14. Hezekiah, Sennacherib, and Big Surprises

all right away we go this is the last slide you were looking at last week we're just picking up where we left off the Assyrian Empire goes for about a hundred and thirty years from 7:45 to 6:12 the first king with tiglath-pileser he's the one with whom a has made the deal and began paying the tribute payments and we looked at that last week the next one is shall money sir shall maneuvers the one against whom Hosea the last king of Israel revolted and so shall my nazar shows up in 724 puts him under siege Israel that is Samaria collapses in 722 and is deported at the same time Xiamen easer himself died and brings Sargon a usurper to the throne who mops up the rest of that campaign to the north there in Israel Sargon is the one who then came back in about seven thirteen and is attacking Egypt and you remember the Egyptians were trying to cook up a deal with Hezekiah who declined and Isaiah had said to him don't make any deals with the king of Egypt those powerful warriors are going to be hauled away taken off captive barefoot and naked remember that that's isaiah 18 and 20 so that's Sargon and he is successful Hezekiah remains unmolested because he keeps making the tribute payments so he's so far so good dodging bullets you know all right Sargon dies in 722 I'm sorry 705 and that brings now the king that we're dealing with today Sennacherib you may recall that regime changes afforded the opportunity for rebellions everybody hope the next king would be sort of weak or that there'd be instability otherwise creating the opportune moment for rebellion so that tends to be what happens and this is when Hezekiah revolted as we saw in the text this guy is the son of Sargon the second he's most famous from our point of view for this conflict that he has with Hezekiah looks like an Assyrian to me he assumes the rule of Assyria in 705 as we say mara doc valladon had been driven out by Sargon in 708 we mentioned that last week he went into hiding down and kind of the swampland of southern Mesopotamia he also returned so the regime change creates his opportunity and that's why the chronology matches so nicely because it's in this very short period of time that he's ruling now about three years that he sends this emissary to Hezekiah congratulating him on his recovery as we saw in the text so merry doc valladon retakes babylon at the same time in 705 Hezekiah revolts against a Syrian control in Jerusalem so Sennacherib immediately has problems on his hands he's got a revolt going on in Babylon he's got a revolt going on in Jerusalem and to make matters worse the Egyptians who had been conquered back in 710 as we saw last week also revolt so he's got problems left and right you know the hope was by all of these rebels that Sennacherib would just have a nervous breakdown Assyrian Kings weren't given to nervous breakdowns Hezekiah in the year 704 as best we can map out the chronology this seems to be the consensus opinion becomes gravely ill this is recorded in Isaiah chapter 38 and also in 2nd Kings we didn't read this text but he becomes gravely ill to the point that it looks like he's going to die this is that occasion when Isaiah comes to him and says get your house in order it's terminal you know and you have this what appears to be a kind of pathetic moment in which it says Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and wept bitterly and I think a cash reading of the text may suggest that this was just Hezekiah wallowing in self-pity and it could have been but I don't think so and I think the best commentators agree this is not Hezekiah just all upset because his own days are numbered but remember what's happened he is trying to restore proper worship in Jerusalem after the great damage that was done by a has he's tried his best to bring about a recovery of the worship of the true God and yet now it seems as if God is still bringing judgment Hezekiah himself appears to be on his deathbed the Assyrian threat is mounting and I think Hezekiah viewed this as a great sign that God had had it with these people judgment was coming end of story and it may very well be that Hezekiah is expressing grief not so much for his own circumstances but more or less on behalf of the entire people now you have to spin the report slightly to get to that conclusion you know I'll grant you that but I think at least giving him the benefit of the doubt that's what's going on in any event Isaiah comes back after Hezekiah prays and says okay you win God is going to give you 15 more years and Hezekiah but on the other hand then it seems as if Hezekiah has a little alteration of his personality and it seems to reflect itself in that odd statement he made well at least there will be peace in my lifetime you know almost as if knowing you've got 15 more years gives you a little bit of us who in this room wants to know when you're actually going to die you know isn't it better not to know if I do I had 15 more years I'm not sure it would be good for me you know what I'm saying and I think that's kind of what happened to Hezekiah you can form your own judgment there but in any event God gives him 15 more years he is a recovery from what appeared to be a mortal you know terminal illness brings about this congratulatory Embassy from Mara doc valladon Mara doc ballad and knows that he himself is imperiled he wants as many people in the great playing field of the ancient world in a state of rebellion as possible because that will deflect a little bit of the attention from him and so he wants Hezekiah in his corner big time he sends him lavish gifts congratulations brother King this is wonderful you know and of course Hezekiah not to his credit gives these guys too warm a welcome it would have been fine to extend a cordial welcome but he shows them everything traipsing through all his treasure houses shows them the whole you know kind of accumulated stuff not a good move and of course for that he is criticized by Isaiah and told at a time when it would have been pretty hard to predict