THE DOWNFALL OF THE KINGDOM OF THE TEN TRIBES; THE HOUSE OF DAVID, AND
THE INTERVENTION OF THE ASSYRIANS.
King Menahem--The Babylonians and the
Assyrians--Pekah--Jotham's reign--Isaiah of Jerusalem--His
style and influence--His first public address--Later
speeches--Their immediate and permanent effect--His
disciples--Their characteristics--Zechariah--His prophecies.
758-740 B. C. E.
While Uzziah was compelled by his disease to pass his last years in
solitude, his youthful son Jotham managed the affairs of the kingdom.
In the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, Menahem, the cruel usurper (768-758),
was probably ruling with an iron hand. Both kingdoms continued in the
same grooves, unconscious of the fact that in the distant horizon
storm-laden clouds were gathering which would discharge themselves on
them with fearful effect. From the north, from the districts of the
Euphrates and Tigris, heavy trials were approaching for the people of
both kingdoms.
No sooner had the Assyrians extended their territory in the north,
east and west, than they turned their attention to the south. They
intended, in the first place, to gain possession of the sea-coast
of the Phœnicians, and thus obtain control over the wealth of that
commercial nation. The next point in view was Egypt, the wealth and
renown of which attracted their ambition. For the first time an
Assyrian army appeared on Israelitish ground, when King Pul invaded
Samaria. King Menahem did not dare summon his forces against the mighty
Assyrian hosts. The internal confusion must have crippled his powers
to such an extent that he could not think of resistance. The curse of
the regicide rested heavily on his head, but it pressed with equal, if
not greater, severity on his nation. Menahem was hated by his people,
for the cruel means by which he had obtained possession of the throne
were ever fresh in their memories, and the friends of the murdered king
nursed this hostile feeling. When Pul arrived on Israelitish ground,
it appears that the enemies of Menahem suggested to the invader the
advisability of dethroning the king. Menahem, meanwhile, betook himself
to the Assyrian conqueror, and promised him a large sum of money on
condition that his government was left secure. Pul accepted the money
and retired from the country, carrying his booty and prisoners with
him. Menahem did not draw the money from his own treasury, but forced
wealthy individuals to provide it. Each one had to pay what was at that
time a heavy sum, viz., 50 shekels.
Thus came the beginning of the end, and the fate which Amos had
clearly predicted half a century before, appeared to be in process of
realisation. He had said that a distant nation would carry off the
Israelites to a foreign land beyond Damascus. The Israelites were in
fact carried off to the region of the Tigris, or to some other division
of the large Assyrian kingdom. The power of the kingdom of the Ten
Tribes, however, remained to all appearance unbroken. It still numbered
60,000 wealthy men, who could pay large sums of tribute money. Menahem
still had his cavalry, his war materials, and the fortresses on which
he thought he could place dependence. But, unknown to him, old age (as
one of the prophets had rightly designated the national decadence) had
now crept over the people. Menahem probably introduced the Assyrian
mode of worship. One characteristic feature of this consisted in the
adoration of Mylitta, the goddess of love, and the duties of her
creed included the renunciation of virtue and the adoption of an
immoral life. This innovation, added to the already existing internal
dissensions, gradually sapped the foundations of the state. When
the cruel Menahem died, and his son Pekahiah succeeded (757), the
latter was able to retain the throne for scarcely two years. His own
charioteer, Pekah, the son of Remaliah, headed a conspiracy against
him, killed him in his palace in Samaria (756), and placed himself on
the vacant throne. The mode of this regicide, the seventh which had
occurred since the commencement of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, is
wrapped in darkness; it seems, however, that Pekah had to remove two
other competitors before he could himself ascend the throne of Samaria.
