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Capricious innovations without number, and the gratification of the worst passions mark the rule of this as of every other arbitrary prince; and soon after the beginning of this reign it could be said that children and women were become the rulers of the people.1

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that many in the nation became dissatisfied with the rule of the house of David. When Ahaz, in his terror at the news of the advance of the allied kings of Damascus and Samaria against Jerusalem, lost all composure, and his want of courage threw the whole people into confusion, many residents in the capital displayed an illconcealed joy at the progress of the enemy, and would have readily engaged in plans for the complete overthrow of the Davidic dynasty. All the more energetic were Isaiah's labours at this critical time. It was clear to his mind that there was little to be dreaded from the alliance of two kingdoms which, like these, had long ago decayed, but everything from the Assyrian power. He sought accordingly in every way to excite in the king that higher courage and faith in which he was deficient, as well as to prevent him from unnecessarily calling in the aid of the Assyrians. The wavering people be admonished in stern words of their duty towards the house of David, which had been for so long a period the firmest protection and the best hope of Judah. With the utmost confidence, he proclaimed the divine decree of the speedy fall of Samaria and Damascus by the Assyrians, but repeated his forebodings and threats that Judah would likewise have to be chastised by the Assyrians with a severity proportioned to the need of it which was displayed by the grievous unbelief of Ahaz and his people.2

The danger of an attack by the two kings on Jerusalem did in reality pass by for the time; but in subsequent years the war was carried on 3 by Ahaz in other directions with great want of success; he lost all the conquests of his two predecessors, and had to suffer so severely from the inroads of the Idumeans and Philistines, that he could hit on no other expedient for procuring aid except calling in the Assyrians. This led to the fulfilment not only of Isaiah's foreboding of the approaching fall of Damascus and the terrible humiliation of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, but also of his warning threats of a chastisement of

the peculiar view and method of expression of the last narrator. On the plural in 2 Chron. xxviii. 3 cf. above, p. 160 note 1.

Is. iii. 12. The expression has a general significance, and should not be referred

specially to king Ahaz alone.

2 Is. vii. 1-ix. 6, with which c. vi. is connected.

3

8 P. 159 sq.

Judah by the Assyrians. For the moment, it is true, Ahaz was relieved from the most pressing danger, and after Samaria and Damascus had been compelled to conclude peace with him, might proceed with greater success to rid himself of the pettier foes who had lately risen against him.' But the price paid for the Assyrian aid was much more than the treasures of the temple and his palace; it was the independence and honour of the realm itself.

2

But the idea of the honour of his kingdom never presented itself to this capricious king. After the conquest of Damascus by Tiglath-Pileser, he repaired thither humbly to pay homage to the Assyrian monarch. But in the midst of this dishonourable submission where a foreign potentate was concerned, he did not forget to satisfy his petty lust of power where his own subjects were concerned. He happened to see in the principal temple at Damascus an altar, the shape of which pleased him better than that of the brazen altar in the forecourt of the temple at Jerusalem. It is quite likely that the shape of this altar, which was doubtless tolerably new, designed in a city where the arts, as many traces show, were then in a highly flourishing condition, may have had many advantages over that of the old Mosaic altar; but the latter was venerable by its antiquity, and no innovations of the kind are readily received by any nation at the hands of such a king as Ahaz. However, he had the pattern of it sent at once to Jerusalem, with orders to the high priest Urijah to construct a similar one and put it in the place of the old altar. Urijah, who is otherwise known to us as a person deserving of respect, was obliged to yield to this arbitrary command; 3 the new altar, upon which henceforth all sacrifices were to be made, was consecrated by Ahaz, who offered sacrifice with his own hand; while the old altar was removed to the north side of the court, and remained there unused. In the course of the following years, however, he felt the burthen of the

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oppress Ahaz: this is contrary to the older and more exact reminiscence; 2) that Ahaz had further been so foolish in this distress as to sacrifice to the gods of Damascus; but, according to the older narrative, it was only a strange altar with the appearance of which Ahaz had, foolishly enough, been pleased. Similarly, the Chronicler represents (ver. 24 sq.) in his own way what is otherwise related in 2 Kings xvi. 17 sq.; hence the supposition that Ahaz finally shut up the temple altogether is not strictly historical.

4 P. 145 sq.

supremacy of the Assyrians so oppressive, that he even had the bronze taken off the larger pieces of the temple furniture, and stripped the costly royal entrance from the palace to the temple as well as the royal Sabbath pulpit of all their ornaments, simply in order to keep the dreaded Assyrian monarch favourably disposed towards him by constantly sending him fresh and valuable presents. All the movable treasures of the temple he had already made away with to the Assyrians before.

Under such oppressive conditions it was a great thing for the faith in a better future, and the firm determination to hold aloof from all the perversities of the age, to remain erect even if only in a small circle of true followers of the eternal religion. Isaiah was the centre of such a circle. With his family and his few faithful disciples he maintained himself all the more resolutely disengaged from the errors which disfigured the times; and lived his best life in the midst of eternal truths and hopes." By the length and consistency of his pious labours, he attracted to himself so much of men's higher confidence, that younger prophets like Micah (and others) rose up quite in his spirit to take part in his work; and even the son and heir of Ahaz, the flower of the young men of the rising generation, learned to share his purpose and his faith.