that actually babylon itself was the great threatening power just beginning to rise still many years out but nevertheless this is kind of a harbinger of not so happy things to happen in the future and it may very well be that it was the the report of the of the wealth of jerusalem that eventually made nebuchadnezzar so interested himself in jerusalem that's speculation but it could be so anyway this is when this congratulation comes the timing is very tight here but it fits neatly perfectly with what the bible reports and the rule of mara doc paladin which is rather a brief one at this point all right Sennacherib actually attacks married AK ballot in in 702 drives him out once again doesn't kill him but again he chases him down into southern mesopotamia this is an inscription a kind of picture that's found in the sort of material that's been recovered from a syrian annals which is depicting Sennacherib on a campaign to drive out married AK Balan just happens to be connected to that campaign sanaya which is what i say right there then in 701 he of course turns his attention back to the relief the region were most interested in so Sennacherib in 701 launches his one and only great suit so-called Syrian campaign he comes down he takes Phoenicia Syria the cities of Judah that we just mentioned it's quite a few of them he takes them takes many people captive it's kind of this sweeping invasion many people escaped into Jerusalem to withstand what is anticipated to be a siege but many of them are caught in the crossfire from there Sennacherib campaigns past Jerusalem to a city called la quiche and Lakeisha if you can see it there on the map is a fairly major city it's a fortified city south of Jerusalem north of Egypt it was viewed as critical that Lakeisha be controlled in order to insulate Egypt from Jerusalem so he comes down he lays siege to the city of La quiche and Lakeisha Veit eventually Falls and the forces moved to Lib now we read about this in the biblical text the Assyrian annals concur precisely with what's being described here so this is we know this both from the Bible and from a Syrian record so they're down at a city called Lib nough the next kind of fortified city and that's where the story is sort of unfolding well it's here that the strategy of Sennacherib is is that he wants to divide he knows that there's some risk that Jerusalem will appeal to the Egyptians and the Egyptians to Jerusalem for a mutual defense pact and he wants to drive a wedge between them and prevent any kind of coalition from emerging and so he's being pretty successful here and that's what this campaign is about I might mention this is a depiction in a Syrian annals of the campaign against la quiche and it shows the destruction of it it also shows if you can see it they're a kind of siege engine and all kinds of things going on you know and and the entire picture isn't intended to simply tell how the Assyrians defeated that city if you go and visit the scene it still has evidence of this particular campaign so this is a siege ramp that's at the location of Locke eesh that you could still visit to this day well this is when Hezekiah got cold feet when he saw Lucky's fall he said to himself maybe I was a little precipitous in this rebellion I did four years ago and so Hezekiah shoots off an email to Sennacherib saying hey brother man did you not get don't you know the truth it was in the mail did you not get it so Hezekiah says what will it take to buy myself out from under this threat that is mounting because when Lakis Falls when Leidner Falls this of course suggests to Hezekiah that his number is next in line so he's trying to buy himself out from under it and he kind of wilts now we don't know if he did this with the counsel of Isaiah or not the text doesn't tell us it doesn't sound very courageous it doesn't sound like it was Hezekiah finest moment hard to say all we know like Joe Friday used to say just the facts man well what we know is that he did make this tribute payment to Sennacherib unfortunately Sennacherib takes the tribute payment but does not adjust his policy his plan is to take out Jerusalem so he's going to take not only what was offered to him freely he's going to take by force everything else so it is kind of a double-cross because he gives the impression that he would accept this tribute and leave Hezekiah alone but in fact we know he had a different plan by the time it's all done it's during the time that Hezekiah our that does Sennacherib is at live nough that the Pharaoh of Egypt now hang on to these names I know it's strange names but this will help if we can kind of keep them in our minds shibito is the ruler of Lower Egypt that is the North the southern part III is under a king named taharka who's mentioned in the text cheb it to seize the Assyrians out there threatening a renewed campaign against Egypt and he calls up his friend to the south to harka and asked him to come and help and of course that's what Sennacherib heard about believing they were coming not only to help the egyptians but to help Hezekiah so that's kind of the drama that's playing out there having heard that Sennacherib sends this robbed shaka that's a military commander to Jerusalem to make this great threat okay Hezekiah we know what you're up to we know you've got the Egyptians coming do you plan to rely on them that read that it'll stab a man's hand if he relies on it you know we read that text don't you believe it we've got to you you're not going to get out of this one and and if you read that entire text just goes on and he says hey tell you what I'll make a deal I'll give you 2000 war horses if you could find people to put on them those 2000 war horses and their warriors won't stand against the puny astir of the Assyrians is that kind of thing just trash talk just you know trying to pick a fight Hezekiah had told the people don't say a word and they obeyed at one point in the text the M of the representative Hezekiah say hey would you please speak not in Hebrew but in Aramaic because the people