_ISAIAH AND AHAZ_
2 KINGS xvi
"Expediency is man's wisdom; doing right is God's."
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Isaiah was one of those men whom God provides for the need of
kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a
poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled insight. If Ahaz had
accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole
history of Judah might have been different.
But the position of things was indeed disastrous. Judah was attacked
from every side. On the south-east the Edomites renewed their
devastating raids, and swept off multitudes of captives, who were sold
as slaves in the Western slave-markets. On the south-west the
Philistines once more rose in revolt, and acquired permanent
repossession of many parts of the Shephelah, mastering Beth-Shemesh,
Ajalon, Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath, Gimzo, and all the adjacent
districts. But this was nothing compared with the humiliation and
destruction inflicted by Rezin and Pekah. They shut up Ahaz in
Jerusalem; and though they could not storm its almost impregnable
defences, which had recently been fortified by Uzziah and Jotham, they
were undisputed masters of the rest of the land, so that Judah was
"brought low and made naked."[442] Rezin, indeed, weary of a tedious
siege, swept southwards to Elath, on the gulf of Akabah, seized it, and
peopled it with an Edomite garrison, thereby destroying the commerce in
which Solomon and Jehoshaphat had taken pride, and which Uzziah had
recently re-established. Having thus left an effectual annoyance to
Judah in his rear, he gave up the design of dethroning Ahaz and
substituting in his place "_the son of Tabeal_," who would have been a
tool in the hands of the confederate kings. He seized, however, a
multitude of captives, and with them and with much booty he returned to
Damascus. "The son of Tabeal"--a name which occurs nowhere else--has
been found very puzzling.[443] I believe it to be simply an instance of
the Rabbinic process of transposition, called _Themourah_. Some identify
it with Itibi'alu of an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. Others suppose
that he was a Syrian, and that Tabeal stands for Tabrimnon. But by the
application of Themourah (called the _Albam_) Tabeal simply gives us
"Remaliah," and is either a scornful variation of the name of Pekah's
father, or has arisen from the watchword of a secret conspiracy. Since
in the text of Jeremiah (li. 41, xxv. 26) (by _Atbash_, another form of
the secret transposition of letters of which the generic name was
_Gematria_) we read _Sheshach_ for Babel, the name Tabeal may have been
dealt with in a similar method.[444] Pekah, according to the Chronicler,
inflicted far deadlier injuries than Rezin. In one day he slew one
hundred and twenty thousand "sons of valour," because they had forsaken
Jehovah, God of their fathers. His general Zichri, a mighty Ephraimite,
slew Maaseiah, the king's son;[445] and Azrikam, the chancellor; and
Elkanah, "the second to the king." The army carried away two hundred
thousand captives and much spoil to Samaria. But on their arrival, a
prophet named Oded[446] reproved the Israelites for having massacred the
Judæans "in a rage that reacheth to heaven." Aided by various princes,
he succeeded in inducing the people to refuse to harbour the captives,
and clothed, fed, and sent them back unharmed to Jericho, mounting the
feeble on horses and asses. The story bears on the face of it the signs
of enormous exaggeration.
In the crisis of their miseries, but just before the siege, Ahaz had
gone outside the city walls "at the end of the conduit of the upper
pool, in the causeway of the fuller's field," probably to look after
the water-supply, which had always been a difficulty for Jerusalem,
and on which depended her capacity to withstand a siege. Here he was
met by the prophet Isaiah, who was leading by the hand the little son
to whom he had given the name of "Shear-jashub" ("A remnant shall
return"),[447] as a witness to the truth of the prophecy which he had
heard on the occasion of his call,--
"And if there should yet be a tenth in it, this shall be again consumed;
yet as the terebinth and the oak, though cut down, have their stock
remaining, even so a sacred seed shall be the stock thereof."[448]
The object of the prophet was to cheer up the fainting heart of the
king, and to say to him first,--
"Take heed, and be quiet."
This mandate probably refers to rumours--which Isaiah must have
heard--of the king's intention to follow the counsels of the party which
urged him to seek foreign assistance. One of these parties advised him
to throw himself into the arms of Egypt, and rely on her protection; the
other gave the more perilous counsel of invoking the aid of Assyria.
Isaiah's mandate to the king and to the nation was to take neither step,
but to trust in the Lord, and to repent of individual and national
misdoing. He summed up his message in the rule,--
"In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence
shall be your strength."
The advice was emphasised by a promise of the most decisive and
encouraging kind. When all looked so helpless, the prophet was bidden
to say,--
"Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for these two stumps of smoking
torches, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of Remaliah's
son. They have taken evil counsel against thee. But thus saith the
Lord God, 'It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the
head of Syria is only Rezin, and the head of Samaria is a mere
Remaliah's son.'"[449]
And then, to confirm the lesson of confidence in God, the brief
assurance,--
"If ye will not confide,
Surely ye shall not abide."
Convinced of the certainty of this immediate deliverance, Isaiah bade
the king to ask for a sign from Jehovah, either in the height above,
or in the depth beneath.
But the timid and hypocritical king was not so to be influenced. He
had on his side "the scornful men, who ruled Judah"; the mocking
priests, who sneered and jeered at Isaiah's teaching as repetitive and
commonplace, and only fit for children; and the princes and nobles,
who formed the Court party, headed by Shebna the scribe. He probably
looked on Isaiah as a mere unpractical faddist, an excited
fanatic--all very well as a prophet, but not a man who ought to thrust
himself into the plans of politicians. Ahaz had his own plans, and he
had not the smallest intention of altering them in consequence of
anything which Isaiah might say. He was far too timid and unfaithful
to rely on anything so vague as Divine assurance. He was convinced
that his only chance lay in the horses of Egypt or the fierce infantry
of Assyria. So he said with sham piety, merely intended to put the
prophet off, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah."
