have been hardly possible, unless the Assyrian policy of Aḥaz was continued under the direction of Aḥaz himself. That policy of friendship to Assyria was maintained as steadfastly by Aḥaz as the policy of friendship to Russia by Bismarck throughout his entire tenure of power. For the prevailing estimate of Ahaz as a weakling needs some correction. The standpoint from which men and policies are judged in the O. T. is essentially the religious standpoint of the observer who belonged to the prophetic school of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, or it is that of the religious legalism of the Book of Deuteronomy. But these do not necessarily coincide with the standpoint of the scientific and dispassionate political historian. Aḥaz at all events succeeded in guiding the ship of the state through stormy seas, and during his reign Judah remained, by means of his persistent policy of cynical opportunism, a dependent, minor vassal-state with its national existence, institutions and sacra intact while other Palestinian kingdoms had been engulfed or wrecked. been regarded with favour by Professor Skinner in the Century Bible, Commentary on Kings (Introd., p. 44), though in his earlier work on Isaiah (Cambridge Bible) it is considered unjustifiable (Introd., p. 76, footnote). In our opinion, while it conserves to us the traditional length of the reign of Ahaz (sacrificed in our own scheme), it leaves us at hopeless variance with nearly every other chronological datum of the Bible for the period 735-700 B. C.

The attempt which was formerly made to account for 2 Kings xviii. 13 (Isa. xxxvi. 1) by the supposition that there was a confusion between an invasion of Sargon in 712-II B.C. and the later well-known invasion of Sennacherib in 701, has broken down utterly since it has been discovered that the passage in Sargon's Nimrûd inscription (line 8), in which mention is made of Sargon's subjection of the 'land Ja-u-du, whose situation is remote,' cannot refer to Judah. For the mention of Jaubi'di of Hamath in the next clause and the discovery of the country Jâdi in the Senjirli inscriptions make it quite evident that the land Jaudu' here is not Judah, but the northern country Jâdi lying adjacent to Hamath. accordance with these facts, it is impossible to refer x. 28-32 to the days of Sargon (see note ad loc.).

In

There is no evidence that the policy maintained by Aḥaz was rudely broken when he died in 715 B.C. All the indications seem to point to the conclusion that the tradition of vassalage to Assyria was maintained (with one exception1) by Hezekiah till the close of Sargon's reign, 705 B.C. Probably this state policy had been acquiesced in by the elders during the reign of Ahaz, for Sargon was as strong and as capable a military ruler as TiglathPileser himself. But indications of a movement towards emancipation begin to be visible after 715 B.C. The evidence for this is to be found in chap. xx of Isaiah, which fortunately bears clearly on its forefront the historic occasion to which it refers, and the date of its composition. It is evidently a warning to Isaiah's countrymen not to rely on Egyptian help, and points to the overthrow of Ashdod as a political lesson to Judah not to be involved in the vortex of South Palestinian intrigues with Egypt and Ethiopia 2. For signs were beginning to appear in the distracted and hitherto impotent Egypt of this twentyfourth dynasty that better days were dawning. That dynasty was soon to see its end, if that end had not already come. See notes on chap. xx. 5 foll.

What was the attitude of Hezekiah towards this new movement? Probably he had been schooled in the policy of his father and, when his sole reign began, was not disposed immediately to break with it. Hitherto the policy of Aḥaz, the humble vassal of Assyria, had been justified by success-the success of a politician whose

J

This exception corresponds with the critical year 711 B. C. to which chap. xx. refers. In a fragment of a prism inscription Sargon refers to Judah, Edom, and Moab entering into treasonable relations with the North Arabian ruler. See commentary on chap. xx, footnote.

2 It is not necessary to discuss Guthe's impossible supposition that this chapter (properly chap. xx. 3 foll.), as well as xxx. 1-5, xxxi. 1-3, must be assigned to the days of Tirhakah (691 B. C.). See his Geschichte des Volkes Isr., p. 204.

ambitions were severely curtailed and who was well content to keep Judah out of harm's way.

Yet Hezekiah's personality is sharply contrasted in the Books of Kings with that of his father. It is a grave misfortune that we possess no living picture of him from a contemporary Hebrew writer possessing the vividness of Isa. vii, which records the dialogue between Isaiah and Aḥaz. Strangely, the only contemporary records which mention his name are the foreign cuneiform annals of Sennacherib. We have therefore to content ourselves with the secondary testimony of 2 Kings. Placing all these indications together, we have presented to us a young ruler of the noblest type stirred by high ambitions upon whom Isaiah's personality had wrought. Did the prophet associate him at all with the ideals suggested by his great watchword Immanuel?

