Freedom, Miracles, and History

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger, and we have concluded with Isaiah’s Christmas sermon and are moving on to the threat of Sennacherib under the days of Hezekiah. Greg, would you take on your usual role of telling us the story?

Before we went live, David, our producer, made the observation, “We were just back in Isaiah 9 and suddenly we’re with Sennacherib. What’s that all about?” Actually, not a whole lot of time has passed. The Christmas sermon that Isaiah delivered to Ahaz was someplace in the middle of his rule, and he did not reign very long. His son Hezekiah comes to the throne upon his death, and Isaiah immediately begins setting things right.

His first act actually is to open up the temple (Ahaz had shut it) and to repair the temple (Ahaz had made a mess of it) and to throw a Passover like Israel had not seen in forever. So he’s beginning these reforms, and along the way one of his reforms is to break the covenant that Ahaz had established with Assyria.

Apparently, he was moving a little fast on God’s timetable. Just because you turn to Christ and try to fix everything doesn’t mean that all of your problems immediately go away, like a huge empire with this huge army that’s within striking distance, so he seems to have miscalculated there.

The reigning emperor, whose name is Sennacherib, turns his armies toward Judah, toward Jerusalem, and Hezekiah says, “Oh, whoops. Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking. I lose my head next. You can go back. I’ll pay whatever you say,” but it was a little late. Sennacherib felt that he needed to make an example, or some such thing. Besides, he wanted to expand toward Egypt in any case, so it was inevitable something was going to happen. And if Hezekiah wasn’t going to side with Assyria, sooner or later this was going to come. The army arrives in Judea and Sennacherib begins subduing all of the other cities, saving Jerusalem for last.

We have an ancient inscription from the ruins of Nineveh from this time period, where Sennacherib is boasting. He says, “Hezekiah himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage.” One commentator said, “I guess that’s a fancy cocky way of saying he couldn’t take the city,” which is about what it amounts to.

That’s a spin. That’s what we call it. In the game of news, we call that spinning.

Yes. Most of the army was elsewhere doing other things, but part of the army showed up with one of Sennacherib’s right-hand men, a guy named Rabshakeh, to intimidate Hezekiah, to intimidate the Jews in Jerusalem, and to say in so many words, “You are so toast. Why don’t you just open your gates right now, cut a deal with us, and just wait for us. And when we have a moment, we’ll send horses and take whoever can ride them, and we’ll take you all away to a nice safe place.” What we have beginning in Isaiah 36 is that interaction or confrontation.

Hezekiah doesn’t go out to meet this envoy. He sends his own envoys, just as Sennacherib doesn’t come in his own person, but the envoys meet and this Rabshakeh, which is a title, has been primed and prepped to know exactly what to say. So with that in mind, I would like to read some of this and make some comments along the way. Again, this is Isaiah 36.

Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defensed cities of Judah and took them. And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army.

Lachish was at that point Sennacherib’s personal concern. He’s there with the bulk of his army. Lachish was a city that was associated with Judah but had kind of made a break from some of the raunchier kings, so Sennacherib is dealing with that, but he sends Rabshakeh with a good sizeable army. We’re told –

And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field.

If we remember back to the beginning of the Christmas sermon, that’s exactly where Isaiah confronted Ahaz and ended up making the promise of the virgin birth of Messiah. It’s a very symbolic place, in that it’s a place where things are made white as snow, and where the waters that feed Jerusalem empty themselves out. So there’s typology going on here, and here stands the pagan king and he has demands to make, and Hezekiah’s men come out to meet him.

Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph's son, the recorder.

These are members of Hezekiah’s Cabinet, basically.

And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him.

So his first argument is, “What do you think you’re doing? You don’t have a Hulk, and we do have an army, and it’s unstoppable and no one has ever stood up to us. You don’t have the power. Oh, I know! You’re thinking political alliance. You probably have some kind of deal with Egypt. Don’t do that. Egypt never honors its bargains. They’ve got nothing. It’s like leaning on a reed or sharp pointy stick. It will go right through your hand and you’ll be worse than before, so don’t even trust that.”

Then the next argument –

But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?

He obviously has spies in the city, because he knows what’s going on, but they’re apparently not Jewish spies because the Jews would have explained it differently. All he knows is that Hezekiah, upon coming to the throne, had gotten rid of all of the multitude of pagan altars that had filled Jerusalem. And what Sennacherib takes away from this is, “He’s taking away from the people their right to worship freely. He’s attacking freedom of religion, and he’s insulting God or the gods, because he’s destroying their altars. Don’t even think that God will help you, because look at what Hezekiah…”

Now, of course Hezekiah was doing exactly what God wanted him to do by getting rid of all of this idolatrous worship, but Sennacherib didn’t understand that, so this was a complete misfire. That doesn’t go anywhere. But now he moves to his offer –

Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.

