16. Assyria Falls, Babylon Rises, and Josiah Reforms

let's do the big picture we've talked about Babylon off and on throughout the course of our studies together and I'd like now to just summarize very very rapidly what we've said about Babylon and kind of get ourselves up to the point where we're picking up the story today so you recall we first mentioned Babylon way back when many of you were here back in the fall September when we first started our studies of Mesopotamia said that there were several dynasties that were part of early ancient Mesopotamia the first was Sumer you recall and then from there was a boy wouldn't wouldn't I be impressed if anyone can remember this a CAD founded by Sargon then the third one was or we like that because that's where Abraham was born about that timeframe then there's kind of a decentralized period in which there's really not one dynasty but several and they're all kind of competing with each other southern Mesopotamia in a conflict between issen and Larsa southern cities and Esch noonah and Asher to the north remember all add cattle rings a bell doesn't it distantly member that and then it comes to the fifth dynasty which is called old Babylon and old Babylon was the greatest of all the most expansive of all the most advanced of all of them and it extends for the greatest period of time from 1894 when Babylon was founded as a city by the amorite stone 2:15 95 when it was shocked by a surprise attack by the Hittites merci Lee the second the Hittite came down to you for a tease and attacked them right in the middle of this era is the greatest king of the old Babylonian era and really one of the greatest kings of all ancient history he's the great famous code giver in advance of Moses and his name is of course Hammurabi so that's the first exposure we had to babylon way back when the Babylonians are defeated in a surprise attack by the Hittites who then go home and leave the remnants of that city of Babylon and its environs to a neighboring City named mark and they were populated by indo-europeans who came down and established what's called kassite babylon they were very quiet they don't leave a lot of records but we get the impression that they just sort of tended their knitting they didn't go on big military campaigns they were they were good at defending themselves but they were happy to just stay home and you know kind of work out their history they're in a fairly quiet sort of way so this is a quiet period for Babylon we know they're there but they're not doing a whole lot that rabble rousers this is the time of the judges with respect to the Old Testament history that brings us to the era that I'll call Assyrian Babylon this is when Babylon was largely under the Assyrian dominance of Sirius to the north and we've just finished now our studies of a Syrian history and noted how frequently Babylon is more or less under there not only control but care and it's kind of a warm happy relationship Babylon was viewed as a holy city by the Assyrians and even though they dominated it politically in some ways they were dominated by it religiously and so it was a bit of a symbiotic relationship between the two and that goes on all through this Assyrian period that we've just been reviewing in the last few weeks and then that brings us now to what's called the neo-babylonian empire a relatively short period of time less than a hundred years surprising because it leaves such a deep imprint on the Old Testament and on the memory of the Jewish people this is really that most important moment really of a kind of sense of being dominated by a foreign power probably because it's the Babylonians who deported the people of Jerusalem and 586 and that was capable of leaving quite an imprint on their memories so anyway it starts in 612 with the fall of Assyria and goes to 539 for you who were here last week I'm going to be doing a little bit that will overlap our conversation from last week so if you're here pardon me for that but repetition is the hallmark of education and for you who weren't here then this will be helpful to make the connection so let's talk about what happened after Bonnie Paul is the last great king of Assyria he is the guy that left the big library that was discovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1848 and by virtue of that discovery we know all about what was going on or at least a lot of what was going on at the time whereas before then we didn't know so much he dies in 627 and there are two suns an older son and a younger son vying for control the younger son is named Sarah coos okay check and see if anyone remembers anything about him inside joke I'm not going to repeat it though you'll have to talk to somebody Sarah coos in any event wants to get a position to work from of power and so immediately upon the death of his father since he's the younger son he goes south and takes a personal residence in the city of Babylon which was under a Syrian control this wasn't a takeover but he goes down and seizes the throne of Babylon but his ambitions are really to create for himself a power base from which he can go back and challenge his older brother who has claimed the control of a serious so that's the first thing that happens it probably would have worked out just fine for Sarah coos except that at the very time that he took the throne he was challenged by a guy that came from the south named NAB OPA laser NAB OPA laser was king of a region deep in the south a fairly small area