_THE REIGN OF AHAZ_
B.C. 735-715
2 KINGS xvi. 1-20
"Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the House of God was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king--
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished."
_Paradise Lost_, i. 467-476.
According to our authorities, Ahaz ("Possessor")[435] began his reign
of sixteen years at the age of twenty. Of the exactitude of these
references we cannot be certain, because they also state (2 Kings
xviii. 2) that Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to
reign, and this reduces us to the absurdity of supposing that Hezekiah
was born when his father was only eleven years old.[436] We might
infer from Isa. iii. 4 that Ahaz was not so old as twenty when he
succeeded Jotham; for there--in a terrible prophecy which can only
refer to the beginning of this reign--we read, "And I will give
children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them"; or, as
it should be perhaps rendered, "And with childishness, or wilfulness,
shall they rule over them."
Whatever may have been the king's age, surely never king succeeded to
a more distracted kingdom, or reigned over a more terrified people! If
he could have had any choice in the matter, he might well have
declined the fearful burden. Describing the state of things, the great
prophet Isaiah, who now began his career, exclaims,--
"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem
and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole
stay of water; the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the
prophet, and the diviner, and the elder; the captain of fifty, and the
honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning charmer, and the
skilful enchanter. And the people shall be oppressed every one by
another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself
proudly against the elder, and the base against the honourable. Then a
man shall take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying,
'Thou hast clothing, be _thou our judge, and let this ruin be under thy
hand_': in that day shall he lift his voice, saying, 'I will not be a
builder-up; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: ye shall not
make me a ruler of the people.' For Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is
fallen. The show of their countenance is against them; and they declare
their sin as Sodom, and hide it not. As for My people, children are
their oppressors, and women rule over them."[437]
This is a frightful picture of famine--the dearth of intellect, the
dearth of statesmen, of all genius, of all insight. It describes the
prevalence of oppression and of ghastly destitution, accompanied by
such utter despair that no one cared to exert himself for the arrest
of the ruin which seemed imminent over that which was already no
better than itself a ruin.
The Book of Isaiah is arranged in a most confused and unchronological
manner, and it is probable that the first five chapters should be
placed after the sixth, which describes the prophet's call in the year
that King Uzziah died. They paint a picture of moral collapse. His
first chapter is called by Ewald "the great arraignment," and by its
references describes the awful period of alarm during the war of Syria
and Ephraim against Judah. It might seem as if the combined host was
even then in the country, or had only just retired from it; for we
read,--
"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land,
strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown
by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a
wilderness, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city."
But even in the midst of this afflictive dispensation there were no
signs of repentance. The children of Israel were rebels who despised
the Holy One of Israel,--"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with
iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly!" (i.
7-9). They had all the externals of religion: they offered vain
sacrifices, and kept a multitude of idle feasts, and offered many
formal prayers; but all this was but a cumbrance to Him who desired
clean hands and a pure heart as conditions of forgiveness (10-20).
What hope could there be for a city of murderers, who loved bribes
and perverted judgment (21-24)? The land was full of pride, full of
idols, full of the luxury of the rich amid the starvation of the poor
(ii. 1-22).[438] Women partook of the general corruption. They walked
mincingly with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,[439] thinking of
nothing but their anklets, and crescents, and bracelets, and mufflers,
ear-drops, head-tires, perfumes, mirrors, armlets, and nose-jewels:
therefore they should have sackcloth for stomachers, ropes for
girdles, and burning instead of beauty, and only a remnant should
escape (iii. 16-iv. 1). Judah was like a vineyard,--rich in
advantages, blessed with fondest care; but when God looked for grapes,
it only brought forth wild grapes--a semblance, but only a poisoned
semblance, of the true vintage: therefore it should be left neglected
and rainless. Woe to the greedy land-grabbing, and drunkenness, and
revelry of the rich! Woe to their mockery of God and their devotion to
vanity! Woe to their insane pride and wanton injustice! Could they
escape vengeance? No! Jehovah had looked for judgment (_mishpat_), but
behold oppression (_mishpach_); for righteousness (_tse'dakah_), but
behold a cry (_tse'akah_) (v. 1-24).[440] They might escape--they
would escape--the Syrian and the Ephraimite; but behind these lay a
more terrible and a more portentous foe, even the Assyrian, the
scourge of God's wrath (25-30).
"It was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with
Ephraim." Is it strange that in such a condition of things the heart
of Ahaz and of his people "was moved as the trees of the wood are
moved with the wind"?
Such was the terrible crisis at which Isaiah began his ministry. He
was the son of Amoz,[441] who has been (much too precariously)
identified with a brother of Amaziah. It is probable that he was a man
of distinguished, if not princely, birth, and he exercised a more
powerful influence over the politics of his country than any other
prophet--not even excepting Jeremiah.
FOOTNOTES:
[435] Probably a shortened form for Jehoahaz ("The Lord taketh hold").
He is called Jahuhazi in Tiglath-Pileser's inscription (Schrader,
_Keilinschr._, p. 163).
[436] For twenty-five it is not improbable that we should read fifteen.
[437] Isa. iii. 1-12.
[438] In Isa. ii. 2-4 we find, as so often in the prophetic books in
their present too-often-haphazard arrangement, a glowing promise of
universal peace placed before unsparing denunciations. The verses are
also found in Micah (iv. 1, 2), and it has been conjectured that in
both prophets they are a quotation from some older source--perhaps
from Jonah, son of Amittai.
[439] Heb., "deceiving with their eyes."
[440] Isa. v. 7. The paronomasia of the original is striking. Van Oort
renders it, "He looked for _reason_, but behold _treason_; and for
_right_, but behold _affright_."
[441] His name means "Jehovah saves," and is perhaps alluded to in Isa.
viii. 18. Amos ("One who bears a burden"), needless to say, is a totally
different name from that of Amoz ("Vigorous"), the father of Isaiah.