The son of Remaliah, the last king but one in Israel (755-736), was
an inconsiderate and ruthless man, who oppressed the country to an
even greater extent than his predecessors. He was characterised as a
faithless shepherd, "who deserted his flock, who sought not the missing
ones, who healed not the wounded, who tended not the sick, and who
even devoured the flesh of the healthy." In order to protect himself
against the attacks of the Assyrians, he joined an alliance which the
neighbouring princes had formed in order to resist the encroachments of
the Assyrians. The plan probably originated in Damascus, which now once
more owned a king, named Rezin, and which would be the first to suffer
from the Assyrian conqueror. Judah was also drawn in. Uzziah, the king,
having died in the leper's house, his son Jotham, who had ruled for
many years as viceroy, assumed the title of king (754-740). Jotham had
no very striking qualities. He was neither ambitious nor statesmanlike,
but he kept in the grooves in which his father had moved. Civic peace
seems to have remained undisturbed; there is at least no account of
any conflict between him and the high priest. The material condition
of the country also remained the same as under Uzziah. There were
the squadrons of cavalry, the war chariots, the ships of Tarshish
which navigated the Red Sea, and wealth and splendour. Jotham also
strengthened the fortifications of Jerusalem. He maintained friendly
relations with the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, or rather with their
king, Pekah, and there seems to have been a very intimate connection
between the two sovereigns. This friendship, however, as well as the
rise of an ambitious nobility in Judah, exerted an injurious influence
on the morals of the people, the evil being especially strong in the
capital. Through circumstances which cannot now be traced, some of the
noble families had attained a height of power that exalted them almost
to equality with the king. The princes of Judah led the councils,
decided the most important affairs of state, usurped the powers of
justice, and so thoroughly obscured the dignity of the house of David,
that but a mere shadow of its authority remained. There existed a
junior branch of the royal family, the house of Nathan, from which the
superintendent of the palace seems always to have been chosen. This
high official ruled court and attendants alike, and gradually attained
to such power and influence, that he was considered the actual regent.
He was known by the title of Manager of the Court (Sochen).
Other evils arose out of these abuses. The princes of Judah sought
to enrich themselves by all possible means, and to extend their
territories by obtaining possession of the pasture lands, vineyards,
and meadows of the country people. Things seem to have come to such
a pass that the nobles and elders employed slaves, or the poor whom
they had reduced to slavery, to cultivate their vast estates. They
did not hesitate to make serfs of the children of those poor who were
unable to pay their debts, and force them to tread the mill. To this
cruel injustice, they soon added the vices of debauchery. They arose
early in the morning and had recourse to the wine-cup, and till late
at night they inflamed their blood with wine. At such entertainments
they had the noisy music of flutes, trumpets, harps, and lutes.
This was an innocent amusement compared with the excesses resulting
therefrom. But the severe morality enjoined by the Sinaitic law was
hostile to dissipation. As long as this law held sway, the love of
licentious pleasures could not be fully gratified. But this restriction
disappeared, when Judah entered into connection with the kingdom of
the Ten Tribes. Here, and especially in the capital Samaria, the
greatest excesses wore, so to say, a sacred character, forming, as they
did, a constituent part of the Baal worship. Here there were temple
priestesses in numbers; sacrifices were offered on the summits of the
mountains and hills, whilst vice held its orgies in the shade of the
oaks and terebinths. So great had been its progress, that Israelitish
daughters unblushingly followed the example of their fathers. Wine and
depravity had so vitiated the minds of the great, that they consulted
blocks of wood and sticks as oracles concerning the future. From
these nobles of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes,--"the drunkards of
Ephraim,"--the princes of Judah learnt how to follow their evil desires
without restraint. Divine service in the Temple of Jerusalem was, it is
true, officially recognised; but this did not prevent the princes from
following their own mode of worship privately. The brotherly fusion
of Israel and Judah chiefly resulted in making idolatry, dissipation,
intoxication, pride, and scorn of what was right, the common character
of both kingdoms.
However, depraved as the Israelitish and Judæan nobles had become,
there existed a safeguard which prevented depravity from becoming an
established institution of law. In Israel, injustice could never pass
as public justice. Here there were men who loudly declaimed against the
mockery of justice, and the degradation of the poor; men who defended
justice and morality as the only right course; men who supported the
weak against the mighty. Just at this period of degradation, while
Jotham ruled in Judah and Pekah in Israel, several God-inspired men
arose, who spoke with words of fire against the vices of the nobility.
