Tag: Assyria

The Bible in a Year – 5 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

5 May. Isaiah chapters 28-31.

Isaiah’s prophecies in chapter 28 condemn not only the political leaders of Israel and Judah but also their priests, who all alike are pictured as being drunk and out of control.  The priests teach the law by rote, as if that is what matters in itself, rather than striving for the ‘rest’ (fellowship with God) to which to law is meant to lead us. Because of this, and the lies and falsehoods that the leaders resort to in an effort to preserve at least themselves from danger in a time of war, God’s judgement will come.

 

The parable of the farmer at the end of the chapter compares those who continually beat others down with religious rules to someone who ploughs the field constantly without ever actually sowing crops, and uses heavy equipment to crush the most delicate herbs. This temptations to resort to legalism (applying rules rather than compassion and common sense) and to make tradition more important that relevance, is ever present in any religion. Rules are to lead us to love of God and neighbour, never ends in themselves, and tradition should be a living thing, not a fixed way of doing things that can never change.  When Jesus said “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30) he may have had passages like this in mind, as well as the many uses in the Old Testament of a yoke as the symbol of oppression.

 

In chapter 29 the focus turns to Jerusalem itself, whose eventual destruction is again prophesied.  But throughout these passages are hints of the “remnant” of which Isaiah writes elsewhere, the faithful few believers who will carry on the true faith following the devastation of cities and peoples.  As with the story of the destruction of Sodom, it only takes a few people who hang on to faith in bad times in order for it to flourish again in better times.

 

Chapters 30 and 31 are a polemic aimed at the leaders in Jerusalem who thought that a military alliance with Egypt would enable them to resist the Assyrian empire.  But Isaiah’s consistent message is that God had appointed the Assyrians to carry out his judgement, and resistance was futile. It was too late now for the nation as a whole to turn back to God, although some individuals might.  But as so often in the prophets, images of judgement and destruction are interspersed with reminders that God is still the merciful parent (the leaders of Judah are his ‘rebellious children’) who will always, eventually, have compassion and bring his people back.  But it will only be when they cast away all their idols that the Assyrians themselves will be defeated, and then by God and not by swords.

 

The Bible in a Year – 26-27 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

26-27 April. 2 Kings chapters 18-22

The kingdoms of the Near East have always had shifting allegiances. Through the history of Israel,  Egypt in particular was sometimes an enemy, sometimes an ally.  The same was true of other powers such as Assyria (roughly what we now call northern Iraq – its capital Nineveh was on the site now occupied by Mosul). Judah was allied with them until the time of Hezekiah (c. 700BC) whose reign we now come to.

 

The Bible reckons Hezekiah a very good king for two reasons – he finally got rid of the pagan shrines which previous kings had tolerated, and he broke of dependency on Assyria, trusting in God to give Judah victory.  The Assyrian king Sennacherib was not happy about this and threatened to capture Jerusalem as he had already done to Samaria. At this point we first hear of Isaiah, best known for the separate book of his prophesies elsewhere in the Old Testament. His oracle against Assyria on this occasion emphasises that both victory and defeat are planned by God – his will is paramount.  That might seem simplistic to us, but in the culture of the time where all  events in human life were assumed to be influenced by gods or spirits of some kind, it would make sense. Sennacherib returns to Nineveh and is murdered there. The time had still not yet come for Judah’s defeat.

 

Next comes the kingdom of Babylon – southern neighbour to Assyria. After Hezekiah is granted an extra 15 years of life by God (I will pass over the miraculous reversal of the sun’s shadow, which we cannot begin to explain) he welcomes envoys from Babylon and boasts of his riches which presumably he must have amassed quite quickly by taxations, after previously, giving away all the silver and gold he could find to appease the Assyrians.  But Isaiah realises this is a mistake and prophesies that in his sons’ time they and all their riches would be taken captive by these same Babylonians.  Amazingly, Hezekiah is complacent, even at the thought of his sons being captured, reckoning that “peace in his time” was all that mattered.  That is either extreme cold-blooded self-interest, or a cowardly shrinking from risky actions, or the sort of short-term thinking (“my poll ratings matter more than the best interests of the country”) that often causes political problems.

 

In chapter 21 we read of Hezekiah’s son Manasseh who was everything his father was not.  He reigned for 55 years from the age of 12, but all that we read of his reign is evil. He reinstated the pagan shrines that had been torn down, turned to the occult, and even placed an idol in the Temple of the Lord. He also “shed innocent blood”. This long and bloody reign contrasting with Hezekiah’s provokes God to declare that Judah’s time is up. Like the rest of Israel, their apostasy has gone so far as to break the covenant that God had always kept.

 

After a brief two-year reign by Amon, we come to Josiah, another child anointed at the age of only eight.  He followed the good works of his great-grandfather whom he had never known.  After 18 years he instructs reserved funds to be used to repair the temple, and in the process something even more important happens: the book of the Law is discovered.  Sometimes we may assume that the people of Israel always knew God’s commandments (even if they often did not keep them) but this passage reads as if for a long time (maybe since Hezekiah’s time, maybe longer) the people had merely been following custom and did not know or understand God’s laws.  Josiah is savvy enough to know the significance of the book.  God’s word to him is that it is too late to save the people from the fate he had ordained for their idolatry, but Josiah would be allowed to die in peace before Israel as a nation was removed altogether from the promised land.

The Bible in a Year – 25 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

The kingdom of Israel has by this time (the late 8th century BC, about 250 years after king David’s time, and perhaps a hundred years after Elisha) become increasingly unstable. Chapters 15-17 list six kings of Israel over a 40 year period, although one lasted only a month and two others less than two years. In the time of king Menahem the Assyrians appear on the scene for the first time, and are paid off, but that can be done only once.  A few years later they come back, this time taking Galilee and other areas of Israel. At this time, incredibly, Judah makes an alliance with the Assyrians against Israel, showing just how irrepairable has become the split between the two parts of what was once a single nation under God.

 

In Hoshea’s reign the Assyrians return a third time, this time capturing the Israelite capital Samaria, and taking large numbers into captivity. Chapter 17 acts as a summary of why  all of the original kingdom of Israel with the exception of the tribe of Judah has gradually been lost to enemy invasions as a direct result of the sin of idolatry over the six centuries or so since they entered the promised land.    But Judah’s time would come.