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Old Testament History
Assyrian Dominance (745 BC-640 BC)
Dennis Bratcher
It is a common historical observation that the Israelite nations, both
the United Kingdom and later the two Kingdoms of Israel (North) and Judah
(South), came into existence in a vacuum of power in the Middle East. The
biblical account presents Israel’s entry and settlement in the land in
theological terms without apology. However, from a purely historical
perspective (which, of course, is a rather modern rational construct) the
tiny nation of Israel flourished from the 12th century to the 8th century BC
because there were no other regional powers sufficient to challenge it.
Egypt to the south had already seen its days of glory and was no longer a
serious claimant to empire. While there would be brief revivals under a few
strong pharaohs, Egypt would never recover the glory days of the great
pyramid builders. The Hittite Empire to the North had crumbled long before
Israel entered the land, and the Syrians were never strong enough alone to
pose any serious threat to Israel. The Israelites gradually subdued or made
trading partners the encroaching Sea Peoples, the Phoenicians and
Philistines, along the coast to the West. The older kingdoms of Mesopotamia
to the North and East had long since disintegrated into warring factions,
and no strong leader had yet emerged to weld them into a unified nation.
After early conflicts with Canaanite tribes, and in spite of occasional
skirmishes with surrounding nations, Israel enjoyed 400 years without major
threats of conquest.
Yet, Israel was located in a strategic geographical position on the
single narrow strip of arable land at the crossroads between Africa,
Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. Israel was particularly vulnerable should
nations to the North decide to build an empire, because the only land route
to the wealth of North Africa and Egypt lay through Israel. This
geographical fact even allowed the prophets to use the metaphor "enemy from
the North" to refer to any threat to the nation (for example, Isa 41:25, Jer
1:14-15, Ezek 1:4, 23:24, 38:14-15, Joel 2:20, etc.).
The relative calm ended in the middle eighth century BC. In 745 BC,
Tiglath-Pileser III (called Pul in biblical traditions; 2 Kings 15:19) took
the throne of Assyria. A shrewd and capable ruler, he quickly managed to
forge the warring Assyrian factions into a formidable nation. Soon, Assyria
ruthlessly began building an empire, extending control over Babylon and the
Medes to the East, defeating the Kingdom of Urartu to the North, and
extending control to the West into Eastern Asia Minor, Phoenicia (Tyre),
Syria (Damascus), and into northern Israelite territory.
The nations of Israel and Judah, for the first time in their history,
would now have to deal with a serious military threat to their very
existence. Yet, neither nation was in any shape to face such a threat. Here
we could again divide the problems up into spiritual and political. But the
biblical traditions do not make such an easy division. They interpret what
we would understand to be political and military weakness, and inadequate
leadership, as a spiritual and moral decay that had undermined the fabric of
both nations (See Baal Worship in the Old Testament).
However, for our purposes here we will track the events from the perspective
of the political leadership of the nations, realizing that the biblical
traditions interpret the events through the lens of faithfulness to Yahweh.
Following the relatively stable and prosperous reign of Jereboam II, the
northern Kingdom of Israel collapsed into near anarchy. Internal turmoil and
power struggles combined with a series of assassinations left Israel in no
position to cope with the growing Assyrian menace. And, as the prophets Amos
and Hosea pointed out, spiritual decline and Ba’al worship were rampant,
factors that further weakened national identity and resolve. At the very
time that Tiglath-Pileser III was coming to power in Assyria, marking the
rebirth of the Assyrian Empire and the greatest external threat the
Israelites had faced since the beginning of the Kingdom, Israel was
self-destructing. The Northern Kingdom would never recover.
Zechariah (746-745) and
Shallum (745)
Zechariah, the son of Jereboam II and the fourth king in the lineage of
Jehu, took the throne after the 40-year reign of his father. However, after
only 6 months in office he was assassinated by Shallum ben Jabesh who
attempted to seize the throne (2 Kings 15:8-12). However, Shallum was
likewise murdered after only a month in power by Menahem ben Gadi.
After assassinating his predecessor, Shallum, Menahem began his reign by
cruel subjugation of those who opposed him. Israel remembered the atrocities
he committed to establish his control (2 Kings 15:16). Although Menahem
reigned nearly 10 years, he was a weak ruler. Faced with the prospect of
Assyrian invasion, Menahem taxed the wealthy of the Kingdom to pay tribute
to Tiglath-Pileser, thus avoiding a direct invasion. But by so doing, for
all practical purposes he had surrendered the nation to the Assyrians and
made it a vassal state of the Assyrian Empire. We can only speculate as to
the national mood at this point, but the unfolding events suggest that there
was strong resentment against subjugation to Assyria.
