of H"jp (as in Ex. v. 3). Lillth (Syr. and Zab. lelitho), lit. the creature of the night, was a female demon (sheddh) of the popular mythology; according to the legends, it was a malicious fairy that was especially hurtful to children, like some of the fairies of our own fairy tales. There is life in Edom still; but what a caricature of that which once was there! In the very spot where the princes of Edom used to proclaim the new king, satyrs now invite one another to dance (ch. xiii. 21); and where kings and princes once slept in their palaces and country houses, the lillth, which is most at home in horrible places, finds, as though after a prolonged search, the most convenient and most comfortable resting-place. Demons and serpents are not very far distant from one another. The prophet therefore proceeds in ver. 15 to the arrow-snake, or springing-snake (Arabic qiffdze, from qdphaz, related to qdphats, Song of Sol. ii. 8, to prepare for springing, or to spring; a different word from qippdd, which has the same root). This builds its nest in the ruins; there it breeds (millet, to let its eggs slide out) and lays eggs (bdqa, to split, i.e. to bring forth); and then it broods in the shade (ddgar is the Targum word in Job xxxix. 14 for chimmem (ithpael in Lam.
i. 20 for TOW]), and is also used in the rabbinical writings for fovere, as Jerome renders it here). The literal sense of the word is probably to keep the eggs together (Targum, Jer. xvii. 11, P?3 W30, LXX. avvijyayev), since W (syn. TOn) signifies tt to collect." Rashi has therefore explained it in both passages as meaning glousser, to cluck, the noise by which a fowl calls its brood together. The dayydh is the vulture. These fowls and most gregarious birds of prey also collect together there.
Whenever any one compared the prophecy with the fulfilment, they would be found to coincide. Vers. 16, 17. "Search in the book of Jehovah, and read! Not one of the creatures fails, not one misses the other: for my mouth — it has commanded it; and His breath — it has brought them together. And He has cast the lot for them, and His hand has assigned it (this land) to them by measure: they will possess it for ever; to generation and generation they will dwell therein." The phrase *?y 3rj3 is used for entering in a book, inasmuch as what is written there is placed upon the page; and 7tf£ Vhn for searching in a book, inasmuch as a person leans over the book when searching in it, and gets the object of his search out of it. The prophet applied the title " The Book of Jehovah " to his collection of the prophecies with which Jehovah had inspired him, and which He had commanded him to write down. Whoever lived to see the time when the judgment should come upon Edom, would have only to look inquiringly into this holy scripture; and if he compared what was predicted there with what had been actually realized, he would find the most exact agreement between them. The creatures named, which loved to frequent the marshes and solitary places, and ruins, would all really make their homes in what had once been Edom. But the satyrs and the llllth, which were only the offspring of the popular belief — what of them? They, too, would be there; for in the sense intended by the prophet they were actual devils, which he merely calls by well-known popular names to produce a spectral impression. Edom would really become a rendezvous for all the animals mentioned, as well as for such unearthly spirits as those which he refers to here. The prophet, or rather Jehovah, whose temporary organ he was, still further confirms this by saying, " My mouth hath commanded it, and His breath has brought them (all these creatures) together." As the first creating word proceeded from the mouth of Jehovah, so also does the word of prophecy, which resembles such a word; and the breath of the mouth of Jehovah, i.e. His Spirit, is the power which accomplishes the fiat of prophecy, as it did that of creation, and moulds all creatures and their history according to the will and counsel of God (Ps. xxxiii. 6). In the second part of ver. 16b the prophet is speaking of Jehovah; whereas in the first Jehovah speaks through him, — a variation which vanishes indeed if we read VS (Olshausen on Job ix. 20), or, what would be better, Wa? but which may be sustained by a hundred cases of a similar kind. There is a shadow, as it were, of this change in the EH?, which alternates with |HJ in connection with the animals named. The suffix of cliiWqattdh (without mappik, as in 1 Sam. i. 6) refers to the land of Edom. Edom is, as it were, given up by a divine lot, and measured off with a divine measure, to be for ever the horrible abode of beasts and demons such as those described. A prelude of the fulfilment of this swept over the mountainous land of Edom immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem (see Kohler on Mai. i. 2-5); and it has never risen to its previous state of cultivation again. It swarms with snakes, and the desolate mountain heights and barren table-lands are only inhabited by wild crows and eagles, and great flocks of birds. But the ultimate fulfilment, to which the appeal in ver. 16 refers, is still in the future, and will eventually fall upon the abodes of those who spiritually belong to that circle of hostility to Jehovah (Jesus) and His church, of which ancient Edom was merely the centre fixed by the prophet.
Edom falls, never to rise again. Its land is turned into a horrible wilderness. But, on the other hand, the wilderness through which the redeemed Israel returns, is changed into a flowery field. Ch. xxxv. 1, 2. u Gladness Jills the desert and the heath; and the steppe rejoices, and flowers like the crocus. It flowers abundantly, and rejoices; yea, rejoicing and singing: the glory of Lebanon is given to it, the splendour of Carmel and the plain of Sharon; they will see the glory of Jehovah, the splendour of our God." "»^np tttb^ (to be accentuated with tiphchah munach, not with mercha tiphchah) has been correctly explained by Aben-Ezra. The orignal Nun has been assimilated to the following Mem, just as jpidyon in Num. iii. 49 is afterwards written pidyom (Ewald, § 91, b). The explanation given by Rashi, Gesenius, and others (Icetabuntur his), is untenable, if only because sus (sis) cannot be construed with the accusative of the object (see at ch. viii. 6); and to get rid of the form by correction, as Olshausen proposes, is all the more objectionable, because " the old full plural in un is very frequently met wTith before Mem" (Bottcher), in which case it may have been pronounced as it is written here.1 According to the Targum on Song of Sol. ii. 1 (also Saad., Abulw.), the chdbhatstseleth is the narcissus; whilst the Targum on the passage before us leaves it indefinite — sicut Mia. The name (a derivative of bdtsal) points to a bulbous plant, probably the crocus and primrose, which were classed together.2 The sandy steppe would become like a lovely variegated plain covered with meadow flowers.3 On gilath, see at ch. xxxiii. 6 (cf. ch. lxv. 18): the infin. noun takes the place of an inf. abs., which expresses the abstract verbal idea, though in a more rigid manner; faph (like gam in Gen. xxxi. 15, xlvi. 4) is an exponent of the increased emphasis already implied in the gerunds that come after. So joyful and so gloriously adorned will the barren desert, which has been hitherto so mournful, become, on account of the great things that are in store for it. Lebanon, Carmel, and Sharon have, as it were, shared their splendour with the desert, that all might be clothed alike in festal dress, when the glory of Jehovah, which surpasses everything else in
1 Bottcher calls urn the oldest primitive form of the plural; but it is only a strengthening of un; cf. tannlm = tannin, Hanameel = Hananeel, and such Sept. forms as Gesem, Madiam, etc. (see Hitzig on Jer. xxxii. 7). Wetzstein told me of a Bedouin tribe, in whose dialect the third pers. prset. regularly ended in m, e.g. akalum (they have eaten).
confounded, but not the narcissus and primrose, which have nothing in common except that they are bulbous plants, like most of the flowers of the East, which shoot up rapidly in the spring, as soon as the winter rains are over. But there are other colchicaceae beside our colchicum autumnale, which flowers before the leaves appear and is therefore called Jilius ante patrem (e.g. the eastern colchicum variegatum).
3 Layard, in his Nineveh and Babylon, describes in several places the enchantingly beautiful and spring-like variation of colours which occurs in the Mesopotamian " desert; " though what the prophet had in his mind was not the real midbar, or desert of pasture land, but, as the words tsiyiih and ' archhah show, the utterly barren sandy desert.
its splendour, should appear; that glory which they would not only be privileged to behold, but of which they would be honoured to be the actual scene.
The prophet now exclaims to the afflicted church, in language of unmixed consolation, that Jehovah is coming. Vers. 3, 4. " Strengthen ye the weak hands, and make the trembling knees strong! Say to those of a terrified heart, Be strong! Fear ye not! Behold, your God will come for vengeance, for a divine retribution: He will come, and bring you salvation." Those who have become weak in faith, hopeless and despairing, are to cheer up; and the stronger are to tell such of their brethren as are perplexed and timid, to be comforted now: for Jehovah is coming ndqdm (i.e. as vengeance), and gemul 'Flohim (i.e. as retribution, such as God the highly exalted and Almighty Judge inflicts; the expression is similar to that in ch. xxx. 27, xiii. 9, cf. xl. 10, but a bolder one; the words in apposition stand as abbreviations of final clauses). The infliction of punishment is the immediate object of His coming, but the ultimate object is the salvation of His people (B^^l a contracted future form, which is generally confined to the aorist). Vers. 5-7. u Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame man leap as the stag, and the tongue of the dumb man shout; for waters break out in the desert, and brooks in the steppe. And the mirage becomes a fish-pond, and the thirsty ground gushing water-springs; in the place of jackals, where it lies, there springs up grass with reeds and rushes" The bodily defects mentioned here there is no reason for regarding as figurative representations of spiritual defects. The healing of bodily defects, however, is merely the outer side of what is actually effected by the coming of Jehovah (for the other side, comp. ch. xxxii. 3, 4). And so, also, the change of the desert into a field abounding with water is not a mere poetical ornament; for in the last times, the era of redemption, nature itself will really share in the doxa which proceeds from the manifested God to His x'edeemed. Shdrdbh (Arab, sardb) is essentially the same thing as that which we call in the western languages the mirage, of Fata morgana; not indeed every variety of this phenomenon of the refraction of light, through strata of air of varying density lying one above another, but more especially that appearance of water, which is produced as if by magic in the dry, sandy desert1 (literally perhaps the " desert shine," just as we speak of the " Alpine glow;" seech, xlix. 10). The antithesis to this is \Xgam (Chald. \igma, Syr. egmo, Ar. again), a fish-pond (as in ch. xli. 18, different from 'dgdm in ch. xix. 10). In the arid sandy desert, where the jackal once had her lair and suckled her young (this is, according to Lam. iv. 3, the true explanation of the permutative ribhtsdh, for which ribhtsdm would be in some respects more suitable), grass springs up even into reeds and rushes; so that, as ch. xliii. 20 affirms, the wild beasts of the desert praise Jehovah.
