_HEZEKIAH_
B.C. 715-686[480]
2 KINGS xviii
"For Ezekias had done the thing that pleased the Lord, and was
strong in the ways of David his father, as Esay the prophet, who
was great and faithful in his vision, had commanded him,"--ECCLUS.
xlviii. 22.
The reign of Hezekiah was epoch-making in many respects, but especially
for its religious reformation, and the relations of Judah with Assyria
and with Babylon. It is also most closely interwoven with the annals of
Hebrew prophecy, and acquires unwonted lustre from the magnificent
activity and impassioned eloquence of the great prophet Isaiah, who
merits in many ways the title of "the Evangelical Prophet," and who was
the greatest of the prophets of the Old Dispensation.
According to the notice in 2 Kings xviii. 2, Hezekiah was twenty-five
years old when he began to reign in the third year of Hoshea of
Israel. This, however, is practically impossible consistently with the
dates that Ahaz reigned sixteen years and became king at the age of
twenty, for it would then follow that Hezekiah was born when his
father was a mere boy--and this, although Hezekiah does not seem to
have been the eldest son; for Ahaz had burnt "his son," and, according
to the Chronicler, more than one son, to propitiate Moloch. Probably
Hezekiah was a boy of fifteen when he began to reign. The chronology
of his reign of twenty-nine years is, unhappily, much confused.
The historian of the Kings agrees with the Chronicler, and the son of
Sirach, in pronouncing upon him a high eulogy, and making him equal
even to David in faithfulness. There is, however, much difference in
the method of their descriptions of his doings. The historian devotes
but one verse to his reformation--which probably began early in his
reign, though it occupied many years. The Chronicler, on the other
hand, in his three chapters manages to overlook, if not to suppress,
the one incident of the reformation which is of the deepest interest.
It is exactly one of those suppressions which help to create the deep
misgiving as to the historic exactness of this biassed and late
historian. It must be regarded as doubtful whether many of the Levitic
details in which he revels are or are not intended to be literally
historic. Imaginative additions to literal history became common among
the Jews after the Exile, and leaders of that day instinctively drew
the line between moral homiletics and literal history. It may be
perfectly historical that, as the Chronicler says, Hezekiah opened and
repaired the Temple; gathered the priests and the Levites together,
and made them cleanse themselves; offered a solemn sacrifice;
reappointed the musical services; and--though this can hardly have
been till after the Fall of Samaria in 722--invited all the Israelites
to a solemn, but in some respects irregular, passover of fourteen
days. It may be true also that he broke up the idolatrous altars in
Jerusalem, and tossed their _débris_ into the Kidron; and (again after
the deportation of Israel) destroyed some of the _bamoth_ in Israel as
well as in Judah. If he reinstituted the courses of the priests, the
collection of tithes, and all else that he is said to have done,[481]
he accomplished quite as much as was effected in the reign of his
great-grandson Josiah. But while the Chronicler dwells on all this at
such length, what induces him to omit the most significant fact of
all--the destruction of the brazen serpent?
The historian tells us that Hezekiah "removed the _bamoth_"--the
chapels on the high places, with their ephods and teraphim--whether
dedicated to the worship of Jehovah or profaned by alien idolatry.
That he did, or attempted, something of this kind seems certain; for
the Rabshakeh, if we regard his speech as historical in its details,
actually taunted him with impiety, and threatened him with the wrath
of Jehovah on this very account. Yet here we are at once met with the
many difficulties with which the history of Israel abounds, and which
remind us at every turn that we know much less about the inner life
and religious conditions of the Hebrews than we might infer from a
superficial study of the historians who wrote so many centuries after
the events which they describe. Over and over again their incidental
notices reveal a condition of society and worship which violently
collides with what seems to be their general estimate. Who, for
instance, would not infer from this notice that in Judah, at any rate,
the king's suppression of the "high places," and above all of those
which were idolatrous, had been tolerably thorough? How much, then,
are we amazed to find that Hezekiah had not effectually desecrated
even the old shrines which Solomon had erected to Ashtoreth, Chemosh,
and Milcom[482] "at the right hand of the mount of corruption"--in
other words, on one of the peaks of the Mount of Olives, in full view
of the walls of Jerusalem and of the Temple Hill!