Névertheless it is fairly clear that the statesmanship of Hezekiah was not the statesmanship of the prophet. The latter might be summed up in a few sentences: Believe in Yahweh the Holy One of Israel. Judah shall suffer for his sins, but a remnant shall be converted to God, and Zion which is His abode and stronghold shall not be taken, Heed not Egypt-the 'Rahab Sit-still' that moves too late if he move at all. Heed not even Assyria, for Assyria's end shall one day come (cf. xxx. 3-5, 7, 2733; xxxi. 1, 8). Probably these seemed to most of Isaiah's countrymen-perhaps even to Hezekiah-impracticable counsels, the words of a superhuman agent or mystic and not of a man of affairs. Hosea, the prophet of the northern kingdom about a generation earlier, was familiar with this attitude. The prophet is a fool, the inspired man is frenzied' (Hos. ix. 7). It is therefore not surprising that the politicians of Jerusalem paid as little heed to the warnings of Isaiah about the Egyptian alliance as the politicians of Samaria to the utterances of his elder contemporary. The Israelites also had their Cassandras. The death of Sargon (705 B. C.) caused as great a flutter

of excitement to pass throughout Palestine and Phoenicia as the death of Tiglath-Pileser III occasioned more than twenty years previously. Probably the effect was even greater. For coincident with the death of Assyria's great military leader and monarch there was a revival of strength in Egypt. About the time 708-6 B. C. the Ethiopian king Shabako the son of Keshta invaded the country north of Thebes and took the Egyptian king Bocchoris prisoner. Now for the first time the Palestinians and Phoenicians who observed the approaching Assyrian colossus with growing anxiety saw in the approaching dynasty of Egypt (the twenty-fifth) a power equal to the Assyrian to which they could appeal for help'.

Even Hezekiah was now constrained to throw his father's policy to the winds. And Isaiah was not uninfluenced by the pulses of the rising expectation of freedom from the galling fetters of Assyrian dominion. A new note appears in his oracles. He adopts a threatening attitude towards Assyria. Hitherto Assyria had been the 'mace of Yahweh's wrath.' But the instrument seeks to exalt itself unduly, and has failed to realize its subordinate relation to God (x. 5 foll., cf. also xiv. 24-27), and boasts, 'through the power of my hand-I have done it, and through my wisdom, . . and have removed the frontiers of nations and plundered their stores' (verses 13 foll.). God's word of comfort now comes to Judah for almost the first time for many years in Isaiah's ministry: 'Fear not my people that inhabit Zion because of Asshur that smites thee,. for in a little while wrath is at an end, . . and it shall come to pass in that day that his burden shall pass from thy shoulder and his yoke shall cease from thy neck' (cf. also xxx. 27 foll., xxxi. 8).

12

About this time an event of great importance took place. The death of Sargon Babylonia as well as Palestine.

reacted powerfully on Babylonia had for a long

} 1 Max Müller, Egypt' in Enc. Bibl., i. col. 1245. **

time been a centre of opposition to the supremacy of Assyria through the restless energy undaunted by defeat of its ruler Merodach-Baladan (Marduk-abal-iddin). This ruler, a man of ceaseless ambition, was originally King of Chaldaea (in the Assyrian inscriptions mât Tâmtim or 'sea-land'), and had possessed himself of a considerable portion, of Babylonia, but was driven out by Tiglath-Pileser in 729 B. C. After that monarch's death he recovered his position, and with the aid of the King of Elam obtained possession of his former realm. Though Sargon defeated him and his Elamite allies in 721 B. C. he could not dislodge him from the throne of Babylon, where the latter ruled by dint of foreign aid from that date till 709 B. C., when Sargon (the Arkeanos of the Ptolemaic Canon) finally drove him from Babylon, which he ruled himself until his death. Then, on Sargon's decease, Merodach-Baladan's enterprises revived, and the embassy to Hezekiah must be placed in this brief interval 705-4 B. C., when Merodach-Baladan was struggling to recover his Babylonian throne. This at length he succeeded in occupying for the third time-but this time for the brief period of six months only (according to Polyhistor's statement preserved in Eusebius)1, or, following contemporary records, nine months.

The Babylonian list of kings assigns nine months to the brief reign of Merodach-Baladan (KIB., ii. p. 290 and Winckler, Untersuch., p. 12) and apparently one month to Marduk-zâkiršum (= Hagises ?). It is most unfortunate that the Baby. lonian Chronicle (transcribed by Pinches in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soc., vol. xix. part iv; see KIB., ii. p. 274 foll.) is seriously mutilated in this important portion, col. ii. lines 10-22. Sennacherib seems to have attempted the reconquest of Babylonia about 704 B. C. Probably the embassy of MerodachBaladan may be assigned to about this date. Sennacherib set up as vassal-king in Babylon Bêl-ibni after Merodach-Baladan had been for a time driven out. But the Babylonian Chronicle makes it quite clear that Merodach-Baladan was able with the help of his allies to render Bêl-ibni's position so insecure that the latter was forced to become disloyal to Assyria, so that