Mehahem’s son Pekahiah took the throne but was quickly assassinated by
one of his officers, Pekah ben Remaliah ("son of Remaliah," Isa 7:1ff, 2
Kings 15:23-26), who then took the throne.
Pekah (736-732) and the
Syro-Ephraimitic coalition
Pekah's assassination of Pekahiah set the nation on a dangerous course.
Perhaps pushed to action by Israelite nationalists, perhaps encouraged by
other nations wanting to stop the Assyrian advance, Pekah began an
aggressive anti-Assyrian program that would prove disastrous. The Northern
Kingdom, torn by internal dissension and political intrigue and crippled
spiritually by the syncretism with Ba’al worship, was in no condition to
launch such a campaign. But Pekah forged ahead with his plans seemingly
heedless of the consequences.
Pekah formed a military alliance with Rezin the king of Damascus (the
territory of Aram or Syria) to resist the Assyrians. Apparently realizing
that even those two combined nations were not enough to withstand Assyria,
Pekah tried to recruit others into the rebellion. He made an appeal to the
Southern Kingdom of Judah, at this time ruled by Jotham son of Uzziah, to
join their efforts. Jotham refused. We are left to speculate as to his
reasons for refusing, but in light of the Assyrian threat, it was probably a
wise course of action.
At this point Pekah made an incredible decision. With resources already
low, Pekah decided with the aid of Rezin to march his army south to Judah,
remove Jotham by force, and replace him with a ruler more agreeable to his
plans (Isa 7:6). The course of events is not clear, but it appears that
other nations such as Edom to the south and the Philistines to the west took
the opportunity to side against Judah in order to secure their own positions
(2 Kings 16:6, 2 Chron 28:17-18).
As Pekah marched his army to the south, Jotham abruptly died and was
succeeded by his son Ahaz who had to face the threat from the combined
Aramean and Israelite forces. Pekah actually managed to lay siege to
Jerusalem. Here the Chronicles account (2 Chron 28:1-15) differs
considerably from the account in 2 Kings (16:5). While the Chronicler tells
of a great slaughter, as well as defeat and looting of Jerusalem as
punishment for the wickedness of Ahaz, 2 Kings simply says that Pekah could
not defeat Ahaz. Since the purpose of the invasion was to replace Jotham (or
Ahaz), and that did not occur, it seems that the 2 Kings account is more
accurate.
This is not to say that the Chronicles’ account is false. It is entirely
possible that there was a great loss of life as Jerusalem was besieged. But
it is obvious that the Chronicles account emphasizes far more the negative
aspects of the invasion as a vehicle for the theological point that
disobedience to God brings consequences (to preserve some sense of justice,
the Chronicler notes that the Northerners did not profit from their looting
of the city, 2 Chron 28:8-15). The writer of Kings only wanted to say that
the invasion ultimately failed and Ahaz remained on the throne of Judah.
Ahaz had appealed to Assyria for assistance in repelling the invading
coalition armies. That had its own consequences in the Southern Kingdom (for
the impact of this invasion on the Southern Kingdom, see under the reign of
Ahaz), but placed the Northern Kingdom and Pekah in imminent peril. The
Assyrian King, while not really needing it to act, had an open invitation to
invade the Northern Kingdom with support from Judah to the South. The
Assyrian armies began to deal one by one with the rebellious nations. In
734, Tiglath-Pileser’s armies decimated the Philistine territories along the
coast southwest of Judah, cut off any assistance from Egypt to the south,
and then turned back north to deal with Israel. By 733 the Assyrians had
taken most of the northern territories of Israel and surrounding areas, and
were poised to take Samaria, the northern capital (2 Kings 15:29). Later,
they would strike further north and ravage the Syrian territories.
At this point, Pekah was assassinated by Hoshea who took control of the
Northern Kingdom. Again, while we have no direct evidence, events suggest
that this assassination was an attempt to change policy toward Assyria and
save the nation.
Hoshea (732-724) and the
end
Hoshea immediately surrendered the Northern Kingdom to Shalmeneser V
(some think this was Shalmaneser IV), the new king of Assyria, and paid
tribute (2 Kings 17:1-3). This action probably saved Samaria from
destruction, at least for a while, but only put the Northern Kingdom more
firmly in the grasp of the Assyrians.
There was no doubt still a faction within Israel that wanted
independence. While Hoshea had acted to save what remained of the nation, he
eventually saw what he thought was an opportunity to break free of Assyrian
control. He made an alliance with Egypt, thinking he could rely on them for
military assistance, and withheld tribute from Assyria (2 Kings 17:4). But
Egypt at this time was weak and was worthless as a military ally.