In the midst of such miracles, by which all nature is glorified, the people of Jehovah are redeemed, and led home to Zion. Vers. 8-10. "And a highway rises there, and a road, and it will be called the Holy Road; no unclean man will pass along it, as it is appointed for them: whoever walks the road, even simple ones do not go astray. There will be no lion there, and the most ravenous beast of prey will not approach it, will not be met with there; and redeemed ones walk. And the ransomed of.Jehovah will return, and come to Zion with shouting, and everlasting joy upon their head: they lay hold of gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing flee away? Not only unclean persons from among the heathen, but even unclean persons belonging to Israel itself, will never pass along that holy road; none but the church purified and sanctified through sufferings, and those connected with it. to? Wfl, to them, and to them alone, does this road belong, which Jehovah has made and secured, and which so readily strikes the eye, that even an idiot could not miss it; whilst it lies so high, that no beast of prey, however powerful (jfrlts chayyoth, a superlative verbal noun: Ewald, § 313, c), could possibly leap up to it: not one is ever encountered by the pilgrim there. The pilgrims are those whom Jehovah has redeemed and delivered, or set free from captivity and affliction (?M,?), related to ^n, solvere; n*l3, "ID, scindere, abscindere). Everlasting joy soars above their head; they lay fast hold of delight and joy (compare on ch. xiii. 8), so that it never departs from them. On the other hand, sorrow and sighing flee away. The whole of ver. 10 is like a mosaic from ch. li. 11, lxi. 7, li. 3; and what is affirmed of the holy road, 1 See G. Kawlinson, Monarchies, i. p. 38.
is also affirmed in ch. lii. 1 of the holy city (compare ch. Ixii. 12, lxiii. 4). A prelude of the fulfilment is seen in what Ezra speaks of with gratitude to God in Ezra viii. 31. We have intentionally avoided crowding together the parallel passages from ch. xl.-lxvi. The whole chapter is, in every part, both in thought and language, a prelude of that book of consolation for the exiles in their captivity. Not only in its spiritual New Testament thoughts, but also in its ethereal language, soaring high as it does in majestic softness and light, the prophecy has now reached the highest point of its development.
FULFILMENTS OF PROPHECY; AND PROPHECIES BELONGING TO THE FOURTEENTH YEAR OF HEZEKIAH'S REIGN, AND THE TIMES IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING.
To the first six books of Isaiah's prophecies there is now appended a seventh. The six form three syzygies. In the i'Book of Hardening," ch. i.-vi. (apart from ch. i., which belonged to the times of Uzziah and Jotham), we saw Israel's day of grace brought to an end. In the " Book of Immanuel," ch. vii.-xii. (from the time of Ahaz), we saw the judgment of hardening and destruction in its first stage of accomplishment; but Immanuel was a pledge that, even if the great mass should perish, neither the whole of Israel nor the house of David would be destroyed. The separate judgments through which the way was to be prepared for the kingdom of Immanuel, are announced in the u Book concerning the Nations," ch. xiii.-xxiii. (from the times of Ahaz and Hezekiah); and the general judgment in which they would issue, and after which a new Israel would triumph, is foretold in the u Book of the great Catastrophe," ch. xxiv.-xxvii. (after the fifteenth year of Hezekiah). These two syzygies form the first great orbit of the collection. A second opens with the " Book of Woes, or of the Precious Corner-stone," ch. xxviii.-xxxiii. (xxviii.-xxxii., from the first years of Hezekiah, and xxxiii. from the fourteenth year), by the side of which is placed the u Book of the Judgment upon Edom, and of the Restoration of Israel," ch. xxxiv. xxxv. (after Hezekiah's fifteenth year). The former shows how Ephraim succumbs to the power of Asshur, and Judah's trust in Egypt is put to shame; the latter, how the world, with its hostility to the church, eventually succumbs to the vengeance of Jehovah, whereas the church itself is redeemed and glorified. Then follows, in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., a " Book of Histories," which returns from the ideal distances of ch. xxxiv. xxxv. to the historical realities of ch. xxxiii., and begins by stating that u at the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field," where Ahaz had formerly preferred the help of Asshur to that of Jehovah, there stood an embassy from the king of Asshur with a detachment of his army (ch. xxxvi. 2), scornfully demanding the surrender of Jerusalem.
Just as we have found throughout a well-considered succession and dovetailing of the several parts, so here we can see reciprocal bearings, which are both designed and expressive; and it is a priori a probable thing that Isaiah, who wrote the historical introduction to the Judseo-Assyrian drama in the second book, is the author of the concluding act of the same drama, which is here the subject of Book vii. The fact that the murder of Sennacherib is related in ch. xxxvii. 37, 38, in accordance with the prophecy in ch. xxxvii. 7, does not render this impossible, since, according to credible tradition, Isaiah outlived Hezekiah (see vol. i. 34). The assertion made by Hitzig and others — that the speciality of the prophecy, and the miraculous character of the events recorded in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., preclude the possibility of Isaiah's authorship, inasmuch as, " according to a wrell-known critical rule," such special prophecies as these are always vaticinia ex eventu, and accounts of miracles are always more recent than their historical germ — rests upon a foregone conclusion which was completed before any investigation took place, and which wTe have good ground for rejecting, although we are well acquainted with the valuable service that has been rendered by this philosopher's stone. The statement that accounts of miracles as such are never contemporaneous with the events themselves, is altogether at variance with experience; and if the advance from the general to the particular were to be blotted out of Isaiah's prophecy in relation to Asshur, this would be not only unhistorical, but un psychological also.
The question whether Isaiah is the author of ch. xxxvi.- xxxix. or not, is bound up with the question whether the original place of these histories is in the book of Isaiah or the book of Kings, where the whole passage is repeated with the exception of Hezekiah's psalm of thanksgiving (2 Kings xviii. 13-xx. 19). We shall find that the text of the book of Kings is in several places the purer and more authentic of the two (though not so much so as a biassed prejudice would assume), from which it apparently follows that this section is not in its original position in the book of Isaiah, but has been taken from some other place and inserted there. But this conclusion is a deceptive one. In the relation in which Jer. Hi. and 2 Kings xxiv. 18- xxv. stand to one another, we have a proof that the text of a passage may be more faithfully preserved in a secondary place than in its original one. For in this particular instance it is equally certain that the section relating to king Zedekiah and the Chaldean catastrophe was written by the author of the book of Kings, whose style was formed on that of Deuteronomy, and also, that in the book of Jeremiah it is an appendix taken by an unknown hand from the book of the Kings. But it is also an acknowledged fact, that the text of Jer. Hi. is incomparably the purer of the two, and also that there are many other instances in which the passage in the book of Kings is corrupt — that is to say, in the form in which it lies before us now — whereas the Alexandrian translator had it in his possession in a partially better form. Consequently, the fact that Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix. is in some respects less pure than 2 Kings xviii. 13- xx. 19, cannot be any argument in itself against the originality of this section in the book of Isaiah.
It is indeed altogether inconceivable, that the author of the book of Kings should have written it; for, on the one hand, the liberality of the prophetic addresses communicated point to a written source (see vol. i. 16); and, on the other hand, it is wanting in that Deuteronomic stamp, by which the hand of this author is so easily recognised. Nor can it have been copied by him out of the annals of Hezekiah (diblire liayydmim)1 as is commonly supposed, since it is written in prophetic and not in annalistic style. Whoever has once made himself acquainted with these two different kinds of historical composition, the fundamentally different characteristics of which we have pointed out in the Introduction (vol. i. p. 2 sqq.), can never by any possibility confound them again. And this passage is written in a style so peculiarly prophetical, that, like the magnificent historical accounts of Elijah, for example, which commence so abruptly in 2 Kings xvii. 1, it must have been taken from some special and prophetical source, which had nothing to do with other prophetico-historical portions of the book of Kings. And the following facts are sufficient to raise the probability, that this source was no other than the book of Isaiah itself, into an absolute certainty. In the first place, the author of the book of Kings had the book of Isaiah amongst the different sources, of which his apparatus was composed; this is evident from 2 Kings xvi. 5, a passage which was written with Isa. vii. 1 in view. And secondly, we have express, though indirect, testimony to the effect that this section, which treats of the most important epoch in Hezekiah's reign, is in its original place in the book of Isaiah. The author of the book of Chronicles says, in 2 Chron. xxxii. 32: u Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and the gracious occurrences of his life, behold, they are written in the vision {chdzdn) of Isaiah the son of Amoz, and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel." This notice clearly proves that a certain historical account of Hezekiah had either been taken out of the collection of Isaiah's prophecies, which is headed chdzdn (vision), and inserted in the " book of the kings of Judah and Israel," or else had been so inserted along with the whole collection. The book of the Kings was the principal source employed by the chronicler, which he calls " the midrash of the book of the Kings" in 2 Chron. xxiv. 27. Into this Midrash, or else into the still earlier work upon which it was a commentary, the section in question was copied from the book of Isaiah; and it follows from this, that the writer of the history of the kings made use of our book of Isaiah for one portion of the history of Hezekiah's reign, and made extracts from it. The chronicler himself did not care to repeat the whole section, which he knew to be already contained in the canonical book of Kings (to say nothing of the book of Isaiah). At the same time, his own historical account of Hezekiah in 2 Chron. xxvii clearly shows that he was acquainted with it, and also that the historical materials, which the annals supplied to him through the medium of the Midrash, were totally different both in substance and form from those contained in the section in question. These two testimonies are further strengthened by the fact, that Isaiah is well known to us as a historian through another passage in the Chronicles, namely, as the author of a complete history of Uzziah's reign (see vol. i. 38); also by the fact, that the prophetico-historical style of ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., with their fine, noble, pictorial prose, which is comparable to the grandest historical composition to be met with in Hebrew, is worthy of Isaiah, and bears every mark of Isaiah's pen; thirdly, by the fact, that there are other instances in which Isaiah has interwoven historical accounts with his prophecies (ch. vii. viii. and xx.), and that in so doing he sometimes speaks of himself in the first person (ch. vi. 1, viii. 1-4), and sometimes in the third (ch. vii. 3 sqq., and xx.), just as in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix.; and fourthly, by the fact that, as we have already observed, ch. vii. 3 and xxxvi. 2 bear the clearest marks of having had one and the same author; and, as we shall also show, the order in which the four accounts in ch; xxxvi.-xxxix. are arranged, corresponds to the general plan of the whole collection of prophecies, — ch. xxxvi. and xxxvii. looking back to the prophecies of the Assyrian era, and ch. xxxviii. and xxxix. looking forwards to those of the Babylonian era, which is the prophet's ideal present from ch. xl. onwards.