called seal and I love that it always makes me think of SeaWorld you know and I imagine amusement parks and stuff I don't think that's what they had but nevertheless see land is a small province really comparable to ancient Sumer pretty much in the same boundaries and this native Chaldean Nabal palais sir has roots that go all the way back to those ancient Sumerian so he has a pedigree that is a thousand years old and he has been ruling quite successfully now in the south and he sees at this moment of regime change his opportunity and so even as sera causes coming down from the north navajo laser immediately launches an attack from the south trying to wrest control of Babylon from Syracuse and establish his own rule there and he's successful and so this challenged by Navi Pillay xur basically is effective in pushing sera Coos out and he has to go back to Assyria and face this civil conflict with his brother and that goes on for about five years so Assyria is wrapped up in this internal strife internal conflict for about five years and that gives NAB OPA laser an opportunity to consolidate his power he is well loved he's violent he's ruthless but he treats his own people very well and he really establishes a huge amount of sort of political capital at this point in support and loyalty both among the people in Sealand and also the people in Babylon so while siroccos is engaged in this civil war in Assyria he can build up his own power also at the same time off to the east the median king sized series is also beginning to develop some power now we haven't talked much about the medians they come next the medo-persians are going to defeat the Babylonians and in less than a hundred years so these two stories kind of happen simultaneously and I just want to mention at this point syak series without talking much about him but he's the king who is over there in media he is able to drive out the Scythian zai mentioned them last week they are kind of a warring people I said they're sort of like the orcs out of Lord of the Rings kind of eat raw meat and stuff like that and come down and he's able after about twenty years of them harassing the median popular to push them out and establish himself as king so notice what's happening Assyria is tied up in knots and to neighboring powers are using that as an opportunity to build their own power base one is Nabokov laser in Babylon the other is sigh X Aries in media so far so good all right well finally in 623 surah cous comes out on top he kills his brother defeats the forces allied with him and is able to consolidate his control of Assyria but there's been huge damage done civil wars are never good for a civilization and certainly Assyria was no exception so Soraka somewhat weakened nevertheless now wants to try to retake control of Babylon this is in 623 just remember 622 is the year that Josiah kept the Passover in Jerusalem so while syak series is trying to get control of Babylon back at the ranch Josiah has just led the people of God in a huge kind of revival I'll say a kind of restitution of their proper religious outlook and this celebration is taking place at just about the same time these two stories come together in a moment so we'll keep them both in mind here all right the fight between sia serratus to the north and naba palais sir to the south goes for about five years there's war between Assyria and Babylon but gradually Nabal PO laser comes out on top he's a very brilliant ruler siroccos not so much and so as time goes on the Assyrians become gradually weaker less morale less focus on the other hand knob up a laser becomes gradually stronger until finally in a remarkable kind of breakthrough NABBA palais zur is actually able to put a stab wound right into the middle of assyria attacking and laying siege to its capital city Asher and this takes place in 616 he doesn't take Asher at this time but he comes so close that syak series realizes he's got a problem and last week we were noting that in a great irony he actually sends off to the Egyptians help help me which is strange because of course the Assyrians had made a lot of enemies in Egypt just a few years earlier they had taken Egypt they had sacked Thebes remember all of that from last week and now the Assyrians are crying out for help from the very people that had been their enemies not that long before well cement sematic it's the king of Egypt is actually somewhat sympathetic not because he likes Soraka so much but because he likes the hope of spoils of war that's one factor the other factor with sematic us however is that he's an old man old Kings don't generally like to go to war they like to stay home and watch TV you know young kings like to go to war young kings full of testosterone like to go out there and fight big battles you know how it is some Atticus is an old man he's been ruling for 50 years and so he kind of has this sort of lakhs of days ago responding okay maybe I'll get back to you kind of responds but he's not really johnny-on-the-spot to go and help out the Assyrians even though he has some sense that it might be a smart thing to do he just doesn't and so really that leaves serac is pretty much twisting in the wind he's made so many enemies so many people hate the Assyrians nobody's willing to come and help these people they have done too much damage there PR is in the tank and there's just nobody that's going to come to their rescue so at this point it's looking pretty grim force Arrakis sigh axiory's joins in this