These men were the third generation of great prophets who succeeded
Amos, Joel, and Hosea, as these had followed Elijah and Elisha.
The most important amongst them was Isaiah, son of Amoz, from
Jerusalem. With his contemporary prophets, Zechariah, Hosea II., and
Micah II., he shared the courage which calls vice and crime by their
right names, and which mercilessly brands the guilty. But he surpassed
them and all his predecessors in depth of thought, beauty of rhythm,
exaltation of poetical expression, in the accuracy of his similes, and
in the clearness of his prophetic vision. Isaiah's eloquence combined
simplicity with beauty of speech, conciseness with intelligibility,
biting irony with an inspiring flow of language. Of his private life
but little is known. His wife was also gifted with prophetic insight.
He wore the usual prophet's dress--a garment of goat's hair. Like
Elijah, he considered his prophetic task as the vocation of his life.
His energies were entirely directed to exposing wickedness, to warning
and exhorting the nation, and to holding before it the ideal of a
future, to attain which it must strive with heart and soul. He gave his
sons symbolical names, indicative of future events, to serve as signs
and types. For more than forty years (755-710) he pursued his prophetic
ministration with untiring zeal and unshaken courage. In critical
moments, when all--great and small, kings and princes--despaired, his
confidence never deserted him, but aroused the hope and courage of his
people.
Isaiah first appeared in the year of king Uzziah's death (755), when
he was about thirty-three years of age. He announced to the nation
(probably on the Temple Mount) the vision which he had been vouchsafed,
and his election as a prophet. Isaiah's first speech was a short,
simple communication of this vision, the deep meaning of which could
not be misunderstood. He related that he had seen in a dream Jehovah
Zebaoth on a high and exalted throne, surrounded by the winged
seraphim. One seraph after another cried, "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah
Zebaoth," with such thrilling voices that the very supports of the
Temple trembled:
"Then I said, Woe is me, for I am undone; I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for
mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.
"Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in
his hand, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar, and
he touched therewith upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath
touched thy lips; thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is
purged."
In his first speech, Isaiah had but lightly touched on the sins of the
nobles, only intimating that they were not alive to pure influences. In
another speech, which has been preserved, he went into greater detail,
and more especially held up a mirror to the princes of Judah wherein
they might see their folly and sin. He described the ideal destiny of
the people of Israel, of the Law which had been entrusted to it, and of
the Temple which was to be its visible representation, and he chose for
his purpose the ever-memorable words of an older prophet:
"For from Zion shall the law go forth, and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem."
In this speech Isaiah touched the root of the evil which had produced
that state of religious demoralisation and heartless injustice which
he denounced. It was pleasure-seeking and wantonness, encouraged by
the women, to satisfy whom the men were continually urged to commit
depredations, and to pillage and enslave their weaker neighbours. With
surprising force the prophet describes the love of display of the
daughters of Zion. Leaving for a moment this sad picture, the speaker
attunes a cheery, hope-inspiring strain:--
"The Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion,
and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the
brightness of a flaming fire by night. For upon all the glory
shall be a covering. There shall be a tabernacle for a shade
in the daytime from the heat, and for refuge, and for a covert
from tempest and from rain."
It may be questioned whether this masterly speech, perfect though it
was in subject and form, made any impression for the moment. At all
events it led to no lasting improvement, for Isaiah and contemporary
prophets had still often to preach against the same errors and the
same sins. The nobles could not easily be converted; they scorned and
scoffed at the threats of an awful future. But Isaiah's powerful words
have not been spoken in vain; they have influenced people to whom
they were not addressed; they have been heard in distant lands, among
distant nations, and in remote days. Isaiah did not content himself
with inveighing against sin; he depicted a moral ideal, through the
realisation of which men would find happiness and contentment. "The
king shall rule with justice, and cause the princes to govern according
to right." "The king shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, and
shall not decide after the hearing of his ears." Isaiah treated with
great contempt the hypocrisy which praises God with the lips whilst the
heart is far from Him. He scorned still more the offering of sacrifices
combined with baseness of thought and wickedness of deed. (Isaiah xxix.