A. FIRST ASSYRIAN ATTEMPT TO COMPEL THE SURRENDER OF JERUSALEM. — CHAP. XXXVI. -XXXVII. 7.
Marcus v. Niebuhr, in his History of Asshur and Babel (p. 164), says, " Why should not Hezekiah have revolted from Asshur as soon as he ascended the throne? He had a motive for doing this, which other kings had not, — namely, that as he held his kingdom in fief from his God, obedience to a temporal monarch was in his case sin." But this assumption, which is founded upon the same idea as that in which the question was put to Jesus concerning the tribute money, is not at all in accordance with Isaiah's view, as we may see from ch. xxviii.-xxxii.; and Hezekiah's revolt cannot have occurred even in the sixth year of his reign (see vol. i. 51). For Shalmanassar, or rather Sargon, made war upon Egypt and Ethiopia after the destruction of Samaria (ch. xx.; cf. Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 22, 27), without attempting anything against Hezekiah. It was not till the time of Sargon, who overthrew the reigning house of Assyria, that the actual preparations for the revolt were commenced, by the formation of an alliance between the kingdom of Judah on the one hand, and Egypt, and probably Philistia, on the other, the object of which was the rupture of the Assyrian yoke.1 The campaign of Sennacherib the son of Sargon, into which we are transported in the following history, was the third of his expeditions, the one to which Sennacherib himself refers in the inscription upon the prism: u dans ma 3e campagne je marchai vers la Syrie." The position which we find Sennacherib taking up between Philistia and Jerusalem, to the south-west of the latter, is a very characteristic one in relation to both the occasion and the ultimate object of the campaign. Ch. xxxvi. I.2 " And it came to pass in the (K. and in the) fourteenth year of king Hizkiyahu, Sancherib Mng of Asshur came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them, (K. adds: Then Hizkiyah king of Judah sent to the king of Asshur to Lachish, saying, I have sinned, withdraw from me again; what thou imposest upon me I ivill raise. And the king of -A sshur imposed upon Hizkiyah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold. And Hizkiyah gave up all the silver that was in the house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house. At the same time Hizkiyah mutilated the doors of the temple of Jehovah, and the pillars which Hizkiyah king of Judah had plated with gold, and gave it to the king of Asshur)." This long addition, which is distinguished at once by the introduction of rvptn in the place of 1iTp?n, is probably only an annalistic interpolation, though one of great importance in relation to Isa. xxxiii. 7. What follows in Isaiah does not dovetail
1 The name Amgarron upon the earthenware prism of Sennacherib does not mean Migron (Oppert), but Ekron (Rawlinson).
2 We shall show the variations in the text of 2 Kings xviii. 13 sqq., as far as we possibly can, in our translation. K. signifies the book of Kings. But the task ot pronouncing an infallible sentence upon them all we shall leave to those who know everything.
well into this addition, and therefore does not presuppose its existence. Ver. 2. " Then the king of Asshur sent Rabshakeh (K.: Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rabshakeli) from Lachish towards Jerusalem to king Hizkiyahu with a great army, and he advanced (K.: to king H. with a great army to Jerusalem; and they went up and came to Jerusalem, and went up, and came and advanced) to the conduit of the upper pool by the road of the fuller s field." Whereas in K. the repeated ttO1 1^1 (and went up and came) forms a u dittography," the names Tartan and Rab-saris have apparently dropped out of the text of Isaiah, as ch. xxxvii. 6 and 24 presuppose a plurality of messengers. The three names are not names of persons, but official titles, viz.. the commander-inchief (Tartan, which really occurs in an Assyrian list of offices; see Rawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 412), the chief eunuch (see the plate in Rawlinson, ii. 118), and the chief cup-bearer (nj5KQl with tzere = NgKb*!). The situation of Lachish is marked by the present ruins of Umm Lakis, to the south-west of Bet- Gibrin (Eleutheropolis) in the Shephelah. The messengers come from the south-west with the ultima ratio of a strong detachment (?*n a connecting form, from ^.n, like vh)l) N\3, Zech. xiv. 4; Ewald, § 287, a); they therefore halt on the western aide of Jerusalem (on the locality, see at ch. vii. 3, xxii. 8-11; compare Keil on Kings).
Hezekiah's confidential ministers go there also. Ver. 3 (K. " And they called to the king), and there went out to him (K. to them) Eliakim son of Hilkiyahu, the house-minister, and Shebna the chancellor, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder" On the office of the house-minister, or major-domo, which was now filled by Eliakim instead of Shebna (fcon^*, K. twice nj2B>), see ch. xxii. 15 sqq.; and on that of sopher and mazkir, see vol. i. pp. 7, 8. Rabshakeh' s message follows in vers. 4—10: " And Rabshakeh said to them, Say now to Hizkiyahu, Thus saith the great king, the king of Asshur, What sort of confidence is this that thou hast got? I say (K. thou sayest, i.e. thou talkest), vain talk is counsel and strength for war: now, then, in whom dost thou trust, that thou hast rebelled against me? (K. Now) Behold, thou trustest (K. ^?) in this broken reed-staff there, in Egypt, on which one leans, and it runs into his hand and pierces it; so does Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if thou sayest to me (K. ye say), We trust in Jehovah our God;
M it not lie ichose high places and altars Ilizkiyahu has removed, and has said to Judali and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before the altar (K. adds, in Jerusalem)^. And now take a vjager with my lord (K. with) the king of Asshur; I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou art able for thy part to give horsemen upon them. And how coiddst thou repel the advance of a single satrap among the least of the servants of my lord?! Thou puttest thy trust then in Egypt for chariots and riders! And (omitted in K.) now have I come up without Jehovah against this land to destroy it (K. against this place, to destroy it)? Jehovah said to me, Go up to (K. against) this land, and destroy Ur The chronicler has a portion of this address of Eabshakeh in 2 Chron. xxxii. 10-12. And just as the prophetic words in the book of Kings have a Deuteronomic sound, and those in the Chronicles the ring of a chronicle, so do Rabshakeh's words, and those which follow, sound like the words of Isaiah himself. " The great king " is the standing royal title appended to the names of Sargon and Sennacherib upon the Assyrian monuments (compare ch. x. 8). Hezekiah is not thought worthy of the title of king, either here or afterwards. The reading rrpfcj in ver. 5 (thou speakest vain talk) is not the preferable one, because in that case we should expect ^m}^rj, or rather (according to the usual style) PHST TJX. The meaning is, that he must look upon Hezekiah's resolution, and his strength (rrvo^ nvy connected as in ch. xi. 2) for going to war, as mere boasting (" lip-words," as in Prov. xiv. 23), and must therefore assume that there was something in the background of which he was well aware. And this must be Egypt, which would not only be of no real help to its ally, but would rather do him harm by leaving him in the lurch. The figure of a reed-staff has been borrowed by Ezekiel in ch. xxix. 6, 7. It was a very appropriate one for Egypt, with its abundance of reeds and rushes (ch. xix. 6), and it has Isaiah's peculiar ring (for the expression itself, compare ch. xlii. 3; and for the fact itself, ch. xxx. 5, and other passages). JW does not mean fragile (Luzz. quella fragil canna), but broken, namely, in consequence of the loss of the throne by the native royal family, from whom it had been wrested by the Ethiopians (ch. xviii.), and the defeats sustained at the hands of Sargon (ch. xx.). The construction cui quis innititur et intrat is paratactic for cui si quis. In ver. 7 the reading jviotfn commends itself, from the fact that the sentence is not continued with rnspn; but as Hezekiah is addressed throughout, and it is to him that the reply is to be made, the original reading was probably lEND. The fact that Hezekiah had restricted the worship of Jehovah to Jerusalem, by removing the other places of worship (2 Kings xviii. 4), is brought against him in a thoroughly heathen, and yet at the same time (considering the inclination to worship other gods which still existed in the nation) a very crafty manner. In vers. 8, 9, he throws in his teeth, with most imposing scorn, his own weakness as compared with Asshur, which was chiefly dreaded on account of its strength in cavalry and war-chariots. N3 ^!?ri'? does n°t refer to the performance and counter- performance which follow, in the sense of u connect thyself " (Luzz. associati), but is used in a similar sense to the Homeric fuyrjvat, though with the idea of vying with one another, not of engaging in war (the synonym in the Talmud is himrdh, to bet, e.g. b. Sabbath 31a): a bet and a pledge are kindred notions (Heb. l^y, cf. Lat. vadari). On pechdh (for pachdh), which also occurs as an Assyrian title in Ezek. xxiii. 6, 23, see vol. i. p. 267, note 3. *rnN nns, two constrictives, the first of which is to be explained according to Ewald, § 286, a (compare above, ver. 2, "132 T'n), form the logical regens of the following servorum domini mei minimorum; and heshibh pene does not mean here to refuse a petitioner, but to repel an antagonist (ch. xxviii. 6). The fut. consec, ntpsrV) deduces a consequence: Hezekiah could, not do anything by himself, and therefore he trusted in Egypt, from which he expected chariots and horsemen. In ver. 10, the prophetic idea, that Asshur was the instrument employed by Jehovah (ch. x. 5, etc.), is put into the mouth of the Assyrian himself. This is very conceivable, but the colouring of Isaiah is undeniable. The concluding words, in which the Assyrian boasts of having Jehovah on his side, affect the messengers of Hezekiah in the keenest manner, especially because of the people present. Yer. 11. " Then said Eliakim (K. the son of Hilkiyahu), and Shebna, and Joah, to Rabshakeh, Pray, speak to thy servants in Aramcean, for we understand it; and do not speak to (K. with) us in Jewish, in the ears of the people that are on the wall." They spoke Y'hudUh, i.e. the colloquial language of the kingdom of Judab. The kingdom of Israel was no longer in existence, and the language of the Israel itish nation, as a whole, might therefore already be called Judaean (Jewish), as in Neh. xiii. 24, more especially as there may have been a far greater dialectical difference between the popular speech of the northern and southern kingdoms, than we can gather from the biblical books that were written in the one or the other. Aramaean (^dramith), however, appears to have been even then, as it was at a later period (Ezra iv. 7), the language of intercourse between the empire of Eastern Asia and the people to the west of the Tigris (compare Alex. Polyhistor in Euseb. chron. arm. i. 43, where Sennacherib is said to have erected a monument with a Chaldean inscription); and consequently educated Judaeans not only understood it, but were able to speak it, more especially those who were in the service of the state. Assyrian, on the contrary, was unintelligible to Judaeans (ch. xxviii. 11, xxxiii. 19), although this applied comparatively less to the true Assyrian dialect, which was Semitic, and can be interpreted for the most part from the Hebrew (see Oppert's " Outlines of an Assyrian Grammar" in the Journal Asiatique, 1859), than to the motley language of the Assyrian army, which was a compound of Arian and Turanian elements. The name Sennacherib (Sancheglbh — 3T"-,nfcT}D, LXX. Sennachereim, i.e. " Sin, the moon-god, had multiplied the brethren ") is Semitic; on the other hand, the name Tartan, which cannot be interpreted either from the Semitic or the Arian, is an example of the element referred to, which was so utterly strange to a Judaean ear.
The harsh reply is given in ver. 12. " Then Eabshakeh said (K. to them), Has my lord sent me to (K. 7W}) thy lord and to thee, not rather to (both texts,?V) the men who sit upon the wall, to eat their dung, and to drink their urine together with you?" — namely, because their rulers were exposing them to a siese which would involve the most dreadful state of famine.