“You even got 2,000 people in that little city of yours? I don’t think so.”

How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

“Not only do you not have the military hardware, you don’t have the population. You can’t even support or field an army, so come back to Egypt? No, we’ve already been there.” Then he plays a different card –

And am I now come up without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.

That’s a closer hit because, as far as Judah can reckon things, that could be true. Maybe God had sent them as judgement. In fact, Isaiah had said things like that, so that’s a little touchy. That’s a sore spot. “Oh, what if he really knows something here? What if God has sent him? What if God has abandoned us already?”

So a question. Is this before or after the prophet of the Lord who said, “This false altar is going to be torn down and desecrated.”? And then he was leaving, and then somebody else who was a servant of the Lord said, “Come eat with me,” but the Lord had told him not to eat with him.

You’re remembering the things concerning the golden calf and its altar with Jeroboam I.

So we should be remembering that at this point, where someone claimed to have a commandment from God?

But in the case you just cited he didn’t. He just claimed he did. But something that will become far more relevant in Josiah’s reign, and Josiah comes later, when Josiah begins a military confrontation with Pharoah Necho out of Egypt, Pharoah Necho says, “Your God told me that you’re to leave me alone,” and he really had. He had really appeared to a pagan king and said, “Josiah is to leave you alone, and you’re to leave him alone. Don’t go there.” So the king says, “Okay, wasn’t planning on it, and I’ll tell him if he shows up,” and he did, but Josiah didn’t listen. He was probably saying, “Oh, he’s just making that up. Remember Sennacherib?” So it does become a real thing.

This pagan king is saying, “God is on my side because you have been wicked,” which is true and it’s the kind of thing God does. Isaiah had already spoken of Assyria coming up through the land and leveling it and taking everything. And then we go further –

Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language [that is, in Aramaic] for we understand it, and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall.

“Uh, could we shift to code, please?” The implication is, “It’s discouraging to the people on the wall who can hear you, so can we shift to your language?” which is still a lot like Hebrew, but spoken with their accent and with their vocabulary. It probably would not be as understandable, and they could all speak it.

I never really understood this request. I understand wanting to avoid the demoralizing effect of your enemies’ propaganda being shouted to you, but did they really expect him to be like, “Oh, I’m so sorry I was frightening your people.”

Yeah, they did, actually. Godly people are naïve sometimes. “Whatever you do, don’t do that!”

“Oh, you mean this?”

“Hey, Vladimir Putin, here’s a list of all the things we would not like you to attack, please.”

Exactly. They didn’t exactly say why they didn’t want them to talk in Hebrew, but it’s implied – “So the people on the wall don’t hear you.” That’s kind of a give-away. Why would they not want them to hear them?

As I said, this guy has been prepped and primed to know exactly what to say. He’s going through one argument after another. The one about Hezekiah rearranging worship he missed on because he was badly informed, but the rest are to the point. They’re scary things. But Rabshakeh when he hears this request takes it and runs with it. This is what he says –

But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

Potty mouth! He’s being really rude. When you have the upper hand, sometimes cussing out your naïve and seemingly defeated foe just makes it worse because you know you’re not being treated as a gentleman, as an equal. You know that you’re being roughed up and slapped in the ears and things are going downhill. Then Rabshakeh escalates.

Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.

So he’s going past the envoys to the people, trying to stir up a direct democratic revolution within the walls.

Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

So the next argument is, “We can avoid war. No one has to die here today. Just send out some kind of token present [gold or silver or something like that] and we’ll take that as good enough for now. We have other people to kill, so we’ll go do that. And while we’re gone you have freedom. You can come out and go back to your little villages, go visit your own house, sleep in your own bed, drink of your own cistern, eat from your own vineyard. Then we’ll come back and we will take you to a land. It’s going to be just like your land. It’s going to be a wonderful land, a land flowing with milk and honey and all that kind of thing. There’s no lose here. This is all great. Just work with us here.” And then he says this –

Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?

Oops.

That was the question he should not have asked.

That’s the line he shouldn’t have stepped over, because to this point, yes, God’s people have sinned. They’ve been very wicked. The last king was an abomination, barely in his grave, and they would have every reason to expect that God might use the Assyrians as the rod of his chastisement. But now he’s stepped over in saying, “You know, your God is not so great. We’ve defeated other gods.” Later on, I think it’s in the letter, he will say, “The other nations had better-looking gods than you. They had better idols. You don’t even have a decent idol here. What’s with you?”