on the wall we don't want them to hear and then the rap Chaka has just wonderful things for them to you know I'll leave that to your reading but anyway this is what's going on that's chapter 18 it's a great dramatic rotation so we have the rub Chaka there at Jerusalem and then something very strange happens Sennacherib army appears to wilt and the question is how did that happen he's there with an immense powerful overwhelming force nobody has got the horsepower to withstand him and then for some strange reason his army just seems to wilt yeah and the question is how did that happen well there's three ancient sources that all give us three different versions of what occurred so I'm going to give you all three and let you form your own opinion the first one comes from Sennacherib himself and this is called Sennacherib prism it's in the British Museum it's a hexagonal kind of column you can see it there and all six sides have written on them in cuneiform details of Sennacherib various campaigns this campaign is included the timing of it matches perfectly with the biblical account so we know Sennacherib came on a campaign into this region and he describes what happened now I'm going to read it to you it's going to be on the screen here but what I want to do is remind you upfront that this is not detached sober history this is propaganda the first true historian that the world ever saw was Herodotus and we're going to read his account of this next but when the Assyrians described their campaigns they were engaging in spin big time at the same time what we know about them is that they would usually tell the truth they would be accurate but they would slant everything in the direction favoring Assyria and if anything was bad news they'd just leave it out okay so with that little preamble let's read the account I don't know can you read I give you go yeah so this is the account from heads from Sennacherib prism so this is Sennacherib zone account of this because Hezekiah king of Judah would not submit to my yoke I came up against him and by force of arms and by the might of my power I took 46 of his strong fenced cities and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number from these places I took and carried off two hundred thousand one hundred fifty six persons old and young male and female together with horses and mules asses and camels oxen and sheep a countless multitude Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem his capital city like a bird in a cage building towers around the city to him him in and raising banks of Earth against the gates so as to prevent escape then upon Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power of my arms and he sent out to me the chiefs and elders of Jerusalem with thirty talents of gold and eight hundred talents of silver and diverse treasures a rich and immense booty all these things were brought to me at Nineveh the seat of my government now you think to yourself okay first of all what is included here is perfectly compatible isn't it with the biblical text Sennacherib came to town he did wipe out a bunch of the cities of Judah we know that from his own records we know it from the biblical account we could certainly surmise that he took a bunch of people captive people that had not been able to get to Jerusalem in time to escape this kind of blitzkrieg that he brought in all of this other stuff of course is compatible we hear that he put Jerusalem under siege we know that to be the case we know that Hezekiah we felt like a bird in a cage so that's pretty much consistent we don't know why if Sennacherib had such a great show of force he didn't just take Jerusalem doesn't mention that does he he does mention that he got all this tribute payment from Hezekiah and then he mentions I went home and you have to say there's something about this that doesn't quite add up and Sennacherib has given us a very favorable account but at the same time you feel like there's something there that is just not quite the whole story so he left Hezekiah is a bird in a cage well obviously Hezekiah was able to open the door to the cage a few days later walk out you know he was not taken he was not captured so there's the account the official Assyrian count of the campaign we just were studying now the next account we have from an ancient source is from the Greek historian Herodotus you know that name he sometimes called the father of history he's the first guy really in history that we would say writes kind of detached objective history generally not with an axe to grind he's a product of the Greek Golden Age he writes around the Year 400 he traveled around the ancient world he visited with lots of people and he tries to reconstruct the outlines of ancient historical events up to his own day and if you don't mind me just mentioning it it is well worth your reading Herodotus is very readable very engaging I always feel like it's learned listening to an old guy with a gray beard just kind of smoking a pipe and telling you stories but these stories are so helpful especially when the stories cover some of the same events that we hear of in the Bible now where did Herodotus get his information he got it from the Egyptians so the account we have from Herodotus is actually the account that comes 300 years later down through Egyptian lore and Herodotus got it by talking to some priests who were the official historiography of the Egyptians and so now we hear Herodotus account but remember this is the Egyptian version of the same event when Sennacherib does spelling there is the the the way you'd find it in Herodotus when Sennacherib king of the Arabians and Assyrians marched his vast army into Egypt the Warriors won and all refused to come to his which is the Pharaoh shubik to refused to come to his aid on this the monarch greatly distressed entered into the inner sanctuary and before the image of the God bee wailed the fate which impended over him as he wept he fell asleep and dreamed that the God came and stood at his side bidding him to be of good cheer