After Eabshakeh had refused the request of Hezekiah's representatives in this contemptuous manner, he turned in defiance of them to the people themselves. Vers. 13-20. " Then Rabshakeh went near, and cried with a loud voice in the Jewish language (K. and spake), and said, Hear the ivords (K. the word) of the great king, the king of Asshur. Thus saith the king. Let not Hizkiyahu practise deception upon you (^^!, K. Ns$!); for he cannot deliver you (K. out of his hand). And let not Hizkiyahu feed you with hope in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah will deliver, yea, deliver us: (K. and) this city will not be delivered into the hand of the Icing of Asshur. Hearken not to Hizkiyahu; for thvs saith the king (Jiammelekh, K. melekh) of Asshur, Enter into a connection of mutual good wishes with me, and come out to me: and enjoy every one his vine, and every one his fig-tree, and drink every one the water of his cistern; till I come and take you away into a land like your land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread-corn and vineyards (K. a land full of fine olive-trees and honey, and live and do not die, and hearken not to Hizkiyahu); that Hizkiyahu do not befool you (K. for he befools you), saying, Jehovah will deliver us! Have the gods of the nations delivered (K. really delivered) every one his land out of the hand of the king of Asshur? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? where the gods of Sepharvayim (K. adds, Hena and ' Ivah)0* and how much less Q3[9 K. *3) have they delivered that Samaria out of my hand? Who were they among all the gods of these (K. of the) lands, who delivered their land out of my hand? how much less will Jehovah deliver Jerusalem out of my hand!?" The chronicler also has this continuation of Rabshakeh's address in part (2 Chron. xxxii. 13-15), but he has fused into one the Assyrian self-praise uttered by Rabshakeh on his first and second mission. The encouragement of the people, by referring to the help of Jehovah (2 Chron. xxxii. 6-8), is placed by him before this first account is given by Isaiah, and forms a conclusion to the preparations for the contest with Asshur as there described. Rabshakeh now draws nearer to the wall, and harangues the people, fc^$n is construed here with a dative (to excite treacherous hopes); whereas in 2 Chron. xxxii. 15 it is written with an accusative. The reading i*P» is altered from "H*E in ver. 20, which is inserted still more frequently by the chronicler. The reading "VyrrriN with |Ji3n is incorrect; it would require jfij? (Ges. § 143, la). To make a berdkhdh with a person was equivalent to entering into a relation of blessing, i.e. into a state of mind in which each wished all prosperity to the other. This was probably a common phrase, though we only meet with it here. KJP, when applied to the besieged, is equivalent to surrendering {e.g. 1 Sam. xi. 3). If they did that, they should remain in quiet possession and enjoyment, until the Assyrian fetched them away (after the Egyptian campaign was over), and transported them to a land which he describes to them in the most enticing terms, in order to soften down the inevitable transportation. It is a question whether the expansion of this picture in the book of Kings is original or not; since njyi pjn in ver. 19 appears to be also tacked on here from Isa. xxxvii. 13 (see at this passage). On Hamath and Arpad (to the north of Haleb in northern Syria, and a different place from Arvad = Arad), see ch. x. 9. Sepharvayim (a dual form, the house of the Sepharvim, 2 Kings xvii. 31) is the Sipphara of Ptol. v. 18, 7, the southernmost city of Mesopotamia, on the left bank of the Euphrates; Pliny's Hipparenum on the Narraga, i.e. the canal, nfhar malka, the key to the irrigating or inundating works of Babylon, which were completed afterwards by Nebuchadnezzar (Plin. h, n. vi. 30); probably the same place as the sun-city, Sippara, in which Xisuthros concealed the sacred books before the great flood (see K. Midler's Fragmenta Historicorum Gr. ii. 501-2). J2 in ver. 18 has a warning meaning (as if it followed M7 YlDBfrl); and both *31 and ^ in vers. 19, 20, introduce an exclamatory clause when following a negative interrogatory sentence: "and that they should have saved," or u that Jehovah should save," equivalent to " how much less have they saved, or will He save" (Ewald, § 354, c; comp. *3"*)K, 2 Chron. xxxii. 15). Kabshakeh's words in vers. 18-20 are the same as those in Isa. x. 8-11. The manner in which he defies the gods of the heathen, of Samaria, and last of all of Jerusalem, corresponds to the prophecy there. It is the prophet himself who acts as historian here, and describes the fulfilment of the prophecy, though without therefore doing violence to his character as a prophet.
The effect of Kabshakeh's words. Vers. 21, 22. " But they held their peace (K. and they, the people, held their peace), and answered him not a word; for it was the kings commandment, saying, Ye shall not answer him. Then came Eliakim son of Hilkiyahu (K. Hilkiyah), the house-minister, and Shebna the chancellor, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hizkiyahu, with torn clothes, and told him the words of Rabshakeh." It is only a superficial observation that could commend the reading in Kings, " They, the people, held their peace," which Hitzig and Knobel prefer, but which Luzzatto very properly rejects. As the Assyrians wished to speak to the king himself (2 Kings xviii. 18), who sent the three to them as his representatives, the command to hear, and to make no reply, can only have applied to them (and they had already made the matter worse by the one remark which they had made concerning the language); and the reading V^rw in the text of Isaiah is the correct one. The three were silent, because the king had imposed the duty of silence upon them; and regarding themselves as dismissed, inasmuch as Kabshakeh had turned away from them to the people, they hastened to the king, rending their clothes, in despair and grief at the disgrace they had experienced.
The king and the deputation apply to Isaiah. Ch. xxxvii. 1-4. " And it came to pass, when king Hizkiyahu had heard, he rent his clothes, and wrapped himself in mourning linen, and went into the house of Jehovah. And sent Eliakim the houseminister, and Shebna (K. omits DN) the chancellor, and the eldest of the priests, wrapped in mourning linen, to Isaiah son of Amoz, the prophet (K. has what is inadmissible: the prophet son of Amoz). And they said to him, Thus saith Hizkiyahu, A day of affliction, and punishment, and blasphemy is this day; for children are come to the matrix, and there is no strength to bring them forth. Perhaps Jehovah thy God will hear the words (K. all the words) of Rabshakeh, with which the king of Asshur his lord has sent him to revile the living God; and Jehovah thy God will punish for the words which He hath heard, and thou wilt make intercession for the remnant that still exists." The distinguished embassy is a proof of the distinction of the prophet himself (Knobel). The character of the deputation accorded with its object, which was to obtain a consolatory word for the king and people. In the form of the instructions we recognise again the flowing style of Isaiah. nri3in? as a synonym of ">!?^, DiJ3, is used as in Hos. v. 9; nyw (from the kal Yty) according to ch. i. 4, v. 24, lii. 5, like nvx: (from the piel YW), Neh. ix. 18, 26 (reviling, i.e. reviling of God, or blasphemy). The figure of there not being sufficient strength to bring forth the child, is the same as in ch. lxvi. 9. ">?^? (from "OB>, syn. H?> Gen. xxxviii. 29) does not signify the actual birth (Luzzatto, punto di dover nascere), nor the delivering-stool (Targum), like mashber shel-chayydh, the delivering- stool of the midwife (Kelim xxiii. 4); but as the subject is the children, and not the mother, the matrix or mouth of the womb, as in Hos. xiii. 13, " He (Ephraim) is an unwise child; when it is time does he not stop in the children's passage" (mashber bdnlm), i.e. the point which a child must pass, not only with its head, but also with its shoulders and its whole body, for which the force of the pains is often not sufficient? The existing condition of the state resembled such unpromising birth-pains, which threatened both the mother and the fruit of the womb with death, because the matrix would not open to give birth to the child. TO like njn in ch. xi. 9. The timid inquiry, which hardly dared to hope, commences with 'ulai. The following future is continued in perfects, the force of which is determined by it: " and He (namely Jehovah, the Targum and Syriac) will punish for the wTords," or, as we point it, " there will punish for the words which He hath heard, Jehovah thy God (Jiokhidch, referring to a judicial decision, as in a general sense in ch. ii. 4 and xi. 4); and thou wilt lift up prayer" {i.e. begin to offer it, ch. xiv. 4). " He will hear," namely as judge and deliverer; " He hath heard," namely as the omnipresent One. The expression, u to revile the living God" (Ifchdreph 'JEldhim chai), sounds like a comparison of Rabshakeh to Goliath (1 Sam. xvii. 26, 36). The " existing remnant" was Jerusalem, which was not yet in the enemy's hand (compare ch. i. 8, 9). The deliverance of the remnant is a key-note of Isaiah's prophecies. But the prophecy would not be fulfilled, until the grace which fulfilled it had been met by repentance and faith. Hence Hezekiah's weak faith sues for the intercession of the prophet, whose personal relation to God is here set forth as a closer one than that of the king and priests.
Isaiah's reply. Vers. 5-7. " And the servants of king Hizkiyahu came to Isaiah. And Isaiah said to them (Ej"}\?K, K. &!??), Speak thus to your lord, Thus saith Jehovah, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of As shut: have blasphemed me I Behold, I will bring a spirit upon him, and he will hear a hearsay, and return to his land; and I cut him down with the sword in his own landr Luzzatto, without any necessity, takes V1»K*1 in ver. 3 in the modal sense of what they were to do (e dovevano dirgli):
they were to say this to him, but he anticipated them at once with the instructions given here. The fact, so far as the style is concerned, is rather this, that ver. 5, while pointing back, gives the ground for ver. 6: " and when they had come to him (saying this), he said to them." 'HJtt we render tt servants" (Knappen1) after Esth. ii. 2, vi. 3, 5; it is a more contemptuous expression than ^V. The riidch mentioned here as sent by God is a superior force of a spiritual kind, which influences both thought and conduct, as in such other connections as ch. xix. 14, xxviii. 6, xxix. 10 (Psychol, p. 295, Anm.).
The external occasion which determined the return of Sennacherib, as described in ch. xxxvii. 36, 37, was the fearful mortality that had taken place in his army. The shemudh (rumour, hearsay), however, was not the tidings of this catastrophe, but, as the continuation of the account in vers. 8, 9, clearly shows, the report of the advance of Tirhakah, which compelled Sennacherib to leave Palestine in consequence of this catastrophe. The prediction of his death is sufficiently special to be regarded by modern commentators, who will admit nothing but the most misty figures as prophecies, as a vaticinium post eventum. At the same time, the prediction of the event which would drive the Assyrian out of the land is intentionally couched in these general terms. The faith of the king, and of the inquirers generally, still needed to be tested and exercised. The time had not yet come for him to be rewarded by a clearer and fuller announcement of the judgment.
B. SECOND ATTEMPT OF THE ASSYRIANS TO FORCE THE SURRENDER OF JERUSALEM. ITS MIRACULOUS DELI- VERANCE.— CHAP. XXXVII. 8 SQQ.