attack the following year so in 6:15 we have nab opal a sir and psy AK series now joining together in a second tack on Asher and as it turns out in 614 after about a year the city Falls that's huge that really spells the beat that's really the end there's two more years of mop up but this is really the turning point so this is the moment when your rights say Syria is in its laughs last kind of death gasp you know that sort of thing well while syak Suri's and nab oppa laser are hanging out at the sea you know a lot of what you're doing a siege as you just wait and so they're there and they've become acquainted and they kind of like each other these two kings of two neighboring powers and they think you know it'd be a lot better for us to just be friends rather than winding up in a situation a few years from now where we are at each other's throats so what do you say let's form a treaty between the Babylonians and the medians and that's exactly what they do and they decide to base that treaty on a marriage in which a lovely princess the daughter of syak serezha motty's marries the son crown prince of Naville / laser who happens to be nebuchadnezzar and so nebuchadnezzar a young man not the ruler yet has this marriage to a Mighty's some of you are catching it a subtle humor up there but and so they get married and they actually get married right there on a Syrian territory at the walls of Asher and so that Treaty of marriages is formed at that point now this is kind of interesting to us is not found in the Bible but it's pretty well attested in ancient history what's if you're familiar with the the wonders of the ancient world as they're called there's one of them that's associated with the city of Babylon anybody know what's the what's the wonder of the ancient world that was distinctively associated with Babylon the Hanging Gardens that's right nobody knows exactly what they look like but we do know they were built by Nebuchadnezzar and we know why he built them anybody know this would be wonderful do you know there's a little trivia here he built them for his wife my tease because she was a median and the median region was very mountainous and she moved to Babylon which was flat as a pancake wisely I had a case once in I think was North Dakota and it involved a place called Mount Detroit a ski lift accident and I thought there's no mountains there and I went out there with the engineer that I was representing and we were driving across the state and it was flat and we were both joking Mount Detroit you know and eventually just off the horizons his little tiny pimple and we got closer and closer and I tell you it was about 50 feet high and they had a little ski lift there and they call it a mountain yeah you people don't know what a mountain is what do you call you know so anyway that was kind of the way it was here in battle is flat not a mountain inside and porom I tease this median princess just got so homesick that Nebuchadnezzar bless his heart built her simulated mountains right there in the middle of Babylon and fill them with beautiful flowers and paths and stuff and it became known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and so that's the reason was because of this marriage that was transacted at this moment meantime two years later after the fall of Asher we have the fall of nineveh and that's the end of the line siroccos as we inch in last week gathers his court together they light a big bonfire they all go up in smoke and that's the end of surah cous and it's really the end of Assyria so 612 kind of a big date in ancient history the fall of Assyria which only some scant 30 years earlier had been one of the most powerful empires that had ever existed so this was a remarkable fulfillment of this prophecy given by Nahum some 30 years earlier that predicted these very events and if you read nay him you you realize what a remarkably graphic description he gave of this from Assyria now this this is where we tie in to Josiah so if you've been sleeping so far now you've wait from Assyria the commander of the Assyrian army escapes with a skeleton crew not his whole army but maybe one or two thousand troops escape from Nineveh his name is Asher ooh bullet and they escaped from Nineveh to the city of Quran we've mentioned Quran before it's the city visited by Abraham many many years earlier and it's a trade nexus there that was quite important and so he escapes to this city and once again renews his appeal to the king of Egypt sematic as' and once again sematic is is less than enthusiastic about the prospects and so he just puts him off well in 6:10 two years later the Babylonians and the Medes come and attack Quran and again a Shura ballot and his skeleton crew escaped and they escaped to another city that exists to this day called karkemish karkemish on the Euphrates and they once again in 6:10 plead with the Egyptians to come and help them out great promises if you'll come we'll give you you know great spoils of Assyria help us retake our empire and so the whole point here is that there's something in it for you if you'll just come and help us recover our holdings from these awful Babylonians and medians well his timing was good that time because somatic aside in the year 610 and the son of somatic us was a young man full of that very warlike sort of DNA named Neko and so Necco taking the throne in 610 gets the the email from these guys up there in car commission he thinks yeah that sounds good let's go to war you know that's