"And he brake the images," or, as the R.V. more correctly renders it,
"the pillars," the _matstseboth_. Originally--that is, before the
appearance of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes--no objection
seems to have been felt to the erection of a _matstsebah_. Jacob erected
one of these _baitulia_ or anointed stones at Bethel, with every sign of
Divine approval.[483] Moses erected twelve round his altar at
Sinai.[484] Joshua erected them in Shechem and on Mount Ebal. Hosea, in
one passage (iii. 4), seems to mention pillars, ephods, and teraphim as
legitimate objects of desire. Whether they have any relation to
obelisks, and what is their exact significance, is uncertain; but they
had become objects of just suspicion in the universal tendency to
idolatry, and in the deepening conviction that the second commandment
required a far more rigid adherence than it had hitherto received.
"And cut down the groves"--or rather the Asherim, the wooden, and
probably in some instances phallic, emblems of the nature-goddess
Asherah, the goddess of fertility.[485] She is sometimes identified with
Astarte, the goddess of the moon and of love; but there is no
sufficient ground for the identification. Some, indeed, doubt whether
Asherah is the name of a goddess at all. They suppose that the word only
means a consecrated pole or pillar, emblematic of the sacred tree.[486]
Then comes the startling addition, "And brake in pieces the brazen
serpent that Moses had made: _for unto those days the children of
Israel did burn incense to it_." This addition is all the more
singular because the Hebrew tense implies habitual worship. The story
of the brazen serpent of the wilderness is told in Num. xxi. 9; but
not an allusion to it occurs anywhere, till now--some eight centuries
later--we are told that up to this time the children of Israel had
been in the habit of burning incense to it! Comparing Num. xxi. 4,
with xxxiii. 42, we find that the scene of the serpent-plague of the
Exodus was either Zalmonah ("the place of the image") or Punon, which
Bochart connects with Phainoi, a place mentioned as famous for
copper-mines.[487] Moses, for unknown reasons, chose it as an innocent
and potent symbol; but obviously in later days it subserved, or was
mingled with, the tendency to ophiolatry, which has been fatally
common in all ages in many heathen lands. It is indeed most difficult
to understand a state of things in which the children of Israel
habitually _burned incense_ to this venerable relic, nor can we
imagine that this was done without the cognisance and connivance of
the priests. Ewald makes the conjecture that the brazen _Saraph_ had
been left at Zalmonah, and was an occasional object of Israelite
adoration in pilgrimage for the purpose. There is, however, nothing
more extraordinary in the prevalence of serpent-worship among the Jews
than in the fact that, "in the cities of Judah and the streets of
Jerusalem, we" (the Jews), "and our fathers, our kings, and our
princes, burnt incense unto the Queen of Heaven."[488] If this were
the case, the serpent may have been brought to Jerusalem in the
idolatrous reign of Ahaz. It shows an intensity of reforming zeal, and
an inspired insight into the reality of things, that Hezekiah should
not have hesitated to smash to pieces so interesting a relic of the
oldest history of his people, rather than see it abused to idolatrous
purposes.[489] Certainly, in conduct so heroic, and hatred of idolatry
so strong, the Puritans might well find sufficient authority for
removing from Westminster Abbey the images of the Virgin, which, in
their opinion, had been worshipped, and before which lamps had been
perpetually burned. If we can imagine an English king breaking to
pieces the shrine of the Confessor in the Abbey, or a French king
destroying the sacred ampulla of Rheims or the _goupillon_ of St.
Eligius, on the ground that many regarded them with superstitious
reverence, we may measure the effect produced by this startling act of
Puritan zeal on the part of Hezekiah.
"And he called it _Nehushtan_." If this rendering--in which our A.V. and
R.V. follow the LXX. and the Vulgate--be correct, Hezekiah justified the
iconoclasm by a brilliant play of words.[490] The Hebrew words for "a
serpent" (_nachash_) and for brass (_nechosheth_) are closely akin to
each other; and the king showed his just estimate of the relic which had
been so shamefully abused by contemptuously designating it--as it was in
itself and apart from its sacred historic associations--"nehushtan," a
thing of brass. The rendering, however, is uncertain, for the phrase may
be impersonal--"one" or "they" called it Nehushtan[491]--in which case
the assonance had lost any ironic connotation.[492]
For this act of purity of worship, and for other reasons, the
historian calls Hezekiah the best of all the kings of Judah, superior
alike to all his predecessors and all his successors. He regarded him
as coming up to the Deuteronomic ideal, and says that therefore "the
Lord was with him, and he prospered whithersoever he went forth."