Rabshakeh, who is mentioned alone in both texts as the leading person engaged, returns to Sennacherib, who is induced to make a second attempt to obtain possession of Jerusalem, as a position of great strength and decisive importance. Vers. 8, 9. " Rabshakeh thereupon returned, and found the king of
Asshur warring against Libnali: for he had heard that he had withdrawn from Lachish. And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, (K. Behold), he has come out to make war with thee; and heard, and sent (K. and repeated, and sent) messengers to Ilizkiyahu, saying" Tirhakah was cursorily referred to in ch. xviii. The twenty-fifth dynasty of Manetho contained three Ethiopian rulers: Sabakon, Sebichos (NiD = N)p? although, so far as we know, the Egyptian names begin with Sh), and Tarakos (Tarkos), Egypt. Taharka, or Heb. with the tone upon the penultimate, Tirhdqdh. The only one mentioned by Herodotus is Sabakon, to whom he attributes a reign of fifty years (ii. 139), i.e. as much as the whole three amount to, when taken in a round sum. If Sebichos is the biblical So\ to whom the lists attribute from twelve to fourteen years, it is perfectly conceivable that Tirhakah may have been reigning in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah. But if this took place, as Manetho affirms, 366 years before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, i.e. from 696 onwards (and the Apis-stele, No. 2037, as deciphered by Vic. de Rouge, Revue archeol. 1863, confirms it), it would be more easily reconcilable with the Assyrian chronology, which represents Sennacherib as reigning from 702-680 (Oppert and Rawlinson), than with the current biblical chronology, according to which Hezekiah's fourteenth year is certainly not much later than the year 714.1 It is worthy of remark also, that Tirhakah is not described as Pharaoh here, but as the king of Ethiopia (melekh Kush; see at ver. 36). Libnah, according to the Onom. a place in regione Eleutheropolitana, is probably the same as Tell es-Safieh (" hill of the pure " = of the white), to the north- west of Bet Gibrin, called Alba Specula {Blanche Garde) in the middle ages. The expression VOW (" and he heard "), which occurs twice in the text, points back to what is past, and also prepares the way for what follows: " having heard this, he sent," etc. At the same time it appears to have been altered from a^J.
The message. Vers. 10-13. " Thus shall ye say to Hizkiyahu king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Asshur. Behold, thou hast surely heard ivhat (K.
1 On the still prevailing uncertainty with regard to the synchronism, see Keil on Kings; and Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums. pp. 713-4.
that which) the kings of Asshwr have done to all lands, to lay the ban upon them; and thou, thou shouldst be delivered? I Have the gods of the nations, which my fathers destroyed, delivered them: Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the Bene- Eden, which are in Telassar? Where is (K. where is he) the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of ' Ir-Sepharvaim, Hena, and 'IvahV Although f$ is feminine, DniK (K. Dnfc), like DOs"innp? points back to the lands (in accordance with the want of any thoroughly developed distinction of the genders in Hebrew); likewise "IKW quas pessumdederunt. There is historical importance in the fact, that here Sennacherib attributes to his fathers (Sargon and the previous kings of the Derketade dynasty which he had overthrown) what Rabshakeh on the occasion of the first mission had imputed to Sennacherib himself. On Gozan, see vol. i. p. 51. It is no doubt identical with the Zuzan of the Arabian geographers, which is described as a district of outer Armenia, situated on the Chabur, e.g. in the Merasid. " The Chabur is the Chabur of el-Hasaniye, a district of Mosul, to the east of the Tigris; it comes down from the mountains of the land of Zuzan, flows through a broad and thickly populated country in the north of Mosul, which is called outer Armenia, and empties itself into the Tigris." Ptolemy, on the other hand (v. 18, 14), is acquainted with a Mesopotamian Gauzanitis; and, looking upon northern Mesopotamia as the border land of Armenia, he says, /care^ec 8e tt}? xjoopas tcl fiev Trpbs rfj 'Apfjuevla r) 5 AvOefiovaia (not far from Edessa) vcj) rjv r/ XaX/ciTts, vtto Be TavTrjv r) TavtpLvTjri*;, possibly the district of Gulzan, in which Nisibin, the ancient Nisibis, still stands.1 For Hdrdn (Syr. Horon; Joseph. Charran of Mesopotamia), the present Harran, not far from Charmelik, see Genesis, p. 327. The Harran in the Guta of Damascus (on the southern arm of the Harus), which Beke has recently identified with it, is not connected with it in any way. Retseph is the Rhesapha of Ptol. v. 18, 6, below Thapsacus, the present Rusafa in the Euphrates- valley of ez-Zor, between the Euphrates and Tadmur (Palmyra; see Robinson, Pal.). Telassar, with which the Targum (ii. iii.) and Syr. confound the Ellasar of Gen. xiv. 1, i.e. Artemita (Artamita), is not the Thelseo? of the Itin. Antonini and of the Notitia 1 See Oppert, Expedition, i. 60.
digmtahun, — in which case the Bene-Eden might be the tribe of Bet Gtnn (Bettegcne) on the southern slope of Lebanon (i.e. the 'Eden of Ccelesyria, Amos i. 5; the Paradeisos of Ptol. v. 15, 20; Paradisus, Plin. v. 19),— but the Thelser of the Tab. Peuting.y on the eastern side of the Tigris; and Ben8 'Eden is the tribe of the 'Eden mentioned by Ezekiel (xxvii. 23) after Haran and Ctesiphon. Consequently the enumeration of the warlike deeds describes a curve, which passes in a northwesterly direction through Hamath and Arpad, and then returns in Sepharvaim to the border of southern Mesopotamia and Babylonia. ' Ir-Sepharvaim is like 'Ir-Nachash, fIr-Shemesh, etc. The legends connect the name with the sacred books. The form of the name is inexplicable; but the name itself probably signifies the double shore (after the Aramaean), as the city, which was the southernmost of the leading places of Mesopotamia, was situated on the Euphrates. The words njjn yjn, if not taken as proper names, would signify, u he has taken away, and overthrown;" but in that case we should expect W) qwn or Wjn *nSW. They are really the names of cities which it is no longer possible to trace. Hena is hardly the well-known Avatho on the Euphrates, as Gesenius, v. Niebuhr, and others suppose; and 'Ivah, the seat of the Avvlm (2 Kings xvii. 31), agrees still less, so far as the sound of the word is concerned, with u the province of Hebeh (? Hebeb: Hitter, Erdk. xi 707), situated between Anah and the Chabur on the Euphrates," with which v. Niebuhr combines it.1
This intimidating message, which declared the God of Israel to be utterly powerless, was conveyed by the messengers of Sennacherib in the form of a letter. Vers. 14, 15. " And Hizkiyahu took the letter out of the hand of the messengers, and read it (K. read them), and went up to the house of Jehovah; and Hizkiyahu spread it before Jehovah?' Sephdrim (the- sheets) is equivalent to the letter (not a letter in duplo), like literce (cf. grammata). *n*?lP?l (changed by K. into D—) is construed according to the singular idea. Thenius regards this spreading out of the letter as a naivete; and Gesenius even goes so far as to speak of the praying machines of the Buddhists. But it was simply prayer without words — an act of prayer, which afterwards passed into vocal prayer. Vers. 16-20. " And Hizkiyahu prayed to (K. before) 1 For other combinations of equal value, see Oppert, Expedition, i. 220. VOL. II. G
Jehovah, saying (K. and said), Jehovah of hosts (K. omits ts'bhd- 'oth), God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim, Thou, yea Thou alone, art God of all the kingdoms of the earth; Thou, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth. Incline Tliine ear, Jehovah, and hear (WW, various reading in both texts VE^)) • Open Tliine eyes (K. with Yod of the plural), Jehovah, and see; and hear the (K. all the) words of Sennacherib, which he hath sent (K. with which he hath sent him, i.e. Rabshakeh) to despise the living God! Truly, 0 Jehovah, the kings of Asshur have laid waste all lands, and their land (K. the nations and their land), and have put (ve7idthon, K. vendthenu) their gods into the fire: for they were not gods, only the work of mens hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them. And now, Jehovah our God, help us (K. adds pray) out of his hand, and all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou Jehovah (K. Jehovah Elohim) art it alone" On C?")3 (no doubt the same word as typvires, though not fabulous beings like these, but a symbolical representation of heavenly beings), see my Genesis, p. 626; and on yoshebh hak- ¥rubhlm (enthroned on the cherubim), see at Ps. xviii. 11 and lxxx. 2. sin in KVnWIjI is an emphatic repetition, that is to say a strengthening, of the subject, like ch. xliii. 25, li. 12, 2 Sam. vii. 28, Jer. xlix. 12, Ps. xliv. 5, Neh. ix. 6, 7, Ezra v. 11: tu ille (not tu es ille, Ges. § 121, 2) = tu, nullus alius. Such passages as ch..di. 4, where Kin is the predicate, do not belong here. ^V is not a singular (like 'W in Ps. xxxii. 8, where the LXX. have *??)$ but a defective plural, as we should expect after pdqach. On the other hand, the reading shHdcho (" hath sent him "), which cannot refer to debhdrlm (the words), but only to the person bringing the written message, is to be rejected. Moreover, Knobel cannot help giving up his preference for the reading vendthon (compare Gen. xli. 43; Ges. § 131, 4a); just as, on the other hand, we cannot help regarding the reading D¥"}K"TIN) ni¥"jsn~73~rix as a mistake, when compared with the reading of the book of Kings. Abravanel explains the passage thus: " The Assyrians have devastated the lands, and their own land" (cf. ch. xiv. 20), of which we may find examples in the list of victories given above; compare also Beth-Arbel in Hos. x. 14, if this is Irbil on the Tigris, from which Alexander's second battle in Persia, which was really fought at Gaugamela, derived its name. But how does this tally with the fact that they threw the gods of these lands — that is to say, of their own land also (for Bn\i7N could not possibly refer to rmntfn, to the exclusion of D¥"in) — into the fire f If we read haggoylm (the nations), we get rid both of the reference to their own land, which is certainly purposeless here, and also of the otherwise inevitable conclusion that they burned the gods of their own country. The reading rvi¥"iNn appears to have arisen from the fact, that after the verb snnn the lands appeared to follow more naturally as the object, than the tribes themselves (compare, however, ch. lx. 12). The train of thought is the following: The Assyrians have certainly destroyed nations and their gods, because these gods were nothing but the works of men: do Thou then help us, O Jehovah, that the world may see that Thou alone art it, viz. God ('Elohim, as K. adds, although, according to the accents, Jehovah Elohim are connected together, as in the books of Samuel and Chronicles, and very frequently in the mouth of David: see Symbolce in Psalmos, pp. 15, 16).
The prophet's reply. Vers. 21, 22a. u And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hizkiyahu, saying. Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me concerning Sennacherib the king of Asshur (K. adds, / have heard): this is the utterance which Jehovah utters concerning him? He sent, i.e. sent a message, viz. by one of his disciples (limmudlm, ch. viii. 16). According to the text of Isaiah, "1B>K would commence the protasis to ^^jn ^1 (as for that which — this is the utterance); or, as the Vav of the apodosis is wanting, it might introduce relative clauses to what precedes (" I, to whom:" Ges. § 123, 1, Anm. 1). But both of these are very doubtful. We cannot dispense with **»$?# (I have heard), which is given by both the LXX. and Syr. in the text of Isaiah, as well as that of Kings.