2. The successor of Ahaz was Hezekiah,3 one of the most splendid princes who ever adorned the throne of David, and whose reign of nine-and-twenty years exhibits an almost unclouded picture of persistent struggles against the most embarrassed and difficult circumstances crowned with elevating victories. He was thoroughly noble, wanting neither in the military spirit nor in personal valour,1 yet devoted by preference to the arts of peace. Careful economy in the kingdom and the promotion of the cultivation of the land were objects which he, like his great grandfather Uzziah, had very much at heart; and even in unfavourable times his treasury was not empty.5 The tenderness of his disposition and the thankfulness of his spirit. are proved most clearly by a hymn of his own composition, which has been preserved." Himself a poet, like his great an

12 Kings xvi. 17 sq.; cf. iii. pp. 251, 244. ' is a covered seat or stand; and is to change, i.e. here to disfigure, strip of its ornament; and it is easily perceived that the last words, 'from fear of (or shorter for) the Assyrian king,' are only a brief expression to indicate what is obvious to everyone.

2 Cf. the beautiful allusions Is. viii.

11-18.

In Is. i. 1, Hos. i. 1, Mic. i. 1, and in the Chronicles, the longer and more original form of the name is found Jehezekiah; in the LXX 'EČeklas.

4 2 Kings xx. 20.

5 2 Chron. xxxii. 27-29, cf. with 2 Kings xx. 13, and that again with xviii. 15.

A. B. i. p. 161 sqq. 2nd ed.
6 Is. xxxviii. 9-20; cf. the Dichter des

cestor David, he reverenced the ancient treasures of literature; and, by means of competent persons at his court, made a collection, as we are distinctly informed, of the Solomonic proverbs.1 Faithfully devoted to the religion of Jahveh in the sublime form in which it was at that time conceived by great prophets, he not only expelled all traces of the heathen religions proper, but he was also the first to attempt to destroy those remains of the ancient Israelitish religion with which, in the course of time, all sorts of superstition had become firmly connected, and which were in too harsh contrariety to the development which the higher religion had been undergoing for several centuries in Jerusalem. It is distinctly stated that he removed the so-called brazen god, i.e. the brazen serpent, before which incense and prayer were offered, as though Moses had intended it for an idol.3 This purification of divine worship he certainly commenced immediately after his accession: but it could not be carried generally through to the idolatrous images of households among the nation, so that it was not till the following century that king Josiah recommenced and followed out with greater severity what Hezekiah had begun. And it will be still more readily understood that, with all his excellence, the king could not succeed all at once in freeing the general moral condition of the people from the faults of the age; but he allowed Isaiah and the other great prophets of the time unrestrained speech concerning them, and thus attacked them with the best available weapons. What rare results were now rendered possible by the free interaction of Isaiah the truly kingly prophet with a young king like Hezekiah!

5

The conduct of such a prince towards the Assyrians could not fail to be different from that of Ahaz. It was just at that time that the Assyrians, during the reign of Shalmaneser, stood at the summit of their proud aspirations, and threatened the freedom of all the various nations as far as Egypt, after their swelling spirit of victory had only once been broken on the island of Tyre. With truthful insight the great prophets in Judah foretold, accordingly, the overthrow of all the kingdoms in the south-west of Asia by the Assyrians. Isaiah especially fixed his

1 Prov. xxv. 1.
2 2 Kings xviii. 4.

See ii. pp. 125, 176 sq. It might have been expected that this image would have continued to be visited by pilgrims in the desert where it was set up by Moses; but later writers inform us it was placed in the temple at Jerusalem, a statement which has made its way from Jewish writings

even into Jalâleldîn's Hist. of Jerus. (ed. Reynolds, p. 148).

This is also clear from the way in which the Assyrians express themselves at the assault of Jerusalem, Is. x. 10, xxxvi. 7, 2 Kings xviii. 22.

5 This is clear from expressions like Is. i. 29–31, xxx. 22.

6 P. 162 sq.

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eyes during those years with the more severity on the destinies of all the states round about Judah, and announced to everyone of them their ruin at the hands of the Assyrians, which each seemed to have merited by its special transgression against the eternal religion.' But the heart of every good Judahite was moved with constantly growing joy at the remembrance of the Davidic sanctuary at Jerusalem; and if in the future it seemed as if everything were unstable, and nothing were capable of remaining erect beneath the crushing power of the Assyrian, still to the pious soul of almost every believer it was inconceivable that Zion too, and with it, as it appeared, the foundation of rock on which were reared the true community and religion, could be shaken by heathens and sink into the dust entirely overthrown. Though the Assyrian storm from the north-east should dash to the ground all the kingdoms of the earth, yet round Mount Zion Jahveh himself would encamp as a wall of protection;--such was the prophecy of an unknown prophet under Ahaz, whose words have been preserved; and while Isaiah certainly considers the Assyrians as a rod of chastisement wielded by the hand of Jahveh, which is destined to come upon Judah as on every other people, yet his heart starts up trembling to resist the idea that the sanctuary at Zion could fall too, and the throne of David be wholly overturned. The simple country prophet Micah, with still bolder and more consequential gaze into the future, certainly announced in the reign of Hezekiah that Jerusalem also with the temple itself would be completely destroyed; but though his evasive yet daring utterance was not unremembered, it is equally certain that it found then but little credence. If, therefore, the new king should venture to maintain a greater independence towards the Assyrians, his spirit could rest in firm confidence on something in Israel and Zion which could never perish. It was a bold venture, certainly, in that age; only it was one worthy of a true king in this community; and it was this alone which could confer on the impending collision between the two powers that significance for the higher religion which it afterwards actually possessed. To this must be added that the existing obligations towards the Assyrians were considered to have expired on the death of the late king. In a word, Hezekiah did not, like Ahaz, seek the aid of the Assyrian monarch, and consequently neither tendered him allegiance nor sent him tribute.

1 See the Propheten des A. B. i. p. 277 sqq. 2 Zech. ix. 1-8.

Mic. iii. 12; cf. Jer. xxvi. 18 sq.

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4 That the war became a real religious war is clear from Is. x. 10 sq., 2 Kings xviii. 22 sqq., and other evidences.

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