The Expositor's Bible Part 34

The question whether the portent of the destruction of the a.s.syrian was identical with that related by Herodotus has never been finally answered. Herodotus places the scene of the disaster at Pelusium,[606]

and tells this story:--Sennacherib, King of the Arabs and a.s.syrians, invaded Egypt. Its king, Sethos, of the Tanite dynasty, in despair entered the temple of his G.o.d Pthah (or Vulcan), and wept.[607] The G.o.d appeared to him with promises of deliverance, and Sethos marched to meet Sennacherib with an army of poor artisans, since he was a priest, and the caste of warriors was ill-affected to him. In the night the G.o.d Pthah sent hosts of field-mice, which gnawed the quivers, bow-strings, and s.h.i.+eld-straps of the a.s.syrians, who consequently fled, and were ma.s.sacred. An image of the priest-king with a mouse in his hand stood in the temple of Pthah, and on its pedestal the inscription, which might also point the moral of the Biblical narrative, ?? ?? t?? ??e?? e?se?? ?st? ("Let him who looks on me be pious"). Josephus seems so far to accept this version that he refers to Herodotus, and says that Sennacherib's failure was the result of a frustration in Egypt.[608] The _mouse_ in the hand of the statue probably originated the details of the legend; but according to Horapollion it was the hieroglyphic sign of destruction by plague.[609] Bahr says that it was also the symbol of Mars. Readers of Homer will remember the t.i.tle Apollo _Smintheus_ ("the destroyer of mice"), and the story that mice were wors.h.i.+pped in the Troas because they gnawed the bow-strings of the enemy.

But whatever may have been the mode of the retribution, or the scene in which it took place, it is certainly historical. The outlines of the narrative in the sacred historian are identical with those in the a.s.syrian records. The annals of Sennacherib tell us the four initial stages of the great campaign in the conquest of Phnicia, of Askelon, and of Ekron, the defeat of the Egyptians at Altaqu, and the earlier hostilities against Hezekiah. The Book of Kings concentrates our attention on the details of the close of the invasion. On this point, whether from accident, or because Sennacherib did not choose to register his own calamity, and the frustration of the G.o.ds of whose protection he boasted, the a.s.syrian records are silent. Baffled conquerors rarely dwell on their own disasters. It is not in the despatches of Napoleon that we shall find the true story of his abandonment of Syria, of the defeats of his forces in Spain, or of his retreat from Moscow.[610]

The great lesson of the whole story is the reward and the triumph of indomitable faith. Faith may still burn with a steady flame when the difficulties around it seem insuperable, when all refutation of the attacks of its enemies seems to be impossible, when Hope itself has sunk into white ashes in which scarcely a gleam of heat remains.

Isaiah had nothing to rely upon; he had no argument wherewith to furnish Hezekiah beyond the bare and apparently unmeaning promise, "Jehovah is our Judge; Jehovah is our Lawgiver; Jehovah is our King.

He will save us." It was a magnificent vindication of his inspired conviction, when all turned out--not indeed in minute details, but in every essential fact--exactly as he had prophesied from the first.

Even in B.C. 740 he had declared that the sins of Judah deserved and would receive condign punishment, though a remnant should be saved.[611] That the retribution would come from some foreign enemy--a.s.syria or Egypt, or both--he felt sure. Jehovah would hiss for the fly in the uttermost ca.n.a.ls of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of a.s.syria, and both should swarm in the crevices of the rocks, and over the pastures.[612] Later on in 732, in the reign of Ahaz, he pointed to a.s.syria,[613] as the destined scourge, and he realised this still more clearly in 725 and 721, when Shalmaneser and Sargon were tearing Samaria to pieces.[614] Contrary, indeed, to his expectation, the a.s.syrians did not then destroy Jerusalem, or even formally besiege it. The revolt from a.s.syria, the reliance on Egypt, did not for a moment blind his judgment or alter his conviction; and in 701 it came true when Sennacherib was on the march for Palestine.[615] Yet he never wavered in the apparently impossible conclusion, that, in spite of all, in spite even of his own darker prophecies (x.x.xii. 14), Jerusalem shall in some Divine manner be saved.[616] The deliverance would be, as he declared from first to last, the work of Jehovah, not the work of man,[617] and because of it Sennacherib would return to his own land and perish there.[618] The details might be dim and wavering; the result was certain. Isaiah was no thaumaturge, no peeping wizard, no muttering necromancer, no monthly prognosticator.[619] He was a prophet--that is, an inspired moral and spiritual teacher who was able to foresee and to foretell, not in their details, but in their broad outlines, the events yet future, because he was enabled to read them by the eye of faith ere they had yet occurred. His faith convinced him that predictions founded on eternal principles have all the certainty of a law, and that G.o.d's dealings with men and nations in the future can be seen in the light of experience derived from the history of the past. Courage, zeal, unquenchable hope, indomitable resolution, spring from that perfect confidence in G.o.d which is the natural reward of innocence and faithfulness. Isaiah trusted in G.o.d, and he knew that they who put their trust in Him can never be confounded.

