_THE RABSHAKEH; OR, LAST TEMPTATIONS OF FAITH._
ISAIAH xxxvi. (701 B.C.).
It remains for us now to follow in chaps. xxxvi., xxxvii., the
historical narrative of the events, the moral results of which we have
seen so vivid in chap. xxxiii.--the perfidious return of the Assyrians
to Jerusalem after Hezekiah had bought them off and their final
disappearance from the Holy Land.
This historical narrative has also its moral. It is not annals, but
drama. The whole moral of Isaiah's prophesying is here flung into a duel
between champions of the two tempers, which we have seen in perpetual
conflict throughout his book. The two tempers are--on Isaiah's side an
absolute and unselfish faith in God, Sovereign of the world and Saviour
of His people; on the side of the Assyrians a bare, brutal confidence in
themselves, in human cleverness and success, a vaunting contempt of
righteousness and of pity. The main interest of Isaiah's book has
consisted in the way these tempers oppose each other, and alternately
influence the feeling of the Jewish community. That interest is now to
culminate in the scene which brings near such thorough representatives
of the two tempers as Isaiah and the Rabshakeh, with the crowd of
wavering Jews between. Most strikingly, Assyria's last assault is not of
force, but of speech, delivering upon faith the subtle arguments of the
worldly temper; and as strikingly, while all official religion and
power of State stand helpless against them, these arguments are met by
the bare word of God. In this mere statement of the situation, however,
we perceive that much more than the quarrel of a single generation is
being decided. This scene is a parable of the everlasting struggle
between faith and force, with doubt and despair between them. In the
clever, self-confident, persuasive personage with two languages on his
tongue and an army at his back; in the fluttered representatives of
official religion who meet him and are afraid of the effect of his
speech on the common people; in the ranks of dispirited men who hear the
dialogue from the wall; in the sensitive king so aware of faith, and yet
so helpless to bring faith forth to peace and triumph; and, in the
background of the whole situation, the serene prophet of God, grasping
only God's word, and by his own steadfastness carrying the city over the
crisis and proving that faith indeed can be _the substance of things
hoped for_--we have a phase of the struggle ordained unto every
generation of men, and which is as fresh to-day as when Rabshakeh played
the cynic and the scribes and elders filled the part of nervous
defenders of the faith, under the walls of faith's fortress, two
thousand five hundred years ago.
THE RABSHAKEH.
This word is a Hebrew transliteration of the Assyrian Rab-sak, _chief of
the officers_. Though there is some doubt on the point, we may naturally
presume from the duties he here discharges that the Rabshakeh was a
civilian--probably the civil commissioner or political officer attached
to the Assyrian army, which was commanded, according to 2 Kings xviii.
16, by the Tartan or commander-in-chief himself.
In all the Bible there is not a personage more clever than this
Rabshakeh, nor more typical. He was an able deputy of the king who sent
him, but he represented still more thoroughly the temper of the
civilisation to which he belonged. There is no word of this man which is
not characteristic. A clever, fluent diplomatist, with the traveller's
knowledge of men and the conqueror's contempt for them, the Rabshakeh is
the product of a victorious empire like the Assyrian, or, say, like the
British. Our services sometimes turn out the like of him--a creature
able to speak to natives in their own language, full and ready of
information, mastering the surface of affairs at a glance, but always
baffled by the deeper tides which sway nations; a deft player upon party
interests and the superficial human passions, but unfit to touch the
deep springs of men's religion and patriotism. Let us speak, however,
with respect of the Rabshakeh. From his rank (Sayce calls him the
Vizier), as well as from the cleverness with which he explains what we
know to have been the policy of Sennacherib towards the populations of
Syria, he may well have been the inspiring mind at this time of the
great Assyrian empire--Sennacherib's Bismarck.
The Rabshakeh had strutted down from the great centre of civilisation,
with its temper upon him, and all its great resources at his back,
confident to twist these poor provincial tribes round his little finger.
How petty he conceived them we infer from his never styling Hezekiah
_the king_. This was to be an occasion for the Rabshakeh's own
glorification. Jerusalem was to fall to his clever speeches. He had
indeed the army behind him, but the work to be done was not the rough
work of soldiers. All was to be managed by him, the civilian and orator.
This fellow, with his two languages and clever address, was to step out
in front of the army and finish the whole business.