“You can’t even see him! Who is this God?”

“Your god just isn’t going to measure up.” Anytime in the ancient world when nations went to war, it was assumed their gods went to war, and when one nation defeated the other, its gods defeated their gods. So then you scooped up their idols and brought them to the temple of your gods and they became subjects and servants and slaves to your gods. That how you build pantheons.

So the assumption here is, “Our gods have beat up all the other gods. They’ll beat up Jehovah. No gods have even given our gods a run for the money. Just give it up.”

Now it’s personal. Now God’s own honor is at stake. It’s not about his people and whether they’ve been sinful or not. It’s whether or not God is really God. This little lesson in comparative religion was a horrible misstep, but Rabshakeh does not know that yet.

Hezekiah’s men were told this and –

But they held their peace, and answered him not a word, for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not.

So these guys go back and tell Hezekiah with their clothes rent that, “This is all he said. It looks really bad, boss. What are we supposed to do? What’s our next move? He’s got this huge army. He’s got more army coming. We don’t have anything. If you’re telling us just trust the Lord, now would be a really great time for the Lord to do something. Maybe you should go do something about that.”

Then chapter 37 –

And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD. And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

So two things are happening at once. Hezekiah has a two-pronged strategy here. He’s going to go into the temple, because Solomon said things like this, “If you need God, pray toward the temple,” but he’s also going to have his guys go and seek out Isaiah, who is the prophet of the hour right now. He survived Ahaz’s reign and he’s still around. The message that Hezekiah sends to Isaiah is this –

Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy, for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.

It’s like a woman being delivered of child, but she’s lost the strength and can’t push and can’t get the child to come out, so they’re both going to die if something doesn’t happen. That’s how it felt in Jerusalem.

It may be the LORD thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God…

Now, he doesn’t mean here in the sense of “know of their existence.” Obviously, God hears everything. He means, “Perhaps God will take this as a serious enough matter that he will do something about it.” God doesn’t respond every time somebody curses him or insults him or tries to make fun of him. If he did, the planet would be vastly depopulated. Hezekiah is hoping that this is a significant enough issue, given the time and circumstances, that God will decide, “This one doesn’t get a free pass.”

It may be the LORD thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left. So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

Isaiah already knows about this. God has already briefed him. He says –

Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

He doesn’t address all the other stuff that Rabshakeh said, because as we said there was some truth in most of it. But blasphemy against God – comparing God to one of the minor pagan deities, and saying that they could beat up on him – that was over the top, thank you, so God is going to deal with that.

Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

A blast upon him – that’s kind of vague, but it doesn’t sound good for the Assyrian army. So Sennacherib is going to be turned back and go home, back to Nineveh, and he’s going to die there. Someone is going to run a sword through him. There’s not a lot of information, but neither does it need to be. God has just said, “I’ve got you covered, all the stuff you wanted. I’m going to intervene. I’m going to send him packing, and when he gets home someone is going to kill him. Anything else?”

Well, there is something else, because as Rabshakeh goes back to check in with his king in verse 8 –

So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah, for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish.

This was another city that belonged properly to Judah, but at an earlier time had separated itself because of the wickedness of the kings, but it’s still standing, apparently. So for some reason that we’re not told, Sennacherib goes to attack that, but verse 9 –

And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia [that is Ethiopia and Egypt], He is come forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah…

First of all, there’s this other city that’s giving him some trouble, and when he’s right in the middle of that, word comes that the Ethiopians and Egyptians were coming. You remember how lightly Rabshakeh had dismissed Egypt. Well, apparently it’s not that easy. There’s actually going to have to be a fight. They have a very large army, and whereas Assyria may be able to knock them out, that’s going to have to be played out on the field of battle, so they have more important things to do than worry about Jerusalem. But there was enough time to send a message to say, “Don’t get your hopes up, Hezekiah.” This is what he says –

Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?

Okay, now it’s gotten more personal. “Don’t let your God deceive you through Hezekiah and say that somehow he’s going to magically fix this, like gods have that kind of power. Our gods have taken out every kingdom and their gods.”

As I said, it’s not apparently recorded here, but the story appears both in Kings and Chronicles and in Isaiah, so this is something God is really highlighting and spotlighting for us as a major step in redemptive history, because if Assyria wins, there goes the promise. Judah goes into captivity. God’s promise is to preserve it and the house of David.

Yes, there’s going to be a captivity sometime, but God has specified Babylon, not Assyria, so God, by his own honor, is bound to do something. It doesn’t have to be spectacular, but, “Hey, when’s the last time I did something not so spectacular? Maybe this is the time.”