No event produced a deeper impression on the minds of the Jews, though that impression was soon afterwards, for a time, obliterated.

Naturally, it elevated the authority of Isaiah into unquestioned pre-eminence during the reign of Hezekiah. It has left its echo, not only in his own triumphant paeans, but also in the Forty-Sixth Psalm, which the Septuagint calls "An ode to the a.s.syrian," and perhaps also in the Seventy-Fifth and Seventy-Sixth Psalms. In the minds of all faithful Israelites it established for ever the conviction that G.o.d had chosen Judah for Himself, and Israel for His own possession; that G.o.d was in the midst of Zion, and she should not be confounded: "G.o.d shall help her, and that right early." And it contains a n.o.ble and inspiring lesson for all time. "It is not without reason," says Dean Stanley, "that in the Churches of Moscow the exultation over the fall of Sennacherib is still read on the anniversary of the retreat of the French from Russia, or that Arnold, in his lectures on Modern History, in the impressive pa.s.sage in which he dwells on that great catastrophe, declared that for the memorable night of the frost in which twenty thousand horses perished, and the strength of the French army was utterly broken, he knew of no language so well fitted to describe it as the words in which Isaiah described the advance and destruction of the hosts of Sennacherib."[620]

They had been brought face to face, the two kings--Sennacherib and Hezekiah. One was the impious boaster who relied on his own strength, and on the mighty host which dried up rivers with their trampling march--the worldling who thought to lord it over the affrighted globe; the other was the poor kinglet of the Chosen People, with his one city and his enfeebled people, and his dominion not so large as one of the smallest English counties. But "one with G.o.d is irresistible," "one with G.o.d is always in a majority." The poor, weak prince triumphs over the terrific conqueror, because he trusts in Him to whom world-desolating tyrants are but as the small dust of the balance, and who "taketh up the isles as a very little thing."[621]

As a.s.syria now vanishes almost entirely from the history of the Chosen People, we may here recall with delight one large and loving prophecy, to show that the Hebrews were sometimes uplifted by the power of inspiration above the narrowness of a bigoted and exclusive spirit.

Desperately as Israel had suffered, both from Egypt and a.s.syria, Isaiah could still utter the glowing Messianic Prophecy which included the Gentiles in the privileges of the Golden Age to come. He foretold that--

"In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and a.s.syria, as a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, and a.s.syria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance."[622]

"That strain I heard was of a higher mood!"

King Hezekiah can have no finer panegyric than that of the son of Sirach: "Even the kings of Judah failed, for they forsook the law of the Most High: all except David, and Ezekias, and Josias failed."[623]

FOOTNOTES:

[560] Isa. x.x.xiii. 8.

[561] Isa. xx. 1.

[562] Jer. x.x.xix. 3. The meaning of the name is not certain. _Saris_, in Hebrew, is "eunuch"; but the word is not known in a.s.syrian records, and we should expect _Rabsarisim_, as in Dan. i. 3.

[563] Rabsak perhaps means _chief officer_ or vizier, and is Hebraised into Rabshakeh. Prof. G. A. Smith (_Isaiah_, p. 345) calls him "Sennacherib's Bismarck." Rabshakeh, usually rendered "chief cupbearer,"

is an Aramaised form of Rabsak (great chief); but we know of no chief cupbearer at the a.s.syrian court (Schrader, _K. A. T._, 199 f.).

[564] From an Apis-stele he seems to have reigned twenty-six years (B.C. 694-668?).

[565] Isa. xxii. 1-13.

[566] Eliakim. See Isa. xxii. 21, 22.

[567] "Vain words"; lit., "a word of the lips." LXX., ????? ?e?????.

[568] Comp. Isa. x.x.x. 1-7; Ezek. xxix. 6. It seems to be an over-refinement to suppose that Sennacherib refers to the divisions between Egypt and Ethiopia.