The prophecy of Isaiah which follows here, is in all respects one of the most magnificent that we meet with. It proceeds with strophe-like strides on the cothurnus of the Deborah style: Vers. 22b, 23. " The virgin daughter of Zion despiseth thee, laugheth thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem shaketh her head after thee. Whom hast thou reviled and blasphemed, and over whom hast thou spoken loftily, that thou hast lifted up thine eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel" The predicate is written at the head, in ver. 22b, in the masculine, i.e. without any precise definition; since HT2 is a verb n"i>, and neither the participle nor the third pers. fem. of fta. Zion is called a virgin, with reference to the shame with which it was threatened though without success (ch. xxiii. 12); bHhulath bath are subordinate appositions, instead of co-ordinate. With a contented and heightened self-consciousness, she shakes her head behind him as he retreats with shame, saying by her attitude, as she moves her head backwards and forwards, that it must come to this, and could not be otherwise (Jer. xviii. 16; Lam. ii. 15, 16). The question in ver. 23 reaches as far as T.^V, although, according to the accents, ver. 23 is an affirmative clause: " and thou turnest thine eyes on high against the Holy- One of Israel " (Hitzig, Ewald, Drechsler, and Keil). The question is put for the purpose of saying to Asshur, that He at whom they scoff is the God of Israel, whose pure holiness breaks out into a consuming fire against all by whom it is dishonoured. The fut. cons, Kfrni is essentially the same as in ch. Ii. 12, 13, and Di"io is the same as in ch. xl. 26.
Second turn, ver. 24. " By thy servants (K. thy messengers) hast thou reviled the Lord, in that thou say est, With the multitude (K. chethib 2212) of my chariots have I climbed the height of the mountains, the inner side of Lebanon; and I shall fell the lofty growth of its cedars, the choice (mibhchar, K. mibhchor) of its cypresses: and I shall penetrate (K. and will penetrate) to the height (K. the halting-place) of its uttermost border, the grove of its orchard." The other text appears, for the most part, the preferable one here. Whether maV cikhekhd (thy messengers, according to ch. ix. 14) or ' abhddekhd (thy servants, viz. Rabshakeh, Tartan, and Rabsaris) is to be preferred, may be left undecided; also whether ^221 33*u is an error or a superlative expression, " with chariots of my chariots," i.e. my countless chariots; also, thirdly, whether Isaiah wrote mibhchor. He uses mistor in ch. iv. 6 for a special reason; but such obscure forms befit in other instances the book of Kings, with its colouring of northern Palestine; and we also meet with mibhchor in 2 Kings iii. 19, in the strongly Aramaic first series of histories of Elisha. On the other hand, r&j? \VD is certainly the original reading, in contrast with top Drip. It is important, as bearing upon the interpretation of the passage, that both texts have rro&O, not m3KJ, and that the other text confirms this pointing, inasmuch as it has fl^fcO instead of K13fe0. The Lebanon here, if not purely emblematical (as in Jer. xxii. 6 = the royal city Jerusalem; Ezek. xvii. 3 = Judah-Jerusalem), has at any rate a synecdochical meaning (cf. xiv. 8), signifying the land of Lebanon, i.e. the land of Israel, into which he had forced a way, and all the fortresses and great men of which he would destroy. He would not rest till Jerusalem, the most renowned height of the land of Lebanon, was lying at his feet. Thenius is quite right in regarding the "resting-place of the utmost border" and " the pleasure-garden wood" as containing allusions to the holy city and its royal citadel (compare the allegory in ch. v. vol. i. pp. 164-5).
Third turn, ver. 25. " /, 1 have digged and drunk (K. foreign) waters, and will make d?y with the sole of my feet all the Nile-arms (*lfr, K. nttf) of Matsor? If we take *n\fy in ver. 24 as a perfect of certainty, ver. 25a would refer to the overcoming of the difficulties connected with the barren sandy steppe on the way to Egypt (viz. et-Tih); but the perfects stand out against the following futures, as statements of what was actually past. Thus, in places where there were no waters at all, and it might have been supposed that his army would inevitably perish, there he had dug them (qur, from which mdqor is derived, fodere; not scaturire, as Luzzatto supposes), and had drunk up these waters, which had been called up, as if by magic, upon foreign soil; and in places where there were waters, as in Egypt (mdtsor is used in Isaiah and Micah for mitsrayimy with a play upon the appellative meaning of the word: an enclosing fence, a fortifying girdle: see Ps. xxxi. 22), the Nile-arms and canals of which appeared to bar all farther progress, it was an easy thing for him to set at nought all these opposing hindrances. The Nile, with its many arms, was nothing but a puddle to him, which he trampled out with his feet.
And yet what he was able to do was not the result of his own power, but of the counsel of God, which he subserved. Fourth turn, vers. 26, 27. "Hast thou not heard? I have done it long ago, from (K. fmin, since) the days of ancient time have I formed it, and now brought it to pass (iTfl&orij K. WMPjn): that thou shouldst lay waste fortified cities into desolate stone heaps; and their inhabitants, powerless, were terrified, and viere put to shame (*BO), K. *BW): became herb of the field and green of the turf, herb of the house-tops, and a corn-field (pn*}Vn7 K. and blighted corn) before the blades." Umerdchoq (from afar) is not to be connected with the preceding words, but according to the parallel with those which follow. The historical reality, in this instance the Assyrian judgment upon the nations, had had from all eternity an ideal reality in God (see at ch. xxii. 11). The words are addressed to the Assyrian; and as his instrumentality formed the essential part of the divine purpose, *W^ does not mean " there should," but " thou shouldest," e/ieXXe? £%r}pefxo)aai (cf. ch. xliv. 14, 15, and Hab. i. 17). K. has rwn? instead of rnNK>n? (though not as chethib, in which case it would have to be pointed rrit^np), a singularly syncopated hiphil (for niKKv). The point of comparison in the four figures is the facility with which they can be crushed. The nations in the presence of the Assyrian became, as it were, weak, delicate grasses, with roots only rooted in the surface, or like a cornfield with the stalk not yet formed (shedemdh, ch. xvi. 8), which could easily be rooted up, and did not need to be cut down with the sickle. This idea is expressed still more strikingly in Kings, "like corn blighted (shedephdh, compare shidddphon, corn-blight) before the shooting up of the stalk;" the Assyrian being regarded as a parching east wind, which destroys the seed before the stalk is formed.
Asshur is Jehovah's chosen instrument while thus casting down the nations, which are " short-handed against him," i.e. incapable of resisting him. But Jehovah afterwards places this lion under firm restraint; and before it has reached the goal set before it, He leads it back into its own land, as if with a ring through its nostril. Fifth turn, vers. 28, 29. " And thy sitting down, and thy going out, and thy entering in, I know; and thy heating thyself against me. On account of thy heating thyself against me, and because thy self-confidence has risen up into mine ears, I put my ring into thy nose, and my muzzle into thy lips, and lead thee back by the way by which thou hast come." Sitting down and rising up (Ps. cxxxix. 2), going out and coming in (Ps. cxxi. 8), denote every kind of human activity. All the thoughts and actions, the purposes and undertakings of Sennacherib, more especially with regard to the people of Jehovah, were under divine control. \V\ is followed by the infinitive, which is then continued in the finite verb, just as in ch. xxx. 12. 1J3N0 (another reading, V?SV) is used as a substantive, and denotes the Assyrians' complacent and scornful self-confidence (Ps. cxxiii. 4), and has nothing to do with |ta$ (Targum, Abulw., Rashi, Kimchi, Rosenmiiller, Luzzatto). The figure of the leading away with a nose-ring (chachl with a latent dagesh, Kn to prick, hence chodch, Arab, chock, chocha, a narrow slit, literally means a cut or aperture) is repeated in Ezek. xxxviii. 4. Like a wild beast that had been subdued by force, the Assyrian would have to return home, without having achieved his purpose with Judah (or with Egypt).
The prophet now turns to Hezekiah. Ver. 30. " And let this be a sign to thee. Men eat this year what is self-sown; and in the second year what springs from the roots (shdchls, K. sdchlsh); and in the third year they sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat (chethib TDK) their fruit" According to Thenius, hasshdndh (this year) signifies the first year after Sennacherib's invasion, hasshdndh hasshenlth (the second year) the current year in which the words were uttered by Hezekiah, hasshdndh hasslflishith (the third year) the year that was coming in which the land would be cleared of the enemy. But understood in this way, the whole would have been no sign, but simply a prophecy that the condition of things during the two years was to come to an end in the third. It would only be a " sign " if the second year was also still in the future. By hasshdndh, therefore, we are to understand what the expression itself requires (cf. ch. xxix. 1, xxxii. 10), namely the current year, in which the people had been hindered from cultivating their fields by the Assyrian who was then in the land, and therefore had been thrown back upon the sdphldch, i.e. the after growth (avro/xara, LXX., the self-sown), or crop which had sprung up from the fallen grains of the previous harvest (from sdphach, adjicere, see at Hab. ii. 15; or, according to others, effundere, see vol. i. 165). It was autumn at the time when Isaiah gave this sign (ch. xxxiii. 9), and the current civil year was reckoned from one autumnal equinox to the other, as, for example, in Ex. xxiii. 16, where the feast of tabernacles or harvest festival is said to fall at the close of the year; so that if the fourteenth year of Hezekiah was the year 714, the current year would extend from Tishri 714 to Tishri 713. But if in the next year also,
713-712, there was no sowing and reaping, but the people were to eat shdchls, i.e, that which grew of itself (aurocpvisj Aq., Theod.), and that very sparingly, not from the grains shed at the previous harvest, but from the roots of the wheat, we need not assume that this year, 713-712, happened to be a sabbatical year, in which the law required all agricultural pursuits to be suspended.1 It is very improbable in itself that the prophet should have included a circumstance connected with the calendar in his " sign;" and, moreover, according to the existing chronological data, the year 715 had been a sabbatical year (see Hitzig). It is rather presupposed, either that the land would be too thoroughly devastated and desolate for the fields to be cultivated and sown (Keil); or, as we can hardly imagine such an impossibility as this, if we picture to ourselves the existing situation and the kind of agriculture common in Palestine, that the Assyrian would carry out his expedition to Egypt in this particular year (713-12), and returning through Judah, would again prevent the sowing of the corn (Hitzig, Knobel). But in the third year, that is to say the year 712-11, freedom and peace would prevail again, and there would be nothing more to hinder the cultivation of the fields or vineyards. If this should be the course of events during the three years, it would be a sign to king Hezekiah that the fate of the Assyrian would be no other than that predicted. The year 712-11 would be the peremptory limit appointed him, and the year of deliverance.