The Rabshakeh spoke extremely well. With his first words he touched the
sore point of Judah's policy: her trust in Egypt. On this he spoke like
a very Isaiah. But he showed a deeper knowledge of Judah's internal
affairs, and a subtler deftness in using it, when he referred to the
matter of the altars. Hezekiah had abolished the high places in all
parts of the land, and gathered the people to the central sanctuary in
Jerusalem. The Assyrian knew that a number of Jews must look upon this
disestablishment of religion in the provinces as likely to incur
Jehovah's displeasure and turn Him against them. Therefore he said, _But
if thou say unto me, We trust in Jehovah our God, is not that He whose
high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to
Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?_ And then,
having shaken their religious confidence, he made sport of their
military strength. And finally he boldly asserted, _Jehovah said unto
me, Go up against this land and destroy it_. All this shows a master in
diplomacy, a most clever demagogue. The scribes and elders felt the
edge, and begged him to sheathe it in a language unknown to the common
people. But he, conscious of his power, spoke the more boldly,
addressing himself directly to the poorer sort of the garrison, on whom
the siege would press most heavily. His second speech to them is a good
illustration of the policy pursued by Assyria at this time towards the
cities of Palestine. We know from the annals of Sennacherib that his
customary policy, to seduce the populations of a hostile State from
allegiance to their rulers, had succeeded in other cases; and it was so
plausibly uttered in this case, that it seemed likely to succeed again.
To the common soldiers on the walls, with the prospect of being reduced
to the foul rations of a prolonged siege (ver. 12), Sennacherib's
ambassador offers rich and equal property and enjoyment. _Make a treaty
with me, and come out to me, and eat every one of his vine and every one
of his fig tree, and drink ye every one of the water of his cistern,
until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of
corn and grapes, a land of bread-corn and orchards. Every one_!--it is a
most subtle assault upon the discipline, comradeship and patriotism of
the common soldiers by the promises of a selfish, sensuous equality and
individualism. But then the speaker's native cynicism gets the better of
him--it is not possible for an Assyrian long to play the part of
clemency--and, with a flash of scorn, he asks the sad men upon the walls
whether they really believe that Jehovah can save them: _Hath any of the
gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the King of
Assyria, ... that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?_ All
the range of their feelings does he thus run through, seeking with sharp
words to snap each cord of faith in God, of honour to the king and love
of country. Had the Jews heart to answer him, they might point out the
inconsistency between his claim to have been sent by Jehovah and the
contempt he now pours upon their God. But the inconsistency is
characteristic. The Assyrian has some acquaintance with the Jewish
faith; he makes use of its articles when they serve his purpose, but his
ultimatum is to tear them to shreds in their believers' faces. He treats
the Jews as men of culture still sometimes treat barbarians, first
scornfully humouring their faith and then savagely trampling it under
foot.
So clever were the speeches of the Rabshakeh. We see why he was
appointed to this mission. He was an expert both in the language and
religion of this tribe, perched on its rock in the remote Judæan
highlands. For a foreigner he showed marvellous familiarity with the
temper and internal jealousies of the Jewish religion. He turned these
on each other almost as adroitly as Paul himself did in the disputes
between Sadducees and Pharisees. How the fellow knew his cleverness,
strutting there betwixt army and town! He would show his soldier friends
the proper way of dealing with stubborn barbarians. He would astonish
those faith-proud highlanders by exhibiting how much he was aware of the
life behind their thick walls and silent faces, _for the king's
commandment was, Answer him not_.
And yet did the Rabshakeh, with all his raking, know the heart of Judah?