The date of this great reformation is rendered uncertain by the
impossibility of ascertaining the exact order of Isaiah's prophecies.
The most probable view is that it was gradual, and some of the king's
most effective measures may not have been carried out till after the
deliverance from Assyria. It is clear, however, that the wisdom of
Hezekiah and his counsellors began from the first to uplift Judah from
the degradation and decrepitude to which it had sunk under the reign of
Ahaz. The boy-king found a wretched state of affairs at his accession.
His father had bequeathed to him "an empty treasury, a ruined peasantry,
an unprotected frontier, and a shattered army";[493] but although he was
still the vassal of Assyria, he reverted to the ideas of his
great-grandfather Uzziah. He strengthened the city, and enabled it to
stand a siege by improving the water-supply. Of these labours we have,
in all probability, a most interesting confirmation in the inscription
by Hezekiah's engineers, discovered in 1880, on the rocky walls of the
subterranean tunnel (_siloh_) between the spring of Gihon and the Pool
of Siloam.[494] He encouraged agriculture, the storage of produce, and
the proper tendance of flocks and herds, so that he acquired wealth
which dimly reminded men of the days of Solomon.
There is little doubt that he early meditated revolt from Assyria; for
renewed faithfulness to Jehovah had elevated the moral tone, and
therefore the courage and hopefulness, of the whole people. The
Forty-Sixth Psalm, whatever may be its date, expresses the invincible
spirit of a nation which in its penitence and self-purification began
to feel itself irresistible, and could sing:--
"God is our hope and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved,
Though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of
God,
The Holy City where dwells the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; therefore shall she not be
shaken:
God shall help her, and that right early.
Heathens raged and kingdoms trembled:
He lifted His voice--the earth melted away.
Jehovah of Hosts is with us;
Elohim of Jacob is our refuge."[495]
It was no doubt the spirit of renewed confidence which led Hezekiah to
undertake his one military enterprise--the chastisement of the
long-troublesome Philistines. He was entirely successful. He not only
won back the cities which his father had lost,[496] but he also
dispossessed them of their own cities, even unto Gaza, which was their
southernmost possession--"from the tower of the watchman to the fenced
city."[497] There can be no doubt that this act involved an almost open
defiance of the Assyrian King; but if Hezekiah dreamed of independence,
it was essential for him to be free from the raids and the menace of a
neighbour so dangerous as Philistia, and so inveterately hostile. It is
not improbable that he may have devoted to this war the money which
would otherwise have gone to pay the tribute to Shalmaneser or Sargon,
which had been continued since the date of the appeal of Ahaz to
Tiglath-Pileser II. When Sargon applied for the tribute Hezekiah refused
it, and even omitted to send the customary present.
It is clear that in this line of conduct the king was following the
exhortations of Isaiah. It showed no small firmness of character that
he was able to choose a decided course amid the chaos of contending
counsels. Nothing but a most heroic courage could have enabled him, at
any period of his reign, to defy that dark cloud of Assyrian war which
ever loomed on the horizon, and from which but little sufficed to
elicit the destructive lightning-flash.
There were three permanent parties in the Court of Hezekiah, each
incessantly trying to sway the king to its own counsels, and each
representing those counsels as indispensable to the happiness, and
even to the existence, of the State.