Seventh turn, vers. 31, 32. "And that which is escaped of the house of Judah, that which remains will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. For from Jerusalem ivill a remnant go forth, and a fugitive from Mount Zion; the zeal of Jehovah of hosts (K. chethib omits ts€bhd'oth) will carry this out" The agricultural prospect of the third year shapes itself here into a figurative representation of the fate of Judah. Isaiah's watchword, " a remnant shall return," is now fulfilled; Jerusalem has been spared, and becomes the source of national rejuvenation. You hear the echo of ch. v. 24, ix. 6, and also of ch. xxvii. 6. The word tseb!moth is wanting in Kings, here as well as in ver. 17; in fact, this
1 There certainly is no necessity for a sabbatical year followed by a year of jubilee, to enable us to explain the " sign," as Hofmann supposes.
divine name is, as a rule, very rare in the book of Kings, where it only occurs in the first series of accounts of Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 15, xix. 10, 14; cf. 2 Kings iii. 14).
The prophecy concerning the protection of Jerusalem becomes more definite in the last turn than it ever has been before. Vers. 33-35. " Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning the king of Asshur, He will not enter into this city, nor shoot off an arrow there; nor do they assault it with a shield, nor cast up earthworks against it. By the way by which he came (K. will come) will he return; and he will not enter into this city, saith Jehovah. And I shield this city (by, K. btt), to help it, for mine own sake, and for the sake of David my servant" According to Hitzig, this conclusion belongs to the later reporter, on account of its " suspiciously definite character." Knobel, on the other hand, sees no reason for disputing the authorship of Isaiah, inasmuch as in all probability the pestilence had already set in (ch. xxxiii. 24), and threatened to cripple the Assyrian army very considerably, so that the prophet began to hope that Sennacherib might now be unable to stand against the powerful Ethiopian king. To us, however, the words " Thus saith Jehovah " are something more than a flower of speech; and we hear the language of a man exalted above the standard of the natural man, and one who has been taken, as Amos says (iii. 7), by God, the moulder of history into " His secret." Here also we see the prophecy at its height, towards which it has been ascending from ch. vi. 13 and x. 33, 34 onwards, through the midst of obstacles accumulated by the moral condition of the nation, but with the same goal invariably in view. The Assyrian will not storm Jerusalem; there will not even be preparations for a siege. The verb qiddem is construed with a double accusative, as in Ps. xxi. 4; solHdh refers to the earthworks thrown up for besieging purposes, as in Jer. xxxii. 24. The reading K3J instead of K3 has arisen in consequence of the eye having wandered to the following fcO\ The promise in ver 35a sounds like ch. xxxi. 5. The reading 7K for by is incorrect. One motive assigned (" for my servant David's sake ") is the same as in 1 Kings xv. 4, etc.; and the other (" for mine own sake") the same as in ch. xliii. 25, xlviii. 11 (compare, however, ch. lv. 3 also). On the one hand, it is in accordance with the honour and faithfulness of Jehovah, that Jerusalem is delivered; and, on the other hand, it is the worth of David, or, what is the same thing, the love of Jehovah turned towards him, of which Jerusalem reaps the advantage.
To this culminating prophecy there is now appended an account of the catastrophe itself. Vers. 36-38. " Tlien (K. And it came to pass that night, that) the angel of Jehovah went forth and smote (vayyakkeh, K. vayyakh) in the camp of Asshur a hundred and eighty-jive thousand; and when men rose up in the morning, behold, they were all lifeless corpses. Then Sennacherib king of Asshur decamped, and went forth and returned, and settled down in Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the temple of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons (K. chethib omits ' his sons') smote him with the sword; and when they escaped to the land of Ararat, JEsarhaddon ascended the throne in his stead." The first pair of histories closes here with a short account of the result of the Assyrian drama, in which Isaiah's prophecies were most gloriously fulfilled: not only the prophecies immediately preceding, but all the prophecies of the Assyrian era since the time of Ahaz, which pointed to the destruction of the Assyrian forces (e.g. x. 33-4), and to the flight and death of the king of Assyria (ch. xxxi. 9, xxx. 33). If we look still further forward to the second pair of histories (ch. xxxviii. xxxix.), we see from ch. xxxviii. 6 that it is only by anticipation that the account of these closing events is finished here; for the third history carries us back to the period before the final catastrophe. We may account in some measure for the haste and brevity of this closing historical fragment, from the prophet's evident wish to finish up the history of the Assyrian complications, and the prophecy bearing upon it. But if we look back, there is a gap between ch. xxxvii. 36 and the event narrated here. For, according to ver. 30, there was to be an entire year of trouble between the prophecy and the fulfilment, during which the cultivation of the land would be suspended. What took place during that year? There can be no doubt that Sennacherib was engaged with Egypt; for (1) when he made his second attempt to get Jerusalem into his powrer, he had received intelligence of the advance of Tirhakah, and therefore had withdrawn the centre of his army from Lachish, and encamped before Libnah (ch. xxxvii. 8, 9); (2) according to Josephus
(Ant. x. 1, 4), there was a passage of Berosus, which has been lost, in which he stated that Sennacherib " made an expedition against all Asia and Egypt;" (3) Herodotus relates (ii. 141) that, after Anysis the blind, who lost his throne for fifty years in consequence of an invasion of Egypt by the Ethiopians under Sabakoa, but who recovered it again, Sethon the priest of Hephaestus ascended the throne. The priestly caste was so oppressed by him, that when Sanacharibos, the king of the Arabians and Assyrians, led a great army against Egypt, they refused to perform their priestly functions. But the priestking went into the temple to pray, and his God promised to help him. He experienced the fulfilment of this prophecy before Pelusium, where the invasion was to take place, and where he awaited the foe with such as continued true to him. "Immediately after the arrival of Sanacharibos, an army of field-mice swarmed throughout the camp of the foe, and devoured their quivers, bows, and shield-straps, so that when morning came on they had to flee without arms, and lost many men in consequence. This is the origin of trie stone of Sethon in the temple of Hephaestus (at Memphis), which is standing there still, with a mouse in one hand, and with this inscription: Whosoever looks at me, let him fear the gods!" This SeOa)? (possibly the Zet whose name occurs in the lists at the close of the twenty-third dynasty, and therefore in the wrong place) is to be regarded as one of the Saitic princes of the twentysixth dynasty, who seem to have ruled in Lower Egypt contemporaneously with the Ethiopians1 (as, in fact, is stated in a passage of the Armenian Eusebius, jEthiopas et Saitas regnasse aiunt eodem tempore), until they succeeded at length in ridding themselves of the hateful supremacy. Herodotus evidently depended in this instance upon the hearsay of Lower Egypt, which transferred the central point of the Assyrian history to their own native princely house. The question,
1 A seal of Pharaoh Sdbakon has been found among the ruins of the palace of Kuyunjik. The colossal image of Tarakos is found among the bas-reliefs of Medinet-Habu. He is holding firmly a number of Asiatic prisoners by the hair of their head, and threatening them with a club. There are several other stately monuments in imitation of the Egyptian style in the ruins of Nepata, the northern capital of the Meroitic state, which belong to him (Lepsius, Denkmaler, p. 10 of the programme).
whether the disarming of the Assyrian army in front of Pelusium merely rested upon a legendary interpretation of the mouse in Sethon's hand,1 which may possibly have been originally intended as a symbol of destruction; or whether it was really founded upon an actual occurrence which was exaggerated in the legend,2 may be left undecided. But it is a real insult to Isaiah, when Thenius and G. Rawlinson place the scene of ver. 36 at Pelusium, and thus give the preference to Herodotus. Has not Isaiah up to this point constantly prophesied that the power of Asshur was to be broken in the holy mountain land of Jehovah (ch. xiv. 25), that the Lebanon forest of the Assyrian army would break to pieces before Jerusalem (ch. x. 32-34), and that there the Assyrian camp would become the booty of the inhabitants of the city, and that without a conflict? And is not the catastrophe that would befal Assyria described in ch. xviii. as an act of Jehovah, which would determine the Ethiopians to do homage to God who was enthroned upon Zion? We need neither cite 2 Chron. xxxii. 21 nor Ps. lxxvi. (LXX. &>8r) 7rpb$ tov 'Aacrvpiov), according to which the weapons of Asshur break to pieces upon Jerusalem; Isaiah's prophecies are quite sufficient to prove, that to force this Pelusiac disaster3 into ver. 36 is a most thoughtless concession to Herodotus. The final catastrophe occurred before Jerusalem, and the account in Herodotus gives us no certain information even as to the issue of the Egyptian campaign, which took place in the intervening year. Such a gap as the one which occurs before ver. 36 is not without analogy in the historical writings of the Bible; see, for example, Num. xx. 1, where an abrupt leap is made over the thirty-seven years of the wanderings in the desert. The abruptness is not affected by the addition of the clause in the book of Kings, " It came to pass that night." For, in the face of the "sign" mentioned in ver. 30, this cannot mean " in that very night " (viz. the night following the answer given by Isaiah); but (un-
1 This Sethos monument has not yet been discovered (Brugsch, Reiseberichte, p. 79). The temple of Phta was on the south side of Memphis; the site is marked by the ruins at Mitrahenni.
2 The inhabitants of Troas worshipped mice, " because they gnawed the strings of the enemies' bows" (see Wesseliug on II. i. 39).
less it is a careless interpolation) it must refer to vers. 33, 34, and mean ilia node, viz. the night in which the Assyrian had encamped before Jerusalem. The account before us reads just like that of the slaying of the first-born in Egypt (Ex. xii. 12, xi. 4). The plague of Egypt is marked as a pestilence by the use of the word ndgaph in connection with hikhdh in Ex. xii. 23, 13 (compare Amos iv. 10, where it seems to be alluded to under the name 131)); and in the case before us also we cannot think of anything else than a divine judgment of this kind, which even to the present day defies all attempts at an setiological solution, and which is described in 2 Sam. xxiv. as effected through the medium of angels, just as it is here. Moreover, the concise brevity of the narrative leaves it quite open to assume, as Hensler and others do, that the ravages of the pestilence in the Assyrian army, which carried off thousands in the night (Ps. xci. 6), even to the number of 185,000, may have continued for a considerable time.1 The main thing is the fact that the prophecy in ch. xxxi. 8 was actually fulfilled. According to Josephus (A?it. x. 1, 5), when Sennacherib returned from his unsuccessful Egyptian expedition, he found the detachment of his army, which he had left behind in Palestine, in front of Jerusalem, where a pestilential disease sent by God was making great havoc among the soldiers, and that on the very first night of the siege. The three verses, " he broke up, and went away, and returned home," depict the hurried character of the retreat, like " abiit excessit evasit erupit" (Cic. ii. Catil. init.). The form of the sentence in ver. 38 places Sennacherib's act of worship and the murderous act of his sons side by side, as though they had occurred simultaneously. The connection would be somewhat different if the reading had been *ns*1 (cf. Ewald, § 341, a). Nisroch apparently signifies the eagle-like, or hawk-like (from nisr, neslier), possibly like 'Arioch from 'tfrz. The LXX. transcribe it vaaapa^ A acrapa^, K acrapatc (K i<j6pa% where B has fieaepa^), and explorers of the monuments imagined at one time that they had discovered this god as
1 The pestilence in Mailand in 1629 carried off, according to Tadino, 160,000 men; that in Vienna, in 1679, 122,849; that in Moscow, at the end of the last century, according to Martens, 670,000; but this was during the whole time that the ravages of the pestilence lasted.