and go forth boldly to meet the Arabian host which would do him no hurt as he himself would send those who should help him epic to then relying on the dream collected such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him who were none of them warriors but traders artisans market people and with these he marched to Pelusium the lose iam is within about 30 miles of Lieb 'no so they're pretty close together march to Pelusium which commands the entrance into egypt and their pitched his tent as the two armies lay there opposite one another there came in the night a multitude of field mice which devoured all the Quivers and bowstrings of the enemy and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields next morning they convinced their fight and great multitudes fell as they had no arms with which to defend themselves their stands to this day in the temple of vulcan a stone statue Chiba - with a mouse in his hand and an inscription to this effect look on me and learn to reverence the gods you know so now there's the Egyptian version through Herodotus and again you notice some striking correlation and some unexpected kind of features first of all Sennacherib is described as the king of the Arabians and the assyrians arabia was sort of a generic term for all the bad people from the east he marches in he's threatening threatening Egypt just as we would otherwise understand the Egyptian army comes out they have not yet been rescued by taharka he's still mustering an army in the south so that was the rumored help that was coming and hadn't arrived yet so he has to go out there with basically shopkeepers you know Sunday school teachers and other non warrior types and they are out there and they posture themselves and then this rather odd story commentators sometimes think that in the 300 years that transpired if there had actually been a plague in the ancient world plagues were associated with mice and rats and so it may very well be that the Egyptian memory of this was this invasion of kind of these rodents and then as it kind of gets modified morphed courts down through history you get this particular version on the face of it it's a little preposterous that a bunch of field mice would sort of invade and eat up all of the leather you know handles and stuff and then these Assyrians would be helpless against some shopkeepers from Egypt I mean the whole story doesn't quite add up but it does say to us that something striking happens something really quite inexplicable so that the Egyptians for their part are prepared to attribute it to an intervention of the gods right so that's the second version of the story the third one is the one you're familiar with this comes from second Kings chapter 18 and it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and 85,000 and when people when the people arose early in the morning there were the corpses all dead so Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away returned home and remained at Nineveh now it came to pass as he was worshiping in the temple of nice rock his God that his sons a dremmel akansha razor struck him down with the sword and they escaped into the land of Ararat then as her Haden his son reigned in his place so you've got three accounts of that event something happened for my money I'm tilting toward the Bible but I'll leave it to your speculation there as to what exactly occurred but it is one of the most unexpected reversals of fortune for this great Assyrian King that we could possibly imagine I'd like to take the rest of our time briefly and just trace out quickly before I give you my Sunday School lesson for the morning the rest of the career of Sennacherib he was not assassinated immediately he did rule for another 15 years or so in 700 he launches his final attack against Mary doc valladon this time Mary doc paladin is defeated never to return he then launches a campaign deep into southern Mesopotamia because he felt like it was a hotbed of revolt he wanted to get all the way down to the Persian Gulf control of these Babylonians especially those native Chaldeans who always were sort of posturing for some kind of revolutionary action while down there he's cut off by the Elamites who come in from the east and mortola strapped him down there toward the Persian Gulf and he has to claw his way back over a couple of years and it's very very dicey but eventually he's able to get back to Assyria but he loses a lot of people in the process he is fuming mad and so in 689 he comes down and does the unthinkable he destroys the city of Babylon now the city of Babylon was viewed by the Assyrians as a holy city it's like many people view role as a holy city or jerusalem as a holy city in the ancient psyche especially in the pagan world babylon had that kind of holy status and so even though they were sometimes at odds with each other there was a kind of reverential treatment to babylon itself the city that was supposed to be respected Sennacherib was so upset so many reversals in his career he kind of takes it out as like kicking the cat you know he just goes down and wipes out Babylon and immediately becomes the most unpopular king in Assyrian history the people of Assyria are outraged offended and horrified that Sennacherib has done this that creates the political climate in which the two sons the older sons of Sennacherib believed that they could seize the kingdom by bumping off the old man so a Syrian records tell us that indeed as the Bible says they came in in 681 and assassinated their father while he was worshiping in a temple the problem is when you have two assassins once they've killed off the bad guy then they turn on each other and so these two sons who had just now opened the door for a regime change can't decide who should be the next king and a civil war begins to erupt the third son is a guy named Ezzor Haydon he figures out quickly he's got no dog in this fight and he actually escapes to error to a anatolia and while the civil war is going on he himself musters an army he's universally respected because he