[569] 2 Kings xviii. 23, A.V.: "Let Hezekiah give pledges."

[570] Heb., _Aramith_.

[571] 2 Kings xviii. 28, where _stood_ should be rendered _came forward_.

[572] The coa.r.s.e expression is softened down by the Chronicler (2 Chron. x.x.xii. 18).

[573] The kings of a.s.syria usually called themselves "great king, mighty king, king of the mult.i.tude, king of the land a.s.sur."

[574] Every one must notice the glaring inconsistency between this _defiance_ of Jehovah and the previous claim to the possession of His sanction. On Hamath, Arpad, etc., see Schrader, ii. 7-10.

[575] Isa. x.x.xiii. 8: "He hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man."

[576] 1 Kings xx. 32; 2 Kings vi. 30.

[577] Sennacherib had already carried off vast numbers. See Isa. xxiv.

1-12; Demetrius _ap._ Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. 403.

[578] Isaiah's phrase, _na'ari melek_, "lads of the king," is contemptuous. LXX., pa?d???a.

[579] Heb., _ruach_; LXX., d?d?? ?? a?t? p?e?a. Theodoret calls this "spirit" _cowardice_ (t?? de???a? ??a? d?????).

[580] Libnah means "whiteness." Dean Stanley (_S. and P._, 207, 258) identifies it with a white-faced hill, the Blanchegarde of the Crusaders.

[581] The dates usually given are Sabaco, B.C. 725-712; Shabatok, 712-698; Tirhakah, 698-672. Manetho, ???a???; Strabo, ?e?????, ?

??????. He was third king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, and the greatest of the Egyptian sovereigns who came from Ethiopia. He reigned gloriously for many years. We see his figure at Medinet Abou, smiting ten captive princes with an iron mace; but he was finally defeated by Esarhaddon, and in 668 by a.s.surbanipal at Karbanit (Canopus). He is called by his conqueror "Tar-ku-u, King of Egypt and Cush" (Schrader, _K. A. T._, 336 ff.).

[582] Heb., _Sepharim_; Vulg., _litterae_; 2 Chron. x.x.xii. 17. The more ordinary term for a letter is _iggereth_.

[583] 2 Kings xix. 12 (Heb.); Ezek. xxvii. 23. On these places see Schrader, ii. 11, 12. It had been indeed Sennacherib's work "to reduce fenced cities to ruinous heaps." He boasts on the Bellino Cylinder, "Their smaller towns without number I overthrew, and reduced them to heaps of rubbish" (_Records of the Past_, i. 27).

[584] "It is a prayer without words, a prayer in action, which then pa.s.ses into a spoken prayer" (Delitzsch).

[585] The a.s.syrians are sometimes represented in their monuments as hewing idols to pieces in honour of their G.o.d a.s.sur (Botta, _Monum._, pl. 140).

[586] LXX., ???e?? t?? ?efa???, "a gesture of scorn" (Psalm xxii. 7, cix. 25; Lam. ii. 15). With the vaunts of Sennacherib compare Claudian, _De bell. Geth._, 526-532.

"c.u.m cesserit omnis Obsequiis natura meis? Subsidere nostris Sub pedibus montes, _arescere vidimus amnes_ ...

Fregi Alpes, _galeis Padum victricibus hausi_."

KEIL, _ad loc._

[587] Comp. 2 Chron. x.x.xiii. 11 (Heb.); Psalm x.x.xix. 1; Isa. x.x.x. 28; Ezek. x.x.xviii. 4, xxix. 4. The a.s.syrians drove a ring through the lower lip, the Babylonians through the nose. See Rawlinson, _Ancient Monarchies_, ii. 314, iii. 436.

[588] 2 Kings xix. 33. "The river of Egypt" (_Nachal-ha-Mizraim_) is the Wady-el-Arish.

[589] Isa. x. 33, 34, xi. 1, xiv. 8; Stanley, _Lectures_, ii. 410.

[590] ????. A sign "is a thing, an event, or an action intended as a pledge of the Divine certainty of another. Sometimes it is a miracle (Gen. iv. 15, Heb.), or a permanent symbol (Isa. viii. 18, xx. 3, x.x.xvii. 30; Jer. xliv. 29)" (Delitzsch).

[591] The first year they should eat _saphiach_ (LXX., a?t?ata; Vulg., _quae repereris_); the second year, _sachish_ (LXX., t?

??at?????ta; Vulg., _quae sponte nasc.u.n.tur_).