Asarak;1 but they have more recently retracted this, although there really is a hawk-headed figure among the images of the Assyrian deities or genii.2 The name has nothing to do with that of the supreme Assyrian deity, Asur, Asshur. A better derivation of Nisroch would be from TIP, T!^, ™', and this is confirmed by Oppert, who has discovered among the inscriptions in the harem of Khorsabad a prayer of Sargon to Nisroch, who appears there, like the Hymen of Greece, as the patron of marriage, and therefore as a " uniter."3 The name yAdrammelekh (a god in 2 Kings xvii. 31) signifies, as wre now know, "gloriosus (^addir) est rex;" and Sharetser (for which we should expect to find Saretser\ dominator tuebitur. The Armenian form of the latter name (in Moses Choren. i. 23), San-asar (by the side of Adramel, who is also called Arcamozan), probably yields the original sense of u Lunus (the moon-god Sin) tuebitur" Polyhistorus (in Euseb. chron. arm. p. 19), on the authority of Berosus, mentions only the former, Ardumuzan, as the murderer, and gives eighteen years as the length of Sennacherib's reign. The murder did not take place immediately after his return, as Josephus says (Ant. x. 1, 5; cf. Tobit i. 21-25, Vulg.); and the expression used by Isaiah, he " dwelt (settled dowm) in Nineveh," suggests the idea of a considerable interval. This interval embraced the suppression of the rebellion in Babylon, where Sennacherib made his son Asordan king, and the campaign in Cilicia (both from Polyhistorus),4 and also, according to the monuments, wars both by sea and land with Susiana, which supported the Babylonian thirst for independence. The Asordan of Polyhistorus is Esar-haddon (also written without the makJceph, Esarhaddo?i), which is generally supposed to be the Assyrian form of p^rifcT'WK, Assur fratrem dedit. It is so difficult to make the chronology tally here, that Oppert, on Isa. xxxvi. 1, proposes to alter the fourteenth year into the twenty-ninth, and Rawlinson would alter it into the twenty-seventh.5 They both of them assign to king
Sargon a reign of seventeen (eighteen) years, and to Sennacherib (in opposition to Polyhistorus) a reign of twenty-three (twenty- four) years; and they both agree in giving. 680 as the year of Sennacherib's death. This brings us down below the first decade of Manasseh's reign, and would require a different author from Isaiah for vers. 37, 38. But the accounts given by Polyhistorus, Abydenus, and the astronomical canon, however we may reconcile them among themselves, do not extend the reign of Sennacherib beyond 693.1 It is true that even then Isaiah would have been at least about ninety years old. But the tradition which represents him as dying a martyr's death in the reign of Manasseh, does really assign him a most unusual old age. Nevertheless, vers. 37, 38 may possibly have been added by a later hand. The two parricides fled to #the " land of Ararat," i.e. to Central Armenia. The Armenian history describes them as the founders of the tribes of the Sassunians and Arzerunians. From the princely house of the latter, among whom the name of Sennacherib was a very common one, sprang Leo the Armenian, whom Genesios describes as of Assyrio- Armenian blood. If this were the case, there would be no less than ten Byzantine emperors who were descendants of Sennacherib, and consequently it would not be till a very late period that the prophecy of Nahum was fulfilled.2
There is nothing to surprise us in the fact that we are carried back to the time when Jerusalem was still threatened by the Assyrian, since the closing verses of ch. xxxvii. merely
2 Duncker, on the contrary (p. 709), speaks of the parricides as falling very shortly afterwards by their brother's hand, and overlooks the Armenian tradition (cf. Rawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 465), which transfers the flight of the two, who were to have been sacrificed, as is reported by their own father, to the year of the world 4494, i.e. B.C. 705 (see the historical survey of Prince Hubbof in the Miscellaneous Translations, vol. ii. 1834). The Armenian historian Thomas (at the end of the ninth century) expressly states that he himself had sprung from the Arzerunians, and therefore from Sennacherib; and for this reason his historical work is chiefly devoted to Assyrian affairs (see Aucher on Euseb. chron. i. p. xv).
contain an anticipatory announcement, introduced for the purpose of completing the picture of the last Assyrian troubles, by adding the fulfilment of Isaiah's prediction of their termination. It is within this period, and indeed in the year of the Assyrian invasion (ch. xxxvi. 1), since Hezekiah reigned twenty-nine years, and fifteen of these are promised here, that the event described by Isaiah falls, — an event not merely of private interest, but one of importance in connection with the history of the nation also. — Vers. 1-3. " In those days Hizhiyahu became dangerously ill. And Isaiah son of Amoz, the prophet, came to him, and said to him, Thus saith Jehovah, Set thine house in order: for thou wilt die, and not recover. Then Hizhiyahu turned (K. om.) his face to the wall, and prayed to Jehovah, and said (K. saying), 0 Jehovah, remember this, I pray, that I have walked before thee in truth, and with the whole heart, and have done what was good in Thine eyes I And Hizhiyahu wept with loud iveeping." " Give command to thy house " (?, cf.?$, 2 Sam. xvii. 23) is equivalent to, " Make known thy last will to thy family " (compare the rabbinical tsavvadh, the last will and testament); for though tsivvdh is generally construed with the accusative of the person, it is also construed with Tamed (e.g. Ex. i. 22; cf. /£, Ex. xvi. 34). nvi in such a connection as this signifies to revive or recover. The announcement of his death is unconditional and absolute. As Vitringa observes, " the condition was not expressed, because God would draw it from him as a voluntary act." The sick man turned his face towards the wall (VJB 2pn? hence the usual fut. cons. 2D_S], as in 1 Kings xxi. 4, 8, 14), to retire into himself and to God. The supplicatory H35J (here, as in Ps. cxvi. 4, 16, and in all six times, with n) always has the principal tone upon the last syllable before Hirr = tfwj (Neh. i. 11). The metheg has sometimes passed into a conjunctive accent (e.g. Gen. 1. 17, Ex. xxxii. 31). "I'^N riK does not signify that which, but this, that, as in Deut. ix. 7, 2 Kings viii. 12, etc. " In truth," i.e. without wavering or hypocrisy. D?B> X>3? with a complete or whole heart, as in 1 Kings viii. 61, etc. He wept aloud, because it was a dreadful thins to him to have to die without an heir to the throne, in the full strength of his manhood (in the thirty -ninth year of his age), and with the nation in so unsettled a state. The prospect is now mercifully changed. Vers. 4-6. u And it came to pass (K. Isaiah was not yet out of the inner city; keri "ivn, the forecourt, and) the word of Jehovah came to Isaiah (K. to him) as follows: Go (K. turn again) and say to Hizkiyahu (K. adds, to the prince of my people), Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David thine ancestor, I have heard thy prayer, seen thy tears; behold, I (K. will cure thee, on the third day thou shalt go up to the house of Jehovah) add (K. and I add) to thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Asshur, and will defend this city (K. for mine own sake and for David my servants sake)." In the place of "Vjn (the city) the keri and the earlier translators have "ttn. The city of David is not called the "inner city" anywhere else; in fact, Zion, with the temple hill, formed the upper city, so that apparently it is the inner space of the city of David that is here referred to, and Isaiah had not yet passed through the middle gate to return to the lower city, where he dwelt (vol. i. pp. 70, 390). The text of Kings is the more authentic throughout; except that ^V TI), " the prince of my people," is an annalistic adorning which is hardly original. "HOT in Isaiah is an inf. abs. used in an imperative sense; yiW, on the other hand, which we find in the other text, is imperative. On yosiph, see at ch. xxix. 14.
The text of Isaiah is not only curtailed here in a very forced manner, but it has got into confusion; for vers. 21 and 22 are removed entirely from their proper place, although even the Septuagint has them at the close of Hezekiah's psalm. They have been omitted from their place at the close of ver. 6 through an oversight, and then added in the margin, where they now stand (probably with a sign, to indicate that they were supplied). We therefore insert them here, where they properly belong. Vers. 21, 22. " Then Isaiah said they were to bring (K. take) a fig -cake; and they plaistered (K. brought and covered) the boil, and he recovered. And Hizkiyahu said (K. to Isaiah), What sign is there that (K. Jehovah will heal me, so that I go up) I shall go up into the house of Jehovah?" As sh'chm never signifies a plague-spot, but an abscess (indicated by heightened temperature), more especially that of leprosy (cf. Ex. ix. 9, Lev. xiii. 18), there is no satisfactory ground, as some suppose, for connecting Hezekiah's illness (taken along with ch. xxxiii. 24) with the pestilence which broke out in the Assyrian army.
The use of the figs does not help us to decide whether we are to assume that it was a boil (bubon) or a carbuncle (charbon). Figs were a well-known emolliens or maturans, and were used to accelerate the rising of the swelling and the subsequent discharge. Isaiah did not show any special medical skill by ordering a softened cake of pressed figs to be laid upon the boil, nor did he expect it to act as a specific, and effect a cure: it was merely intended to promote what had already been declared to be the will of God. pV tfHD^ is probably more original than the simpler but less definite?P 'IDW. Hitzig is wrong in rendering W, "that it (the boil) may get well;" and Knobel in rendering it, " that he may recover." It is merely the anticipation of the result so common in the historical writings of Scripture (see at ch. vii. 1 and xx. 1), after which the historian goes back a step or two.
The pledge desired. Vers. 7, 8. "(K. Then Isaiah said) and (K. om.) let this be the sign to thee on the part of Jehovah, that ("1KW, K. "'3) Jehovah ivill perform this (K. the) word which He has spoken; Behold, I make the shadow retrace the steps, which it has gone down upon the sun-dial of Ahaz through the sun, ten steps backward. And the sun went back ten steps upon the dial, which it had gone down" (K. " Shall the shadow go forward pi? J, read "H^n according to Job xl. 2, or "H??.?.] ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps f Then Yechizkiyahu said, It is easy for the shadoio to go down ten steps; no, but the shadow shall go back ten steps. Then Isaiah the prophet cried to Jehovah, and turned back the shadow by the steps that it had gone down upon the sun-dial of Ahaz, ten steps backward"). "Steps of Ahaz" was the name given to a sun-dial erected by him. As maaldh may signify either one of a flight of steps or a degree (syn. madrigdh), we might suppose the reference to be to a dial-plate with a gnomon; but, in the first place, the expression points to an actual succession of steps, that is to say, to an obelisk upon a square or circular elevation ascended by steps, which threw the shadow of its highest point at noon upon the highest steps, and in the morning and evening upon the lowest, either on the one side or the other, so that the obelisk itself served as a gnomon. It is in this sense that the Targum on 2 Kings ix. 13 renders gerem hamma dloth by derag shaayyci, step (flight of steps) of the sun-dial; and the obelisk of Augustus, on the