Shalmeneser’s army attacked the reduced Israelite Kingdom in 724, captured
most of the land, and took Hoshea prisoner. Only Samaria remained. It was
besieged for 3 years, and was finally taken in 721 (2 Kings 17:5-6). The
city was destroyed, the northern Kingdom transformed into a province of the
Assyrian Empire, a number of the people taken as prisoners or exiles to
Assyria, and other people resettled in the captured territory (2 Kings
17:24-34).
The Northern Kingdom had ceased to exist. Even though there were
continued prophetic dreams of a restored and unified Kingdom (for
example,
Ezek 37:18-22) it would forever disappear from history. The writer of 2
Kings gives a long theological evaluation of the fall of the Northern
Kingdom, attributing their demise to faithlessness to their covenant with
Yahweh in worshipping other gods (2 Kings 17:7-18).
The middle eighth century BC was relatively prosperous for both
the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Even
though Jeroboam II’s reign in the Northern Kingdom provided a period of
relative peace and prosperity, he continued to allow Ba’al worship to
flourish and was therefore seen as taking another step toward disaster for
the nation (Amos 7:10-17). During the same period in the Southern Kingdom of
Judah, Uzziah also proved to be a capable leader providing a corresponding
forty year period of peace and prosperity for Judah. (2 Chron 26). Uzziah
was one of only five kings of the Southern Kingdom whom the biblical
traditions give passing marks as a leader. So, there is some sense of the
passing of an era and the dawning of an ominous future in Isaiah of
Jerusalem marking the beginning of his ministry as "the year that king
Uzziah died" (Isa 6:1).
Jotham (co-regent, 750-742;
king, 742-735)
King Uzziah contracted leprosy during the latter part of his reign, so
his son Jotham shared the throne as co-regent for the last years of Uzziah’s
rule, although it is likely that Uzziah retained control. Considering the
monumental events swirling through the area, very little notice is taken of
the reign of Jotham. The accounts in both Kings and Chronicles note a few
building projects (2 Chron 27:1-5, 2 Kings 32-35) while the Chronicler adds
a victory over the Ammonites that resulted in three years of tribute. Both
accounts give him mixed ratings, noting that he tried to follow the
practices of Uzziah but did not promote any religious reforms. The
Chronicler tends to sanitize Jotham’s reign, omitting any reference to the
threat from the alliance of Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel mentioned in
Kings (The Syro-Ephraimitic Coalition, 2 Kings 15:37).
Since Jotham died just as the armies of Pekah were poised to strike at
Jerusalem, it fell to his son Ahaz to deal with this threat.
Ahaz is remembered as one of the worst kings of Judah, not only willing
to surrender the country to Assyria for his own survival but also willing to
compromise the nation’s commitment to God. Ahaz came to the throne just as
the coalition of Syria and Israel was ready to depose his father Jotham and
replace him with someone more sympathetic to their anti-Assyrian plans (Isa
7:6) . We do not know all of the motivations that drove Ahaz since much of
the biblical account views his actions through the consequences it had both
politically and religiously for the Southern Kingdom. But his actions
spelled disaster in both areas for Judah.
Ahaz faced the prospect of civil war with the Northern Israelites. No
doubt taking advantage of a volatile situation, the Edomites to the south
captured Elath, Judah’s port on the Red Sea and forced Ahaz’ army to retreat
(2 Kings 16:6). About the same time the Philistines along the southeastern
coast, whom Judah had held in check for some time, began raiding into the
hill country along Judah’s southern borders. Ahaz, unwilling or unable to
wage campaigns on three fronts, began seeking military alliances with other
nations. The prophet Isaiah desperately pleaded with Ahaz to trust in the
promises of God and not to pursue such a reckless course of action (Isa
7-8). But Ahaz ignored Isaiah, and after overtures to Egypt failed to
produce any results, he finally appealed to the Assyrian ruler Tiglath
Pileser III for assistance (1 Kings 16:7-10). In effect, Ahaz had willingly
surrendered the Southern Kingdom to Assyria.
Assyria needed little excuse to take action, and the events that unfolded
led to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians in 721 BC.
While saving his throne and averting the same fate for the Southern Kingdom,
Ahaz and Judah were now vassals of the Assyrian Empire. In the ancient Near
Eastern culture, where each nation had a patron deity as protector and
defender of that country, subjugation of another country meant that the gods
of the victor had prevailed over the gods of the other. As vassal of
Assyria, Ahaz was compelled to acknowledge the Assyrian gods as his own.
