234 SUBJECTS OF SENNACHERIB. In Genesis xxxvii., and Job vi. 19, we have the caravans mentioned, and in Ezekiel xxvii., an ample account of the trade which they carried on; while Kedar, known by its tents of black hair-cloth, and rich in the flocks which formed its staple commerce, seems to have been distinguished from these purely trading tribes, by greater estrangement from civilized intercourse and courtesy, as might have been expected from their different habits.* Sir Henry Rawlinson finds the names of Tehaman (Teman), Damun, Kidar (Kedar), Khagarin (Hagarenes), and Nabaut (Nebaioth), in a list of the Aramæan tribes who lined the Tigris and Euphrates,' subjugated by Sennacherib, and from whom he carried off an enormous booty' of men, women, and cattle, of which the kinds and numbers are specified and among the countries whose kings. brought their accustomed tribute' to Sennacherib, he reads that of Huduma, or Edom.t * Song of Solomon i. 5; Isaiah xlii. 11; lx. 7; Ezek. xxvii. 21: Psalm cxx. 5; Jeremiah ii. 10. + Outline, pp. 19, 22. Compare Oppert, Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 42, 44, where the same names are found. CHAPTER XVI. ISAIAH XXII.-POLITICAL PARTIES AT JERUSALEM.-SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. -ELIAKIM AND THE MINORITY.-ISAIAH'S ATTACK ON SHEBNA. PRE PARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE.-TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM.-SITE OF ZION. 10 an ordinary Englishman, accustomed all his life to hear denunciations of the policy of the government followed by anticipations of the downfall of its author, and of the benefits which the country must expect from the new policy of his successor in the ministry, it may seem superfluous to examine seriously the notion that the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah consists of two separate prophecies, or that its unity needs proving by such arguments as he will find in the commentators. The date of the prophecy is evidently that of the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, and of the third cam This date, and the Hebrew chronology of this period must of course be changed, if the Assyrian Canon' should be established. If it is made certain that this long list of names has been accurately read and understood, and if it supplies a chronology which solves all difficulties without substituting new ones, the Hebrew dates must be set aside. But while the question is only one of general probability, and such it seems to me to be as yet, I must think that the authority of contemporary documents, or extracts of documents, of a nation having at the time the political and literary culture exhibited in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and historians, is to be preferred to that of a list of names put together many years after the dates they are supposed to mark, and by a nation with the history and culture indicated by the Inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. Professor Rawlinson thus describes the Canon :-The Assyrian Canon (discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson, among the antiquities in the British Museum, and published by him in the Athenæum, Nos. 1812, and 2064), an account of Assyrian chronology from about B.C. 909 to B.C. 680, impressed on a number of clay tablets in the reign of Sardanapalus the son of Esarhaddon, all now more or less broken, but supplying each other's deficiencies and yielding by careful comparison a complete chronological scheme covering 236 ISAIAH XXII. 'THE VALLEY OF VISION' - paign of Sennacherib; and, more precisely, during the time that the Assyrian armies were overrunning Judæa, but before they had appeared under the walls of Jerusalem. And a comparison of the accounts in the Assyrian Inscriptions and the books of Kings and Chronicles with the discourse before us, enables us, at the end of twenty-five centuries, to see the very form and pressure of those ancient times. There is indeed a difficulty from that peculiarity of Hebrew grammar noticed before, which permits an interchange of the past and future tenses of the verb in such a way as to make it a matter of discussion with translators which of the two, or whether the present tense instead of either, will best express the force of the original. The verbs in the description of the preparation for the siege with all its circumstances, are translated by Gesenius and others as presents, they understanding them to describe the facts as Isaiah sees them in his mind's eye, and just before their actual occurrence. No doubt this is the true view in the main, and we may be well content with it, if the slight haze which it leaves over certain details of the picture cannot be dispelled by any modern insight: but it is obvious that there is a haze. The alarm of the city and its reckless jollity, the repairs of the fortifications and the array of the enemy in the neighbouring valleys, imply some lapse of time during their course; and as the whole conditions of ancient and Eastern life require us to believe that this prophecy was spoken, and not first published in writing as it might be now, the question presents itself whether any Hebrew scholarship can fix the exact point of time at which it was spoken, and so distinguish the facts which the prophet saw with his bodily eye from those present to him in vision. No such distinction may be possible now; the master-artist himself may have obliterated any original differences between the actual and the ideal objects of his discourse; but thus much at least we may see, that the actual facts, to which Isaiah could at the moment point with his hand, were such as to enable a space of 230 years. The chronology of the whole period is verified by a recorded solar eclipse, which is evidently that of June 15, B.C. 763.'