13; i. 11-14.)
Isaiah appears to have used other means besides soul-stirring sermons,
in order to heal the moral and religious ills of Judah. Adopting the
measures of Elijah and Samuel, he assembled around himself those who
shared his principles, or instructed young men and imbued them with
his spirit. From among those who had suffered from the injustice and
tyranny of the nobles of Judah, he drew into his circle the thoughtful
and susceptible, who became at once his disciples and his children. He
did not instil into them impatient and impetuous zeal, but he impressed
on them the virtues of gentleness, patience, and entire resignation
to God. The members of the circle which he had collected around him
were called the "gentle ones," or "the sufferers of the land" (Anavim,
Anve-Arez). They were mostly either of poor family, or impoverished
through the depredations of the nobles. They called themselves or were
called "the poor" (Dallim, Ebionim). From Isaiah they learnt not to
complain of poverty and spoliation, but to bear suffering and wrong
with faith in God and His dispensations. These "gentle ones" formed a
special community, to which they devoted all their heart and mind, and
to which Isaiah and his successors looked forward as the national core
and substance. They were expected to regenerate and purify the entire
people. These poor Anavim were to become the popular models of virtue.
The light shed by these great prophets cast beneficent rays around;
germs of thought, which lay hidden in the teachings of Sinai, came to
light, and the spiritual rulership of the nation became established
through them. Isaiah, therefore, forms a turning point in the national
history of the people of Israel, as Samuel and, in a lesser degree,
Elijah had done before him. Isaiah's prophetic view was not confined to
his nation and country; it passed beyond these boundaries to the two
great states of Egypt and Assyria, which, like great cloud-masses, were
soon to cast their electric flashes over Israel and Judah.
Another prophet, named Zechariah, son of Berechiah, rose up against
the continued perversions of the times. This prophet's oratory could
not compare with the fiery and graceful eloquence of his contemporary,
Isaiah. He is wanting in power and continuity; he does not let
thought follow thought in logical sequence, but passes without any
perspicuous connection from one subject to another. The language of
Zechariah, too, is poetically tinted and not without symmetry, but it
lacks the scansion and other forms of poetry. Zechariah frequently
employs the metaphor of shepherd and flock, which he applies to
the relation between king and people. He unrolls the picture of a
glorious future, in order to lift the people up above the dispiriting
present. He predicts that the neighbouring nations, who were hostile
to Israel,--the Aramæans, Tyrians, and even the Philistines--would
acknowledge the God of Israel, and would be accepted as His children,
when they have laid aside their evil deeds and their false pride.
He also prophesies that God would make peace between the house of
Judah and the house of Ephraim, and that He would bring back their
exiles. Even though He had dispersed them amongst the nations, they
would remember Him in their banishment, and return to Him with their
children. The pride of Assyria would be humbled, the Egyptian rod be
stayed. This declaration closed with the prospect that of the entire
nation only a third should survive; but even this remnant would have
to pass through the refining crucible of trials in order to become
worthy of its mission as the people of God. Zechariah made special
allusions to Pekah, king of Israel, as the "false shepherd," who had
treated his flock more ruthlessly than his predecessors. He relates how
God appointed a shepherd over His people, and gave him two staves--one
named "Mercy," and the other "Concord." But the nation had rejected
God, and therefore it had been rejected by God, who broke the staff
of mercy, and annulled the covenant He had made with all the tribes
of Israel; and now He would break the second staff, the "staff of
Concord," to annul the friendship between the tribes of Israel and
Judah. God had placed over them a foolish shepherd who did not seek
for the lambs that are lost--who did not heal the wounded, and who
devoured the flesh of the healthy ones. The nation, it is true,
deserved no better guide; nevertheless, the shepherd who had thus
deserted his flock would surely incur the chastisement of God.