No, truly. The whole interest of this man is the incongruity of the
expertness and surface-knowledge, which he spattered on Jerusalem's
walls, with the deep secret of God, that, as some inexhaustible well,
the fortress of the faith carried within her. Ah, Assyrian, there is
more in starved Jerusalem than thou canst put in thy speeches! Suppose
Heaven were to give those sharp eyes of thine power to look through the
next thousand years, and see this race and this religion thou puffest
at, the highest-honoured, hottest-hated of the world, centre of
mankind's regard and debate, but thou, and thy king and all the glory of
your empire wrapped deep in oblivion. To this little fortress of
highland men shall the heart of great peoples turn: kings for its
nursing-fathers and queens for its nursing-mothers, the forces of the
Gentiles shall come to it, and from it new civilisations take their
laws; while thou and all thy paraphernalia disappear into blackness,
haunted only by the antiquary, the world taking an interest in thee just
in so far as thou didst once hopelessly attempt to understand Jerusalem
and capture her faith by thine own interpretation of it. Curious pigmy,
very grand thou thinkest thyself, and surely with some right as delegate
of the king of kings, parading thy cleverness and thy bribes before
these poor barbarians; but the world, called to look upon you both from
this eminence of history, grants thee to be a very good head of an
intelligence department, with a couple of languages on thy glib tongue's
end, but adjudges that with the starved and speechless men before thee
lies the secret of all that is worth living and dying for in this world.
The Rabshakeh's plausible futility and Jerusalem's faith, greatly
distressed before him, are typical. Still as men hang moodily over the
bulwarks of Zion, doubtful whether life is worth living within the
narrow limits which religion prescribes, or righteousness worth fighting
for with such privations and hope deferred, comes upon them some elegant
and plausible temptation, loudly calling to give the whole thing up.
Disregarding the official arguments and evidences that push forward to
parley, it speaks home in practical tones to men's real selves--their
appetites and selfishnesses. "You are foolish fellows," it says, "to
confine yourselves to such narrowness of life and self-denial! The fall
of your faith is only a matter of time: other creeds have gone; yours
must follow. And why fight the world for the sake of an idea, or from
the habits of a discipline? Such things only starve the human spirit;
and the world is so generous, so free to every one, so tolerant of each
enjoying his own, unhampered by authority or religion."
In our day what has the greatest effect on the faith of many men is just
this mixture, that pervades the Rabshakeh's address,--of a superior
culture pretending to expose religion, with the easy generosity, which
offers to the individual a selfish life, unchecked by any discipline or
religious fear. That modern Rabshakeh, Ernest Rénan, with the forces of
historical criticism at his back, but confident rather in his own skill
of address, speaking to us believers as poor picturesque provincials,
patronising our Deity, and telling us that he knows His intentions
better than we do ourselves, is a very good representative of the
enemies of the Faith, who owe their impressiveness upon common men to
the familiarity they display with the contents of the Faith, and the
independent, easy life they offer to the man who throws his strict faith
off. Superior knowledge, with the offer on its lips of a life on good
terms with the rich and tolerant world--pretence of science promising
selfishness--that is to-day, as then under the walls of Jerusalem, the
typical enemy of the Faith. But if faith be held simply as the silent
garrison of Jerusalem held it, faith in a Lord God of righteousness, who
has given us a conscience to serve Him, and has spoken to us in plain
explanation of this by those whom we can see, understand and trust--not
only by an Isaiah, but by a Jesus--then neither mere cleverness nor the
ability to promise comfort can avail against our faith. A simple
conscience of God and of duty may not be able to answer subtle arguments
word for word, but she can feel the incongruity of their cleverness with
her own precious secret; she can at least expose the fallacy of their
sensuous promises of an untroubled life. No man, who tempts us from a
good conscience with God in the discipline of our religion and the
comradeship of His people, can ensure that there will be no starvation
in the pride of life, no captivity in the easy tolerance of the world.
To the heart of man there will always be captivity in selfishness; there
will always be exile in unbelief. Even where the romance and sentiment
of faith are retained, after the manner of Rénan, it is only to mock us
with mirage. _As in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, our heart
and flesh shall cry out for the living God, as we have aforetime seen
Him in the sanctuary._ The land, in which the tempter promises a life
undisturbed by religious restraints, is not our home, neither is it
freedom. By the conscience that is in us, God has set us on the walls of
faith, with His law to observe, with His people to stand by; and against
us are the world and its tempters, with all their wiles to be defied. If
we go down from the charge and shelter of so simple a religion, then,
whatever enjoyment we have, we shall enjoy it only with the fears of the
deserter and the greed of the slave.
In spite of scorn and sensuous promise from Rabshakeh to Rénan, let us
lift the hymn which these silent Jews at last lifted from the walls of
their delivered city: _Walk about Zion and go round about her; tell ye
the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, and consider her palaces,
that ye may tell it to the generation to come. For this God is our God
for ever and ever. He will be our Guide even unto death._