- 115-
** The mention of the places enumerated in 2 Kings 19:12, confirms the view expressed
in a previous note, that the boasted conquests were not those of the present reign, but
looked back upon the past. Thus Gozan was a district in Mesopotamia on the river
Chabor, whence Sargon had transported colonists to Samaria. Not far from Gozan was
the town of Haran, the Roman and Greek Carrhae, one of the earliest Assyrian
possessions, mentioned even in the 12th cent. B.C. (comp. Genesis 11:31, etc.). Rezeph
was another Mesopotamian town, frequently mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as
Rasaappa, or Rasappa. Thelasar (in Ass. Til-Assuri, either "the Assyrian hill," or, "the hill
of Asur")seems to have been one of the cities of "the Sons of Eden," a tribe inhabiting a
district on both banks of the middle Euphrates. It is probable that either Shalmaneser or
Sargon had changed the original name of the city to Telassar (comp. the Eden of Ezekiel
27:23; perhaps also the Beth-Eden of Amos i. 5).
But it was a virtual defeat, which, with the failure to gain possession of Jerusalem,
determined the final retreat of Sennacherib from Palestine. His circumstances must have
made him most anxious to obtain the surrender of the Judaean capital. Accordingly, a
second embassy had been dispatched to demand it -probably before the battle of Altaku,
although after the approach of the Ethiopian army. This second summons was addressed
to Hezekiah, and was in terms similar to those previously used, although it naturally
contained no longer any reference to Egypt, and was also perhaps more directly
challenging to the God of Israel (2 Kings 19:9-13).
It argues, in our view, a painful want not only of spiritual insight, but even of deeper
sympathy, when certain modern critics depreciate the act of Hezekiah in going to the
Temple to spread before Jehovah "the letters" of the Assyrian, either as mechanical or as
evidence of a lower standpoint. It was not even symbolical, but, as Delitzsch has rightly
designated it, a prayer without words - a sublime expression of faith, in entire accordance
with what had preceded, and such as in certain events of our lives we might be disposed
to imitate, at least in spirit. Still more strange does it seem to find the authenticity of the
prayer with which Hezekiah accompanied this submission to the living God, questioned
on the ground that the setting aside of all other gods as powerless,* being the work of
men's hands, and the exclusive acknowledgment of Jehovah were beyond the spiritual
range of the time. Surely this is not only arbitrarily to displace the Scriptural records, but
on the ground of it to construct a history of Israel, and then to judge events by this self-
made standard.
- As Thenius reminds us, there is monumental evidence of the cutting in pieces of the
image of a god after the taking and sacking of a city.
It was only as we would have expected when Isaiah, in the name of his God, and as His
representative, made response alike to the letter of the Assyrian and to the prayer of
Hezekiah. His utterance consists, as has been rightly observed,* of three parts.
(^)