I. There was the Assyrian party, urging with natural vehemence that
the fierce northern king was as irresistible in power as he was
terrible in vengeance. The fearful cruelties which had been committed
at Beth-Arbel, the devastation and misery of the Trans-Jordanic
tribes, the obliteration and deportation of the heavily afflicted
districts of Zebulon, Naphtali, and the way of the sea in Galilee of
the nations, the already inevitable and imminent destruction of
Samaria and her king and the whole Northern Kingdom, together with
that certain deportation of its inhabitants of which the fatal policy
had been established by Tiglath-Pileser, would constitute weighty
arguments against resistance. Such considerations would appeal
powerfully to the panic of the despondent section of the community,
which was only actuated, as most men are, by considerations of
ordinary political expediency. The foul apparition of the Ninevites,
which for five centuries afflicted the nations, is now only visible to
us in the bas-reliefs and inscriptions unearthed from their burnt
palaces. There they live before us in their own sculptures, with their
"thickset, sensual figures," and the expression of calm and settled
ferocity on their faces, exhibiting a frightful nonchalance as they
look on at the infliction of diabolical atrocities upon their
vanquished enemies. But in the eighth century before Christ they were
visible to all the eastern world in the exuberance of the most brutal
parts of the nature of man. Men had heard how, a century earlier,
Assurnazipal boasted that he had "dyed the mountains of the Nairi with
blood like wool"; how he had flayed captive kings alive, and dressed
pillars with their skins; how he had walled up others alive, or
impaled them on stakes; how he had burnt boys and girls alive, put out
eyes, cut off hands, feet, ears, and noses, pulled out the tongues of
his enemies, and "at the command of Assur his god" had flung their
limbs to vultures and eagles, to dogs and bears. The Jews, too, must
have realised with a vividness which is to us impossible the cruel
nature of the usurper Sargon. He is represented on his monuments as
putting out with his own hands the eyes of his miserable captives;
while, to prevent them from flinching when the spear which he holds in
his hand is plunged into their eye-sockets, a hook is inserted
through their nose and lips and held fast with a bridle. Can we not
imagine the pathos with which this party would depict such horrors to
the tremblers of Judah? Would they not bewail the fanaticism which led
the prophets to seduce their king into the suicidal policy of defying
such a power? To these men the sole path of national safety lay in
continuing to be quiet vassals and faithful tributaries of these
destroyers of cities and treaders-down of foes.
II. Then there was the Egyptian party, headed probably by the powerful
Shebna, the chancellor.[498] His foreign name, the fact that his
father is not mentioned, and the question of Isaiah--"What hast thou
here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a
sepulchre here?"--seem to indicate that he was by birth a foreigner,
perhaps a Syrian.[499] The prophet, indignant at his powerful
interference with domestic politics, threatens him, in words of
tremendous energy, with exile and degradation.[500] He lost his place
of chancellor, and we next find him in the inferior, though still
honourable, office of secretary (_sopher_, 2 Kings xviii. 18), while
Eliakim had been promoted to his vacant place (Isa. xxii. 21). Perhaps
he may have afterwards repented, and the doom have been
lightened.[501] Circumstances at any rate reduced him from the
scornful spirit which seems to have marked his earlier opposition to
the prophetic counsels, and perhaps the powerful warning and menace of
Isaiah may have exercised an influence on his mind.
III. The third party, if it could even be called a party, was that of
Isaiah and a few of the faithful, aided no doubt by the influence of
the prophecies of Micah. Their attitude to both the other parties was
antagonistic.
i. As regards the Assyrian, they did not attempt to minimise the
danger. They represented the peril from the kingdom of Nineveh as
God's appointed scourge for the transgressions of Judah, as it had
been for the transgressions of Israel.
Thus Micah sees in imagination the terrible march of the invader by
Gath, Akko, Beth-le-Aphrah, Maroth, Lachish, and Adullam. He plays with
bitter anguish on the name of each town as an omen of humiliation and
ruin, and calls on Zion to make herself bald for the children of her
delight, and to enlarge her baldness as the vultures, because they are
gone into captivity.[502] He turns fiercely on the greedy grandees, the
false prophets, the blood-stained princes, the hireling priests, the
bribe-taking soothsayers, who were responsible for the guilt which
should draw down the vengeance. He ends with the fearful prophecy--which
struck a chill into men's hearts a century later, and had an important
influence on Jewish history--"Therefore, because of you shall Zion be
ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become ruins, and the hill of the
Temple as heights in the wood";--though there should be an ultimate
deliverance from Migdal-Eder, and a remnant should be saved.[503]
Similar to Micah's, and possibly not uninfluenced by it, is Isaiah's
imaginary picture of the march of Assyria, which must have been full
of terror to the poor inhabitants of Jerusalem.[504]
"He is come to Aiath!
He is passed through Migron!
At Michmash he layeth up his baggage:
They are gone over the pass:
'Geba,' they cry, 'is our lodging.'
Ramah trembleth:
Gibeah of Saul is fled!