On a trip to Damascus to meet the Assyrian king to pledge his loyalty,
and probably to pay homage to Assyrian deities as well, he saw an altar to
Asshur the patron deity of Assyria. He made plans of this altar, sent them
to Jerusalem, and instructed that the altar be built and placed in the
Temple for his use. When he returned from Damascus, Ahaz offered sacrifices
on the altar. In addition, he removed some of the furnishings of the
Temple and closed the king’s entrance into the Temple at the instructions of
the Assyrian ruler (2 Kings 16:10-18). In effect, Ahaz had converted part of
the Temple into a shrine to Asshur!
With the king providing such an example, Ba’al worship and all sorts of
Canaanite religious practices flourished. Ahaz himself even allowed one of
his sons to be offered as a child sacrifice (2 Kings 16:3). This era was
remembered as one of the worst times of apostasy from God in the Southern
Kingdom, rivaled only by the reign of Manasseh. The prophets Isaiah and
Micah both scathingly denounced the apostasy and warned of dire consequences
for the Southern Kingdom, just as had already happened to the North, if
Judah did not repent and return to God (Mic 1:2-16, 3:9-12, Isa 9:8-10:4).
But the nation remained captive to Assyrian and Assyrian gods throughout the
reign of Ahaz.
As bad as the reign of Ahaz had been, the reign of his son Hezekiah was
remembered as one of the best for Judah. Hezekiah came to the throne just as
events were heating up again in Palestine. After two decades of Assyrian
rule, many of the surrounding nations as well as Judah were anxious to be
free of the Assyrians. And there were many faithful followers of Yahweh in
Judah, as exemplified by Micah and Isaiah with his group of followers, who
found the religious situation under Ahaz intolerable. Hezekiah would quickly
be caught up in a series of events that would allow Judah to escape the fate
of Samaria and the Northern Kingdom, at least for a while.
The new Assyrian king, Sargon II who came to power about the time Samaria
fell in 722/1 BC, was occupied in the northern, eastern, and western
provinces of the Assyrian Empire quelling revolts and consolidating his
reign. This eased some pressure on Palestine toward the end of the rule of
Ahaz. Egypt, who had been weak during for some time, experienced a
resurgence of power with a new dynasty around 716-715 BC, and encouraged
rebellion against Assyria in Palestine and Syria as a means of establishing
a buffer zone between Egypt and Assyria should Assyria again turn ambitious.
Led by Ashdod around 714, several Philistine city-states withheld tribute
from Assyria, and surrounding nations were invited to join the rebellion
with promised aid from Egypt. We have little information about Hezekiah’s
involvement in the rebellion, although it is clear that Isaiah advised him
to have no part of an alliance with Egypt (Isa 20). If he sided with the
rebels at all, he managed to extricate himself before it was too late. By
712 Sargon had ruthlessly crushed the rebellion since the promised Egyptian
aid never came.
However the pressure to purge Assyrian rule and deities from Judah
continued to mount. Hezekiah, encouraged to restore the worship of Yahweh by
the prophets Isaiah and Micah, began a series of sweeping religious reforms
that intended to purge the pagan religious practices as well as to address
the social abuses that had been allowed to prevail under Ahaz. The biblical
traditions report this as simply an attempt to cleanse the nation of the
religious syncretism that Ahaz had allowed to pollute the land (2 Chron 29).
But since the altar to Assyrian gods had tremendous political implications,
the reforms were hardly purely religious. To remove the Assyrian shrines was
the same as rejecting Assyrian rule. While the biblical reports are matter
of fact, the reforms probably were done gradually over a period of time
rather than a radical break all at once.
In any case, by 704 Hezekiah’s opportunity came. Sargon II was
assassinated and Sennacherib (705-681 BC) came to power in Assyria.
Typically, outlying provinces attempted to rebel and Sennacherib was
immediately spread thin attempting to hold the Empire together. Hezekiah was
ready for a break from Assyria and withheld tribute, an open signal of
rebellion. Other states in the area joined the rebellion and Hezekiah, in
brokering an alliance with Egypt over the objections of Isaiah (Isa 30, 31),
became the leader of the revolt. It took Sennacherib until 701 to quiet the
other provinces sufficiently to turn his attention to Hezekiah.
Sennacherib marched from the north into Palestine intent on devastating
cities that had rebelled. He began along the northwestern coastal area of
Phoenicia and the seaport of Tyre, which quickly fell. The defeat of Tyre
caused many of the city-states as far away as Moab and Ammon to promptly
reassert their allegiance to Assyria. However, the Philistine cities of
Ashkelon and Ekron along with the Kingdom of Judah continued to refuse
tribute to Sennacherib. Determined to teach the rebellious cities a lesson,
Sennacherib continued his southward march. In a short span of time, he had
secured all of the Philistine territory along the coast and turned inland to
deal with Hezekiah and Judah. The Assyrians destroyed a great number of
towns in Judah and finally laid siege to Jerusalem itself.
