Read the whole of both the chapters containing this eloquent prophecy which was so forcibly ful filled.
This description cannot apply to the later As syrian advance upon Jerusalem in the time of Sennacherib ; this was made from the southwest, from the direction of Lachish and Libnah (not from the northeast), along the highroad which led from Syria and Samaria, and conducted an in vading army past Michmash and Ramah, Anathoth and Nob.
Moreover, the tone adopted by Isaiah is very different from that of the prophecy he was com missioned to deliver, when the hosts of Sen nacherib were threatening the sacred city. Then Hezekiah and his people were encouraged by the promise that the enemy should be utterly over thrown ; now, on the contrary, the prophet de clares that the Assyrian is the rod of God's anger, and that though a remnant shall return, and the oppressor shall be punished, it shall be only when the measure of God's chastisement of his people shall be complete, when they have been trodden down like the mire in the streets, and when the high ones of stature have been hewn down.
The contents of the prophets also point unmis takably to the age of Sargon. The Assyrian king is made to boast of his conquests of Carchemish and Hamath, of Arpad, Damascus and Samaria, all of them being the achievements of Sargon, not of his son Sennacherib. The "burden" of chapter xxii also seems to belong to the age of Sargon.
Here it is revealed to Isaiah that the iniquity of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not be purged until they die, and all the agonies of a protracted siege are represented as having been already en dured. The rulers of the city have fled from the foe, its streets are full of the corpses of those who have died of famine, the hosts of Assyria occupy the valleys around it, and the people in their despair have drowned their fears in a last carousal. No part of this picture is applicable to the campaign of Sennacherib, when the Lord de fended His city, so that the Assyrian shot not an nor cast a bank against it. We can hest explain the prophecy and the occasion that called it forth by combining the words of Sargon with those of Isaiah, and concluding that Sargon's con quest of Judah was not accomplished without the siege and capture of its capital.
Ten years, therefore, before the campaign of Sennacherib, Jerusalem had felt the presence of an Assyrian army, a fact which serves to explain how that "the 14th year" of Hezekiah slipped into the text in Is. xxxvi:i and 2 Kings xviii:r3 in place of the 24th. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that so important an event should be unrecorded in the Book of Kings. Whatever the explanation of this may be, the incident is a curious illustration DI the way in which the recently discovered and trans lated Assyrian records tend to confirm Biblical historical records.
The fate of Merodach-baladan was now sealed. The year after the suppression of the revolt in the West (B. C. 71o), Sargon hurled the whole power of the Assyrian empire against Babylonia. The Babylonian king made a vain effort to resist. His allies from Elam were driven back into the moun tains, and Merodach himself was obliged to re treat to his ancestral marshes, leaving Babylon in the hands of the conqueror. Sargon now took the title of king of Babylonia, but he was murdered B. C. 705, and was succeeded by his son Senna cherib. (See SENNAGIIERIB.) The conquest of Judah by Sargon ten years be fore the invasion of Sennacherib is another in stance of the unexpected light which the Assyrian inscriptions have cast upon the pages of the Old Testament. The difficulties presented by the tenth and twenty-second chapters of the Book of Isaiah have been removed, as well as the apparent incon sistencies in the account given by the sacred his torian of the campaign of Sennacherib against Hezekiah.
A full discussion of this point, however, belongs to a critical introduction to the text of Isaiah rather than to a description of the age in which the prophet lived, and those who wish to study it may do so in Canon Cheyne's well-known Commen tary Upon Isaiah (A. H. Sayce, M. A., Times of Isaiah, pp. 7, 49, 61). (See ASSYRIA.)