Raise thy shrill cries, O daughter of Gallim!
Hearken, O Laishah! Answer her, O Anathoth!
Madmenah is in wild flight (?).
The inhabitants of Gebim gather their stuff to flee.
This very day shall he halt at Nob.
He shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion,
The hill of Jerusalem."
Yet Isaiah, and the little band of prophets, in spite of their perils,
did _not_ share the views of the Assyrian party or counsel submission.
On the contrary, even as they contemplate in imagination this terrific
march of Sargon, they threaten Assyria. The Assyrian might smite Judah,
but God should smite the Assyrians. He boasts that he will rifle the
riches of the people as one robs the eggs of a trembling bird, which
does not dare to cheep or move the wing.[505] But Isaiah tells him that
he is but the axe boasting against the hewer, and the wooden staff
lifting itself up against its wielder. Burning should be scattered over
his glory. The Lord of hosts should lop his boughs with terror, and a
mighty one should hew down the crashing forest of his haughty Lebanon.
ii. Still more indignant were the true prophets against those who
trusted in an alliance with Egypt. From first to last Isaiah warned
Ahaz, and warned Hezekiah, that no reliance was to be placed on
Egyptian promises--that Egypt was but like the reed of his own Nile.
He mocked the hopes placed on Egyptian intervention as being no less
sure of disannulment than a covenant with death and an agreement with
Sheol. This rebellious reliance on the shadow of Egypt was but the
weaving of an unrighteous web, and the adding of sin to sin. It should
lead to nothing but shame and confusion, and the Jewish ambassadors to
Zoan and Egypt should only have to blush for a people that could
neither help nor profit. And then branding Egypt with the old
insulting name of Rahab, or "Blusterer," he says,--
"Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose.
Therefore have I called her 'Rahab, that sitteth still.'"
Indolent braggart--that was the only designation which she deserved!
Intrigue and braggadocio--smoke and lukewarm water,--this was all
which could be expected from _her_![506]
Such teaching was eminently distasteful to the worldly politicians,
who regarded faith in Jehovah's intervention as no better than
ridiculous fanaticism, and forgot God's wisdom in the inflated
self-satisfaction of their own. The priests--luxurious, drunken,
scornful--were naturally with them. Men were fine and stylish, and in
their religious criticisms could not express too lofty a contempt for
any one who, like Isaiah, was too sincere to care for the mere
polishing of phrases, and too much in earnest to shrink from
reiteration. In their self-indulgent banquets these sleek, smug
euphemists made themselves very merry over Isaiah's simplicity,
reiteration, and directness of expression. With hiccoughing insolence
they asked whether they were to be treated like weaned babes; and then
wagging their heads, as their successors did at Christ upon the cross,
they indulged themselves in a mimicry, which they regarded as witty,
of Isaiah's style and manner. With him they said it is all,--
"Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav,
Quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav,
Z'eir sham, Z'eir sham!"--
which may be imitated thus:--With him it is always "Bit and bit, bid
and bid, for-bid and for-bid, for_bid_ and for_bid_, a lit-tle bit
here, a lit-tle bit there."[507] Monosyllable is heaped on
monosyllable; and no doubt the speakers tipsily adopted the tones of
fond mothers addressing their babes and weanlings. Using the Hebrew
words, one of these shameless roysterers would say, "_Tsav-la-tsav,
tsav-la-tsav, quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav, Z'eir sham, Z'eir
sham_,--that is how that simpleton Isaiah speaks." And then doubtless
a drunken laugh would go round the table, and half a dozen of them
would be saying thus, "_Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav_," at once. They
derided Isaiah just as the philosophers of Athens derided St. Paul--as
a mere _spermologos_, "a seed-pecker!"[508] or "picker-up of
learning's crumbs." Is all this petty monosyllabism fit teaching for
persons like us? Are we to be taught by copybooks? Do we need the
censorship of this Old Morality?
On whom, full of the fire of God, Isaiah turned, and told these
scornful tipsters, who lorded it over God's heritage in Jerusalem,
that, since they disdained his stammerings, God would teach them by
men of strange lips and alien tongue. They might mimic the style of
the Assyrians also if they liked; but they should fall backward, and
be broken, and snared, and taken.[509]
It must not be forgotten that the struggle of the prophets against these
parties was far more severe than we might suppose. The politicians of
expediency had supporters among the leading princes. The priests--whom
the prophets so constantly and sternly denounce--adhered to them; and,
as usual, the women were all of the priestly party (comp. Isa. xxxii.