what young Kings want to do and so he musters a pretty good-sized army egypt by this time is a fairly powerful force and decides this is his big chance not only to get some of the spoils of war from the leftovers of the Assyrians but to assert his dominance throughout the region between Egypt on the one hand and car commish on the other and so he launches off an attack from this point this is neck oh this is a little statute is only about foot tall in the Brooklyn Museum but he left quite a few artifacts he's a typical kind of Egyptian pharaoh sort of guy anyway he launches his attack out from Egypt going up right into the region of Jerusalem he has no argument with Jerusalem no argument of Josiah but much to his surprise Josiah comes out with an army and meets him and this of course is the background for the story that we just read in the Old Testament Necco says whoa what's up with this Josiah my man go home this is I don't you know the as the old saying goes there you do not have a dog in this fight and that was true Josiah had no particular interest to defend here he just comes out for reasons that remain quite obscure internet now I have a theory and my theory is going to be part of my Sunday School lesson at the end so I'm going to hold my theory for the time being but nevertheless just make a little mental note out comes Josiah and of course Josiah is killed in this battle that takes place and it takes place on a battlefield called Megiddo that's what it looks like it's a fairly flat famous battlefield it became proverbial to the people of God as a place of a great defeat sort of like for us something like Waterloo you know if I say somebody met their Waterloo most of you in this room are old enough to know that Waterloo actually stands for a great defeat of Napoleon in the year 1815 lost to the British commander whose name was Wellington very good alright very good so anyway we say Waterloo is kind of a great moment of defeat for the Jewish people in the ancient world Megiddo became a similar kind of reference so if you refer to Megiddo you were referring to a huge may be unexpected reversal of fortunes a Megiddo you see a Waterloo would the idea because Josiah this king that was so celebrated so well-loved died what seems to be an unnecessary death in the conflict that he undertook with Necco at that point on the death of Joe of Josiah the people in Jerusalem put the younger brother their two sons here Jehovah kiemce and Jehovah has for some reason they put the younger brother on the throne Jehovah has in 609 Necco at the same time heads north after defeating Josiah attacks and successfully drives off the Babylonians and indeed takes car commish and at least by implication takes all the real estate between Egypt and karkemish that entire area there that's depicted on the map and so the Babylonians by the way under the command of Nebuchadnezzar he's still the Crown Prince are driven back they have to go home and Necco has been successful Elinor did you ever make it to car commission your mini travels you didn't this is what it looks like it's still there car Khamis I guess you'd say that so if you ever want to visit looks like a great place and you can think about this Sunday School lesson if you ever happen in so anyway Necco at this point returns from car commish and parks outside of jerusalem he figures that since josiah had jumped into this fight josiah son is going to have to pay the piper and the son jehovah has has no stomach for a battle with neck oh he's much more powerful jehovah has immediately caves in surrenders and is taken to Egypt never to be heard from again the older brother of Jehovah has a man by the name of Jehovah King is placed on the throne as a sworn puppet loyal to Necco so this is all happening in about the year 609 - in - 608 this is the moment when the Prophet Habakkuk gives his complaining message really why are you using those less righteous than we to judge us he sees what's coming both through the Prophet Jeremiah and his own prophetic insight he knows the rough roads are coming that God is going to chase in these people and that he's using people less righteous than the folks in Judah to judge the people in Judah you know and so that's Habakkuk the tenor of his mess a great book worth reading in this connection alright in 605 Nebuchadnezzar comes back this time he has a much more powerful army and he makes pretty short work of the garrison that was stationed there in karkemish this is called the Battle of Carr commish it's 605 it's well attested in ancient history and that's the time it took place in the Egyptians are defeated they are driven home and now we have for the first time a real incursion of Babylonian power into the region that we're interested in from there Nebuchadnezzar goes to Jerusalem and has a little chat with Jehovah King Jehoiakim is a sworn puppet to Necco but Nebuchadnezzar has very little trouble persuading him that he should change his loyalties and joy he does at that point it becomes instead of puppet to Nebuchadnezzar okay then at that point Nebuchadnezzar attacks Egypt so in 605 he's had success at karkemish he's had success at Jerusalem he's on his game he's the crown prince and he heads for Egypt and he's going to give you know some of his own medicine back to Necco and just as he's attacking he gets this word from home nebuchadnezzar learns that his father nab opa laser has just died and of course at that point the most important thing for nebuchadnezzar to do is go