At this point, the accounts of the ensuing campaigns of Sennacherib are
not clear and there are differing opinions about the precise sequence of
events. The debate centers on whether there were two separate campaigns by
Sennacherib against Hezekiah, one in 701 and another in 688-687, or only one
in 701. The evidence, both from biblical accounts and Sennacherib’s own
Annals, which have survived, is unclear. Some suggest that at this time
Hezekiah, fearing the worst, sent envoys to Sennacherib and secured a peace
treaty at the price of heavy tribute that resulted in Hezekiah stripping the
temple of it gold to meet the demands (2 Kings 18:13-16). They suggest that
later Hezekiah again rebelled against Assyria around 690 with assistance
from the new Egyptian pharaoh Tirhakah while Sennacherib was busy putting
down unrest in Babylon (2 Kings 19:9). Since Tirhakah did not become Pharaoh
until 690, this would imply a second campaign by Sennacherib subsequent to
the 701 incursion.
However, most historians contend that there was only one campaign, with
all the above events relating to the siege of Jerusalem in 701. Their
perspective is that Hezekiah attempted to prevent the destruction of
Jerusalem by sending tribute, but Sennacherib was not satisfied with the
offer and was determined to destroy Jerusalem and humiliate Hezekiah (2
Kings 18:17-18). The reference to Tirhakah would then either be an
anachronistic reference from a later period, or a reference to Tirhakah as a
military leader a decade before he became pharaoh. In any case, the details
are not adequate enough from the biblical account to decide with any
certainty.
Regardless of the precise historical details, the primary biblical concern is the devastation of large
areas of Judah by the Assyrians and the outcome of the siege of Jerusalem.
There are various theories about what happened to end the siege, such an
infestation of rats that led to a sudden deadly plague (2 Kings 19:35) or an
unexpected recall of Sennacherib to Assyria (2 Kings 19:5-7), but they seem
to miss the point of the biblical narrative. The biblical traditions simply
remembered that just as it seemed inevitable the Assyrians would take the
city, they suddenly left in the middle of the night never to return to the
city (2 Kings 19:35-37). Clearly, the biblical traditions attribute this to
God, just as Isaiah had promised Hezekiah (Isa 37:33-35). The implication of
these events from the biblical perspective is that God spared the city
because of the faithfulness of Hezekiah and the reforms that he had
instituted in the worship of Yahweh (2 Chron 31:20-21). Even so, both the
account in Kings and especially the parallel account in Chronicles note that
Hezekiah was not not a model king and had a tendency to pride and self
glorification (Isa 39; 2 Chron 32:24-26).
Theological Note: It should not diminish this
perspective either theologically or historically to note that the
deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrians would later lead to the
dogma of the inviolability of Zion, the idea that God would
always under all circumstances protect the city of Jerusalem and the
Temple. This assumed that the promise of Isaiah was a timeless and unconditional one.
Jeremiah would later face these ideas that presented a tremendous
hindrance to his own message, which was precisely the opposite of
Isaiah’s: that the city of Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians (note Jer 7:1-11). He would also face false prophets such as Hananiah (Jer
28), who no doubt quoted the words of Isaiah to him with full confidence
without considering that there was no righteous king close to the
equivalent of Hezekiah and therefore the message from God might be
different. It is even possible that these prophets were later disciples
of Isaiah who were trying to preserve a tradition for its own sake
without standing in the "council" of God (Jer 23:21-22).
It is a sober warning that God’s word for his people
might be different at different times. Likewise it warns how easily and
dangerously God’s people can assume that what was true in the past must
always be true without qualification or consideration of how the
condition of the people and their response might affect history. In many
ways, it is this same assumption about the work of God in the world that
caused problems for Jesus. Ironically, it was the Isaiah tradition
itself that challenged the idea of "what has been must be" as it
proclaimed God as the God of new things (Isa 42:8-9, 43:18-21).
The last years of Hezekiah’s reign are obscure. If there were two
invasions by Sennacherib, then Hezekiah’s entire reign was occupied with the
Assyrian threat. If there was only one, the later part of his reign was
evidently uneventful, except for some building projects around Jerusalem (2
Kings 20:20, 2 Chron 32:27-32).
This section is not yet finished; it will be
made available as it is completed.
Manasseh (687-642)
Amon (642-640)
-Dennis Bratcher, Copyright ©
2018, Dennis
Bratcher, All Rights Reserved
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