9-20). The king, indeed, was inclined to side with his prophet, but the
king was terribly overshadowed by a powerful and worldly aristocracy, of
which the influence was almost always on the side of luxury, idolatry,
and oppression.
iii. But what had Isaiah to offer in the place of the policy of these
worldly and sacerdotal advisers of the king? It was the simple command
"Trust in the Lord." It was the threefold message "God is high; God
is near; God is Love."[510] Had he not told Ahaz not to fear the
"stumps of two smouldering torches," when Rezin and Pekah seemed
awfully dangerous to Judah? So he tells them now that, though their
sins had necessitated the rushing stroke of Assyrian judgment, Zion
should not be utterly destroyed. In Isaiah "the calmness requisite for
sagacity rose from faith." Mr. Bagehot might have appealed to Isaiah's
whole policy in illustration of what he has so well described as the
military and political benefits of religion. Monotheism is of
advantage to men not only "by reason of the high concentration of
steady feeling which it produces, but also for the mental calmness and
sagacity which surely springs from a pure and vivid conviction that
the Lord reigneth."[511] Isaiah's whole conviction might have been
summed up in the name of the king himself: "Jehovah maketh strong."
King Hezekiah, apparently not a man of much personal force, though of
sincere piety, was naturally distracted by the counsels of these three
parties: and who can judge him severely if, beset with such terrific
dangers, he occasionally wavered, now to one side, now to the other?
On the whole, it is clear that he was wise and faithful, and deserves
the high eulogy that his faith failed not. Naturally he had not within
his soul that burning light of inspiration which made Isaiah so sure
that, even though clouds and darkness might lower on every side, God
was an eternal Sun, which flamed for ever in the zenith, even when not
visible to any eye save that of Faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[480] The first of these dates is highly uncertain, as is the entire
chronology of this reign. I follow Kittel.
[481] 2 Chron. xxxi. 2-21.
[482] Josiah did this many years later (2 Kings xxiii. 13).
[483] Gen. xxxv. 14. See Spencer, _De legg. Hebr._, i. 444; Bochart,
_Canaan_, ii. 2.
[484] Exod. xxiv. 4. Comp. Deut. vii. 5, xii. 3, xvi. 22; Lev. xxvi.
1; 2 Chron. xiv. 3, xxxi. 1; Jer. xliii. 13; Hos. x. 2; Mic. v. 13
(where the A.V. often has "statue" or "image"). Comp. Clem. Alex.,
_Strom._, i. 24; Arnob., _c. Gent._, i. 39.
[485] The rendering "grove" in the A.V. is borrowed from the ἄλσος of
the LXX., and the _lucus_ of the Vulgate. On the connection of the
Asherah with the sacred tree of the Assyrian, see my article on
"Grove" in Smith's _Dict. of the Bible_; and Fergusson, _Nineveh and
Persepolis Restored_, 299-304. On the worship of Asherah, see 1 Kings
xv. 13; 2 Kings xxi. 3-7, xxiii. 4; 2 Chron. xv. 16; Judg. iii. 5-7,
vi. 25, xviii. 18. Baudissin in _Herzog Realencykl._, _s.v._ We may
well be startled by the prevalence of idolatry in Jerusalem revealed
in Isa. x. 11, xxvii. 9, xxix. 11, xxx. 9, 22, etc.
[486] See Wellhausen, _Hist._, 235; Stade, _Gesch. d. V. I._, 460; W.
R. Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 171; Cheyne, _Isaiah_, ii. 303;
Renan, _Hist. du Peuple d'Israel_, i. 230 (Prof. Driver, _Bibl.
Dict._, i. 258, 2nd edition).
[487] _Hierozoicon_, ii. 3, § 13.
[488] Jer. xliv. 17. In the collection of antiquities of Baron
Ustinoff at Jaffa are five or six dragon-headed serpents, with ears of
copper and hollow inside. They are ancient, and were perhaps used as
talismanic copies of Nehushtan.
[489] If this was a genuine relic, it must have been nearly eight
hundred years old. It is never mentioned elsewhere.