wasn't involved in the the assassination which was kind of an unpopular thing to do even though Sennacherib was not well-liked and so the army actually just sort of defects in mass to Azhar Haydon he comes in drives out the two boys they go up to the region of what we would call Armenia in Turkey or the Ararat never to be heard from again Azhar Haydon is the next king we're going to look at Azhar Hayden he himself is mentioned in second Kings as you may have noticed also in ezra and we'll be taking a look at his rule he the two other brothers we noticed this the army rallies to Ezzor hayden and will take up as her Hayden next week alright I have two minutes for my Sunday School lesson not quite as much as I wanted but I want you to if you have your Bible still turn back to 2nd Kings chapter 19 this is a wonderful text and I hope it encourages you the way it encourages me but this is that moment when Hezekiah has received a letter a threatening blasphemous challenging letter from the Assyrian King delivered courtesy of the Rab shaka Hezekiah takes this letter now and this is the story of what he does with it this is chapter 19 verse 14 Hezekiah received a letter from the hand of the messengers and read it then Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord and Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said O Lord God of Israel who are enthroned above the cherubim you are God you alone of all the kingdoms of the earth you have made heaven and earth incline your ear O Lord and hear open your eyes and Lord and see here are the words of Sennacherib which he has sent to mock the Living God truly O Lord the kings of the Assyria's of Assyria have laid waste the nations of their lands and have hurled their gods into the fire though they were no gods but the work of human hands wouldn't stone and so they are destroyed so now O Lord our God save us I pray you from his hand so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you O Lord our God alone then Isaiah son of amos sent to Hezekiah saying thus says the Lord the God of Israel I have heard your prayer to me about King Sennacherib of Assyria this is the word of the Lord spoken concerning him quote she despises you she scorns you the virgin daughter of Zion she tosses her head behind her back behind your back daughter Jerusalem have you mocked and reviled against whom of you raised your voice and haughtily lifted your eyes against the Holy One of Israel isn't that great stuff okay what's our lesson for things from this I'd like to make it three but it's gotta be for this time Hezekiah spread the letter before the Lord is there a Sennacherib in your life every one of us if we thought about it could name the Sennacherib right somebody something some situation something or rather that is laid siege to your sense of well-being lesson number one my friends lay the letter before the Lord spread it out you don't have you know notice Hezekiah doesn't meet with his top military commanders he doesn't sit down and start plotting all kinds of you know responses this and strategies that he takes the letter first and foremost and lays it before the Lord just lay it out there honesty is the best punches get it out there notice the second thing he does however is worship Oh Lord God of Israel who were enthroned above the cherubim you are God now God knows he's God but we need to remind ourselves sometimes and worship is the most fundamentally powerful thing we can do to remind ourselves that the Lord God Almighty reigns and that whatever the Sennacherib is that's causing you grief that Sennacherib is no match for the God of heaven and earth so Hezekiah lays it before the Lord then he worships good medicine then he makes his request 0.3 verse 19 so now O Lord God save us I pray you from his hand it is okay and indeed desirable that we should pray for what we believe we need or want bear in mind caveat Paul tells us in Romans chapter eight we don't know how to pray as we ought I love that verse in that a great verse we don't know how to pray so don't beat yourself up just pray the best you can any prayer you pray no matter how profound how deep is misguided so relax just pray the best you can and the good news is the Holy Spirit who searches the heart of God and the heart of you knows exactly what you need and transforms your prayers as incompetent as they may be into something delicious to God's ear and then listen for his answer and I love this answer I used to roleplay this a little more time I might even do it here but in when I taught this stuff in the ninth grade I'd always get some lovely young lady with long hair to be the virgin daughter of Israel of Jerusalem you know and the whole scene was she would come up and then you get this kid in the class who sort of was the thug you know so you get some big kid you know usually good-natured but okay you're the thug you're Sennacherib and so you got this little young lady quaking in fear like this and this big ol you know kind of deal and and you know someone like Toby here he would be good he's a kind of big tough guy and and then we'd always have somebody hiding behind the screen who's bigger and tougher and so the way the skit would play out is you know she'd be standing there quaking he's kind of posturing I'm going to get you you're in trouble and all of a sudden out from behind the screen stands the champion and all of the sudden she's filled with courage and she just shakes her head in disdain who do you don't you see what I have here you know kind of thing oh they got into it they did but that that's where we are it is not your power it's not your competence it's not your might it's the Lord God Almighty who is your champion and when he is invoked he is pleased to show himself strong on behalf of those who seek him as he did in the case of Hezekiah

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: 14., Hezekiah, Sennacherib, Assyria, Bruce, Gore, Herodotus, Taharqa, Isaiah

Id: -O5RHbq3BLI

Length: 38min 55sec (2335 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2015