So Hezekiah receives the letter from the messengers and he goes into the house of the Lord and spreads it out before God. He takes the letter, unrolls it, and points and says, “Look. See what this guy is saying, Lord? Read this letter.”

How often do we treat God like he’s one of us? It’s hard to deal with someone who knows everything from eternity to eternity by one eternal act of knowledge. We want to talk to him, and he wants to be talked to. As it’s said of Aslan, “Sometimes he just likes to be asked,” so Hezekiah is asking. He says, “Look at this. Read this,” and he spreads it before the Lord. Then Hezekiah prays, and this is what he says –

O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made heaven and earth. Incline thine ear, O LORD, and hear; open thine eyes, O LORD, and see, and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God.

He doesn’t appeal to – “But we have been so faithful,” or even “I’ve been so faithful. Look at all I’ve done for you!” He doesn’t go there. He appeals to God’s name, his reputation.

Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries, and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only.

Hezekiah went to the temple, but the answer comes back through Isaiah. Isaiah is told by God, “Say this.”

Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him. The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn. The daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? Even against the Holy One of Israel.

Notice, God could have, and we might expect him to say, “Alright, you’re right about my people. They’re wicked. They’re corrupt. They deserve punishment. But you touched me, so this is personal just between us now,” but he doesn’t do that. He has his people laugh at them. He inspires his people to mock them, to shake their head. Later on he’ll say to stick out your tongue at them.

God includes us in the victory, and it’s not just praying for Sennacherib’s soul. It’s actually laughing him to scorn, because the things he has said are ridiculous. The position he’s put himself in is outrageously dangerous and stupid, and it’s worthy of a dark comedy. As you see the guy doing the monologue and walking right toward the cliff, it’s funny and God laughs.

Which is funny to me too, because Sennacherib has set himself up as the provider of these people. He says, “I’m going to take you to where you’ll have your own vine and your own fig tree and you’re going to be taken care of. I’m going to provide for you.” He’s putting himself in a husbandly role, whereas God is saying, “Oh, that girl that you just tried to seduce? Yeah, she’s laughing at you.”

Some people have said that if a woman has despised a man in her heart, that’s the end of the relationship. There’s no coming back from that, which is why in the New Testament they’re like, “Wives, reverence your husbands. That’s how to make this work here.” So this is not working on any level for Sennacherib, according to God.

And he goes further. When he identifies himself he doesn’t say, “The Holy One who made heaven and earth. The Holy One who rules the nations.” He says, “The Holy One of Israel.” He’s still including his people.

You can think back here to Balaam when he’s hired by Balak to curse Israel. Balaam looks out at the tribes camped at the foot of Mount Sinai and says something incredible. “The Lord hath not seen iniquity in Israel.”

“Are you looking at the same Israel we’re looking at? Because, ya know, the whole Midianite woman thing, and offerings to the dead, and before that the rebellions in the wilderness, the grumbling and the golden calf – what do you mean you haven’t seen iniquity?”

“Because they’re covered by the covenant blood.”

So God here says, “Yeah, I will have things to say to my people later, but right now this is a family matter and they’re my kids and you’re not touching them. I’m theirs, they’re mine. You got into something, Sennacherib, that you did not understand and we’re laughing at you. Too bad for you.”

By thy servants hast thou reproached the Lord and hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof, and I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel.

What he’s doing here is comparing Palestine Canaan to Mount Lebanon, which was full of cedars and fir trees. Carmel means garden. It’s this beautiful place and he’s saying, “We are the Lord’s garden, as precious to him as Carmel is to the world. And you think you’re just going in and chopping down whatever you want and taking whatever you want and dirtying up all the water.”

I have digged, and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places.

This is God talking to Sennacherib.

Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps. Now therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded. They were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. But I know thy abode…

We have a modern equivalent – “I know where you live. You’re part of the plan.”

“I’ve been giving you the victories all along. It wasn’t that you were beating me.”

Yeah, and some of this should have leaked out. The prophets had said enough that his spies should have picked up on it and brought it back. “Uh, boss, uhhh, they think that you’re working for their God and that you’re accomplishing his purposes. You might want to factor that into how you talk to them.” He got a little in, but not much, because he’s too proud for that.

But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me.

This was not just political rhetoric. This was not just propaganda, things they came up with because they thought they would be effective. The king of Assyria actually is angry at Yahweh. We’re not told exactly why. We’re not told what’s going on here that made this happen right now.