-Manual of Ancient History, p. 7. A SIEGE EXPECTED. 237 his hearers to follow him in filling up the blank portions of the canvas. If when he spoke they could see people on the housetops looking wistfully in the direction of Lachish, before which the Assyrian army was at the moment lying, it would seem hardly a figure of speech to tell them that the valleys of Hinnom and Rephaim, beyond which their eyesight might not carry them, were full of Persian cavalry, though in fact they saw nothing but green corn waving, nor recognized as yet any sign of an enemy along the mile or two of the western highway which might be visible from Jerusalem -for they well knew that a very few miles more of that road would take them into the heart of Sennacherib's camp. And so of the rest. And if the present and the future of that day have long become one ideal past to us, the whole harmonious picture is not the less true to the life,-true to the old Hebrew life which actually was then and there, and which is still here for us to see; and true no less to the human life of our own and every other day. : Let us then look at the picture as it is, after noticing its significant and somewhat enigmatical title, analogous to that of the previous prophecy against Babylon. It is apparently taken-we need not doubt by Isaiah himself— from the expression in verse 5, which seems to be itself suggested by the fact that it is in vision that the prophet sees the trouble and spoiling of the city which to his outward eye was at the moment showing signs of self-confidence. Titles stand first, but then, as now, were written. last, to designate the subject written of; and this prophecy is a vision of the political state and prospects of the city which stood in the midst of the valleys of Judah, and of the political party and minister who ruled the city at that. time. Perhaps the thought that this city was the centre and source of all prophetic vision,-that 'out of Zion should go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem,' at all times and for all peoples, may have added to Isaiah's sense of the propriety of the present title; but the other is more likely to have first suggested it. - Hezekiah had from the beginning of his reign given. proof of his faith in Jehovah, as the King whose viceroy 238 SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. he was; but we can see that he had inherited something of the weakness of his father's character, along with an authority greatly controlled by the nobles, and by what we now call a bureaucracy, or government by narrow and worldly-minded officials, who, though unable to take any far-seeing or comprehensive views of the interests of the country, were too firmly seated in power to be dislodged. At the head of these was Shebna, of whom it has been conjectured, from his father's name never being mentioned (as was usual, and as we find done in the case of his fellowministers*), and from his being engaged in making a family sepulchre, that he was a man of obscure origin; while his name, which does not seem to be Hebrew, and by which no one else is called in the Bible, has been supposed to indicate that he was a foreigner. Hezekiah, apparently at the beginning of his reign, 'rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not ;'t and while-as I have already observed there is no indication that, in so doing, he acted by the advice or with the approval of Isaiah, we know from Isaiah himself that he opposed an alliance with Egypt in support of this revolt, and may infer from his language that it was Shebna and his party who promoted it. The kingdom of Israel had trusted to the like alliance, and was annihilated. And now the Assyrian armies were encamped in the south-west of Judah, apparently on the road to Egypt but expecting and expected to swallow up the little Jewish kingdom easily by the way; its fortified cities had already fallen, one after another; and Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me; that which thou puttest on me I will bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.' And this tribute Hezekiah sent to him, stripping his palace and the temple of the treasures and ornaments with which, during the previous years of his reign, it had been his glory to have made good the like act of his father Ahaz.§ Whether out of sheer treachery,|| * 2 Kings xviii. 18. + Kings xviii. 7. Isaiah xxix. 14 ff., xxx. 1 ff., compared with the prophecy before us. § 2 Kings xviii. 14, 15. Isaiah xxxiii. 1, 7, 8; on which passage see my comment. |