That moment marks what may be called the birth-throe of Messianic
prophecy in its most specific character. For then the prophet, after
reproving the king for wearying Jehovah as well as His servants, adds,
in words of far wider and deeper significance than their immediate
bearing, that Jehovah Himself should give a sign; for the maiden
should conceive and bear a Son, and call His name Immanuel ("God with
us"). The child should grow up in a time of scarcity; for owing to the
devastation of the land, he would only be able to be nurtured on
curdled milk and honey. But before he had reached years of
discretion--before he had arrived at the power of moral choice--the
land whose two kings Ahaz abhorred should be a desert. Yet let not
Ahaz exult too much in the immediate deliverance! Days of unexampled
misery were at hand. Jehovah should hiss for the fly from the farthest
canals of Egypt, and for the bee of Assyria, and they should settle in
swarms in the valleys and pastures. Ahaz--he had not alluded to the
design, but Isaiah knew it well--was about to hire a razor from beyond
the Euphrates, but that razor should sweep away the hair and beard of
Judah. Agriculture should languish, and the people should only be able
to live in privation on whey and honey; and the vineyards should be
full of briers and thorns, and should be mere places for hunting.[450]
This event, therefore, as Caspari says, stands at the turning-point of
Old Testament History. It marks the beginning of that second period of
the History of the Chosen People in which their hopes were granted as
a counterpoise to their anguish and their humiliation. "It stood,
therefore, at the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of
the prophet which reached out over the whole development of the people
of God."
To all such prophecies Ahaz was utterly deaf: they did not for a
moment induce him to swerve from his purpose. But to call still
further attention to his promise as the Syrian Ephraimitish host
pressed forward, Isaiah took a great piece of vellum, and inscribed on
it, in the ordinary characters,--
"SPEED-PLUNDER-HASTE-SPOIL."
He put it up in some conspicuous place, before his own house or in the
Temple, and took the priest Urijah and Zechariah, the son of
Jeberechiah, into his confidence as faithful witnesses. He told them the
explanation of his sign, and they would satisfy the curiosity of the
people on the subject. It meant that in nine months' time his wife
should bear a son, and that he and his wife, the prophetess, would call
the boy's name "Speed-plunder-haste-spoil," as a sign that before the
child was able to say "Father" or "Mother" Rezin and Pekah should be
extinguished. For the Assyrian should speed to the plunder and haste to
the spoil, and the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria should be
carried away by the King of Assyria. Since Judah despised "the soft
flowing waters of Shiloah,"[451] and preferred Rezin and Pekah,[452]
they should be deluged by the Euphrates of Assyria, and Assyria's
outspread wings should overshadow thy land, O Immanuel (viii. 1-8). How
vain, then, of the people to try and meet the confederacy of Syria and
Ephraim by new confederacy of Judah with Assyria! This, after all, is
Immanuel's land. God is with us. We have but to fear God, we have but to
be faithful to duty, and Jehovah shall be our sanctuary, though He be a
stumbling-block to many in Israel, and a snare to many in
Jerusalem.[453] This is God's teaching and God's testimony, and Isaiah
and his children are signs of it. For does not Isaiah mean "Salvation of
Jehovah"; and Shear-jashub, "A remnant shall return"; and
Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Swift-spoil-speedy-prey"; and Immanuel, "God is
with us"? What need, then, to seek wizards and necromancers? Seek God;
confide, abide![454] Trouble and darkness there should be; but all was
not utterly hopeless. Northern Israel had been bedimmed and afflicted;
but soon they should be exalted, and see light, and their yoke be broken
as in the day of Midian, and the trampling boot and blood-stained mantle
of the warrior shall be burned in the fire: for a Child is born, a Son
is given unto us of David's line, who shall be a Mighty Deliverer, a
Prince of Peace,--and Israel shall perish.
FOOTNOTES:
[442] 2 Chron. xxviii. 19.
[443] It may mean "God is good" (Tabeel).
[444] For further explanations I must refer to my paper on Rabbinic
Exegesis (_Expositor_, First Series, v. 373).
[445] 2 Chron. xxviii. 7.
[446] Of Oded nothing else is known.
[447] Some, however, interpret the name "A remnant repents" (LXX., ὁ
καταλειφθεὶς Ἰασούβ; Vulg., _Qui derelictus est Jaseb_).
[448] Isa. vi. 13.
[449] The words "And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be
broken, that it be not a people" (Isa. vii. 8), are almost certainly
an interpolation: for (1) the overthrow came within far less than
sixty years; (2) the clause awkwardly breaks the context; (3) the
"sixty years" is inconsistent with the promise (vii. 16) that it
should be within very few years.
[450] Isa. vii. 1-25.
[451] Not improbably the water which afterwards flowed through
Hezekiah's new tunnel between the Virgin's Tomb and the Pool of
Siloam. It is referred to in 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 30 (Isa. xxii. 9-11).
See Appendix II.
[452] This, if it be correct, can only mean that the son of Tabeal had
a party in Jerusalem; but Hitzig renders it "_dreadeth_," not
"rejoiceth in."
[453] The meaning is by no means clear.
[454] See Driver, _Isaiah_, p. 34.