home he needs to secure the throne he needs to present himself to the people of babylon as their new king and legitimate king there's no contest over the point but nevertheless he needs to be there in person he also needs to take back with him spoils of war to prove his great prowess as a military figure and so on his way home he stops back in jerusalem and takes with him jeho Hakeem and some of the nobility of Jerusalem one guy you've heard of named Daniel is included and some of his friends Shadrach Meshach and Abednego and many others are taken by Nebuchadnezzar and this is when they go to Babylon this is not the deportation of the Jews this is actually Nebuchadnezzar now and his strategy his plan is to educate these noble people Daniel and his friends and many others in Babylonian arts Babylonian wisdom Babylonian prowess Babylonian history he wants two Babylonian eyes them he wants to make them so so impressed with Babylon that their own rude hometown will become much less impressive to them and then Nebuchadnezzar wants to put them back into their native homes as loyal servants bureaucrats and so on of the Babylonian Empire so Nebuchadnezzar is is an infrastructure guy he has some plans and that's the reason he's doing all of this and it's very well orchestrated and so off he goes back to Babylon and that's the end of our conversation today except for my Sunday School lessons so next week we're going to pick up with Nebuchadnezzar in the sanctuary I mentioned that to you and we'll probably spend two weeks on him what do we learn from Josiah when you think about biblical ethics you realize that biblical ethics have two sides an external and an internal there is what we do and there is why we do it and the Bible treats both is quite important so we know that you can do for example the wrong thing for the wrong reason you can have a bad act motivated by a bad reason you know and that is sin that's rebellion that's all of the bad things that we think of you can also biblically do the right thing for the right reason that's virtue and so you have those two classes but as you can tell logically there's two other classes aren't there you can do the right thing for the wrong reason that's called hypocrisy hypocrisy as the is the tribute that vice pays to virtue never heard that I wish that were original hypocrisy is when a person of vice wants to appear better than that person really is and we invariably do that we want to come off better when we're under public scrutiny than we really are politicians are especially good at it but the rest of us aren't far behind doing the right thing for the wrong reasons selfishly motivated public virtue you see but there's also an alternative doing the wrong thing for the right reasons sometimes we can have perfectly you know virtuous motives and just do the wrong thing just because we have a good motive doesn't make our act a wise one a proper one an obedient one a strategic one and I think that's probably the way we think about Josiah there's other examples of this in the Bible you think of Abraham who was married to Sarah and the god of God had made the promise to them that he would be the father of many nations and yet he still didn't have son number one let alone multiple sons and all the things that would be indicia of being a great patriarch you didn't have anything so what does he do probably properly motivated to help God accomplish God's purposes like you know God needed a little extra help here Abraham takes the Egyptian handmaid Hagar and problems from that point on good motive bad action it's probably what happened with Josiah he had been hearing for some time that Babylon was going to be the instrument of God's discipline in that region Jeremiah had been saying it repeatedly Habakkuk said it others were saying it Josiah believed it and when he saw Babylon about to be attacked by the Egyptians he probably thought that he had to go out and fight on behalf on behalf of the angels he had to go out to defend those babel a he didn't like the Babylonians but he wanted to make sure God's plan didn't get messed up I mean these Egyptians could the whole thing up and so he has to go out and fight the Egyptians to protect God's plan bad bad idea you know God will see his purposes through he is sovereign he doesn't need our help he may use us as instruments of his purposes and oftentimes does but we must never think or labor under the delusion that somehow God can't get the job done without us and that's why even when our motives are quite pure we should always take the second step and really ask God for wisdom as to what we should do just because I have a pure heart doesn't mean necessarily the action I'm going to take based on that pure heart is going to be a very smart move and God is the God not only of the heart but of the body we need to present our bodies as living sacrifices and we need to be clear that as we act from these good motives that we're doing so in a way that is fully informed by the wisdom of God's Word I think that's what Josiah probably slipped up on there and it's part of the reason that he ends rather unhappy you know the ends of a wonderful career and a rather unhappy way and so I guess that's one will have to leave Josiah you you

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 47,341

Rating: 4.8114753 out of 5

Keywords: Assyria, Josiah, Bruce, Gore, Nabopolassar, Media, Cyaxeres, Saracus, Necho

Id: kyyC7btuHAg

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2015