[490] נְחֻשׁתָּן, "a brazen thing." The king certainly showed a horror
of sacerdotal imposture and religious materialism. Yet Renan argues,
from Isa. x. 11, xxvii. 9, xxx. 9, 22, that he must have had a certain
amount of tolerance. See _Hist. du Peuple d'Israel_, iii. 30.
[491] 2 Kings xviii. 4. _Vayyikra_ is like the English indefinite
plural. The impersonal rendering (as in other passages) is adopted in
the Targum of Jonathan, the Peshito, etc., and by Luther, Bunsen,
Ewald, and most moderns.
[492] This relic is still shown in the Church of St. Ambrose at Milan.
It used to be the popular notion that it would hiss at the end of the
world. The history of the Milan "relic" is that a Milanese envoy to
the court of the Emperor John Zimisces at Constantinople chose it from
the imperial treasures, being assured that it was made of the same
metal that Hezekiah had broken up (Sigonius, _Hist. Regn. Ital._,
vii.). It is probably a symbol used by some ophite sect. See Dean
Plumptre, _Dict. of Bibl._, _s.v._ "Serpent."
[493] 2 Kings xvi. 8; Driver, _Isaiah_, 68.
[494] The diverting of the water-courses enabled him to bring the water
into the city by a subterranean tunnel. The Saracens took a similar
precaution (Gul. Tyr., viii. 7). See Appendix II., where the inscription
is given; and compare 2 Chron. xxxii. 30. Apparently it carried the
water of Gihon to the south-east gate, where were the king's gardens.
Ecclus. xlviii. 17: "Ezekias fortified his city, and brought in water
into the midst thereof: he digged the hard rock with iron, and made
wells for water." For "water" the MSS. read "Gog," a corruption probably
for ἀγωγὸν, "a conduit" (Geiger) or "Gihon" (Fritzsche).
[495] Psalm xlvi. 1-11.
[496] 2 Chron. xxviii. 18.
[497] 2 Kings xviii. 8: comp. xvii. 9. Josephus says that he failed to
take Gath (_Antt._, IX. xiii. 3).
[498] A.V., "treasurer" (_soken_; lit., "deputy" or "associate": Isa.
xxii. 15). He was "over the household." The Egyptian alliance had for
Judah, as Renan points out, some of the fascination that a Russian
alliance has often had for troubled spirits in France (_Hist. du
Peuple d'Israel_, iii. 12).
[499] Renan says that he may have been a Sebennyite, and his name
Sebent.
[500] Isa. xxii. 17, 18: "Behold, the Lord shall sling and sling, and
pack and pack, and toss and toss thee away like a ball into a distant
land; and there thou shalt die" (Stanley). The versions vary
considerably.
[501] Isa. xxxvii. 2. There can be little doubt that there were not
_two_ Shebnas.
[502] Mic. i. 10-16. See the writer's _Minor Prophets_ ("Men of the
Bible" Series), pp. 130-133, for an explanation of this enigmatic
prophecy.
[503] Jer. xxvi. 8-24. He tells us that the prophecy was delivered in
the reign of Hezekiah. See my _Minor Prophets_, pp. 123-140.
[504] Isa. x. 28-32. It would involve a cross-country route over
several deep ravines--_e.g._, the Wady Suweinit, near Michmash. In 1
Sam. xiv. 2, Thenius, for "Migron," reads "the Precipice." Some take
Aiath for Ai, three miles south of Bethel. Renan says (_Hist. du
Peuple d'Israel_, iii.): "Nom d'Anathoth, arrangé symboliquement."
[505] Isa. x. 14. The metaphor of a bird's nest occurs more than once
in the boastful Assyrian records.
[506] Isa. xxx. 1-7. Rahab means "fierceness," "insolence." For the
various uses of the word, see Job xxvi. 12; Isa. li. 9, 10, 15; Psalm
lxxxix. 9, 10, lxxxvii. 4, 5.
[507] See Dr. S. Cox (_Expositor_, i. 98-104) on Isa. xxviii. 7-13.
[508] Acts xvii. 18.
[509] Isa. xxviii. 7-22.
[510] Professor Smith, _Isaiah_, i. 12.
[511] Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, p. 73; Smith, _Isaiah_, 109.