Isaiah 20:1-29

BOOK 3

PROPHECIES FROM THE ACCESSION OF HEZEKIAH TO THE DEATH OF SARGON

727-705 B.C.

THE prophecies with which we have been engaged (Chapter s 2-10:4) fall either before or during the great Assyrian invasion of Syria, undertaken in 734-732 by Tiglath-pileser II, at the invitation of King Ahaz. Nobody has any doubt about that. But when we ask what prophecies of Isaiah come next in chronological order, we raise a storm of answers. We are no longer on the sure ground we have been enjoying.

Under the canonical arrangement the next prophecy is "The Woe upon the Assyrian". Isaiah 10:5 In the course of this the Assyrian is made to boast of having overthrown "Samaria" (Isaiah 10:9) "Is not Samaria as Damascus? Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?" If "Samaria" mean the capital city of Northern Israel-and the name is never used in these parts of Scripture for anything else-and if the prophet be quoting a boast which the Assyrian was actually in a position to make, and not merely imagining a boast, which he would be likely to make some years afterwards (an entirely improbable view, though held by one great scholar), then an event is here described as past and over which did not happen during Tiglath-pileser's campaign, nor indeed till twelve years after it. Tiglath-pileser did not require to besiege Samaria in the campaign of 734-32. The king, Pekah, was slain by a conspiracy of his own subjects; and Hoshea, the ringleader, who succeeded, willingly purchased the stability of a usurped throne by homage and tribute to the king of kings. So Tiglath-pileser went home again, satisfied to have punished Israel by carrying away with him the population of Galilee. During his reign there was no further appearance of the Assyrians in Palestine, but at his death in 727 Hoshea, after the fashion of Assyrian vassals when the throne of Nineveh changed occupants, attempted to throw off the yoke of the new king, Salmanassar IV Along with the Phoenician and Philistine cities, Hoshea negotiated an alliance with So, or Seve, the Ethiopian, a usurper who had just succeeded in establishing his supremacy over the land of the Pharaohs. In a year Salmanassar marched south upon the rebels. He took Hoshea prisoner on the borders of his territory (725), but, not content, as his predecessor had been, with the submission of the king, "he came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years." 2 Kings 17:5 He did not live to see the end of the siege, and Samaria was taken in 722 by Sargon, his successor. Sargon overthrew the kingdom and uprooted the people. The northern tribes were carried away into a captivity, from which as tribes they never returned.

It was evidently this complete overthrow of Samaria by Sargon in 722-721, which Isaiah had behind him when he wrote Isaiah 10:9. We must, therefore, date the prophecy after 721, when nothing was left as a bulwark between Judah and the Assyrian. We do so with reluctance. There is much Isaiah 10:5 which suits the circumstances of Tiglath-pileser's invasion. There are phrases and catch-words coinciding with those in chapter 7-9:7; and the whole oration is simply a more elaborate expression of that defiance of Assyria, which inspires such of the previous prophecies as Isaiah 8:9. Besides, with the exception of Samaria, all the names in the Assyrian's boastful catalogue-Carchemish, Calno, Arpad, Hamath, and Damascus-might as justly have been vaunted by the lips of Tiglath-pileser as by those of Sargon. But in spite of these things, which seem to vindicate the close relation of Isaiah 10:5 to the prophecies which precede it in the canon, the mention of Samaria as being already destroyed justifies us in divorcing it from them. While they remain dated from before 732, we place it subsequent to 722.

Was Isaiah, then, silent these ten years? Is there no prophecy lying farther on in his book that treats of Samaria as still standing? Besides an address to the fallen Damascus in Isaiah 17:1, which we shall take later with the rest of Isaiah's oracles on foreign states, there is one large prophecy, chapter 28, which opens with a description of the magnates of Samaria lolling in drunken security on their vine-crowned hill, but God's storms are ready to break. Samaria has not yet fallen, but is threatened and shall fall soon. The first part of chapter 28, can only refer to the year in which Salmanassar advanced upon Samaria-726 or 725. There is nothing in the rest of it to corroborate this date; but the fact, that there are several turns of thought and speech very similar to turns of thought and speech in Isaiah 10:5, makes us the bolder to take away chapter 28 from its present connection with 29-32, and place it just before Isaiah 10:5.

Here then is our next group of prophecies, all dating from the first seven years of the reign of Hezekiah: 28, a warning addressed to the politicians of Jerusalem from the impending fate of those of Samaria (date 725); Isaiah 10:5, a woe upon the Assyrian (date about 720), describing his boasts and his progress in conquest till his sudden crash by the walls of Jerusalem; 11, of date uncertain, for it reflects no historical circumstance, but standing in such artistic contrast to 10 that the two must be treated together; and 12, a hymn of salvation, which forms a fitting conclusion to 11. With these we shall take the few fragments of the book of Isaiah which belong to the fifteen years 720-705, and are as straws to show how Judah all that time was drifting down to alliance with Egypt-20, Isaiah 21:1; Isaiah 38:1; Isaiah 39:1. This will bring us to 705, and the beginning of a new series of prophecies, the richest of Isaiah's life, and the subject of our third book.