I’m trying to remember the sequence for Jonah’s preaching. Jonah preached during the days of Jeroboam II, which is about in this time period. No, it’s past, because as Hezekiah is ascending the throne, Israel is collapsing in the north. That means Jeroboam is already gone, which means Jonah has already been there, so it is more than possible that Sennacherib was a young prince who grew up in a culture that for a brief time had embraced Jehovah, and as an unbeliever maybe that rankled him.

“I want to go off and do great conquests.”

“Son, that is not the way of the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth.”

“What?! That’s so not Assyrian.”

“But you understand. We worship the God of heaven now.”

“So it’s your dumb religion that keeps me from going off and making a name for myself?”

“Don’t speak of him that way. You need to humble yourself.”

Something like that may have happened. We don’t know.

Or something more personal, where he’s blaming God for something. He knew God was to blame, if he learned that Jehovah is the God of whole world, so if something went wrong in his life he’s like, “Oh, I know who to blame for this.”

And he is angry.

Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

And this shall be a sign unto thee [to Hezekiah and to Judah] Ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself, and the second year that which springeth of the same, and in the third year sow ye and reap and plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof.

It almost sounds like the provisions for the 49th Sabbath year, followed by the Jubilee. “You’re going to live off what was, then you’re going to plant, and you’re still going to be living off the harvest. Then you’re going to actually get busy going back to the way things were.”

I was wondering if that was not only like that, but that exact thing. “Look back at what I already told you.”

Yeah, there’s more to think about here that I have not considered yet.

And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

Last time we heard that phrase it was with the establishing of Messiah’s reign. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son given.” At the end it says, “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.” This is part of that, because all of this is about bringing Messiah into the world.

This is not because God values the nation-state of Judah for any particular purpose of their own, or value of their own, or anything they’ve done. It’s all about this is the channel through which Messiah comes.

The nation is going to into captivity before we’re done, but not yet, not now. It’s not time. God has the pattern set up in exactly the right way, and this isn’t it. Assyria needs to go down.

Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD. For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

This is about the Davidic covenant. It’s not because God values Jewish people for being Jewish people. It’s all about Messiah. If they will trust in their Messiah, then God will use them and God will bless them, but he doesn’t need anybody. He just has provided certain channels that he’s planning to use, so he’s going to defend those channels until he’s ready to dispose of them.

That’s the end of the message, but not the end of what God does. God is so succinct about what he does.

Then the angel of the LORD [that would be Jesus] went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand [185,000 in the army]. And when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

That is, when the remaining people woke up. Obviously, the dead people didn’t get up.

They didn’t wake up dead.

“Oh, look! We’re all dead.”

So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.

The Egyptians preserved some record of their supposed confrontation with the Assyrians, and took complete credit for it, but since I don’t remember the details precisely I’m just going to leave it at that. History does know about this, kind of. They know that Assyria was there, that the Egyptians were coming, that there was at least some kind of preparatory confrontation, and that the Assyrians turned around and ran.

The Egyptians attributed it to their gods. The Assyrians are strangely silent in their inscriptions. We have Sennacherib saying, “Yeah, I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage,” but no mention of what happened afterward. It’s just like radio silence. “We’re not talking about that right now.”

Sometime thereafter, within a fairly short time, it seems –

And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Armenia, and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.

Armenia is what we call it. At that time it was called Urartu, and Assyrians know all about it. It was a major power to the north, and if you listen to the consonants – Urat, Ararat – this is the kingdom centered around Mount Ararat. They were a very powerful kingdom to the north. They had been a thorn in the side of Assyria. There had been a lot of conflict, and since his sons upon killing him escaped there, it sounds like they probably had bought off his sons.

They were probably the two sons not in line, and probably Urartu had made a deal with them and said, “You get rid of your dad, and then you come home to us and we’ll embrace you and make your lives wonderful.” Anyway, that’s what happened. They killed their dad, assassinated him while he was worshiping, and they run away, leaving Esarhaddon in charge of Assyria. Then he has a lot of work to do, and Judah is simply not one of his major concerns, so Judah gets a pass for a while.

Assyria goes on, and we’ll see probably next time that one of the things that happens in here is this little place called Babylon keeps rebelling, and eventually one of the Babylonian kings says, “Enough of that,” and just smashes and wipes it out.

Esarhaddon, aside from conquering Egypt, also looks out there and says, “You know, that’s a great trading location. We really should have something there. I know! Let’s rebuild Babylon, and we’ll put these Chaldean folk in there and they can be our people. Yeah, won’t that be great!” That’s one of the worst mistakes in the history of geopolitical science, but we’ll see more of what goes on with all of that.

God not only substantially reduces the size of the Assyrian army and arranges for the current king and conqueror to die at the hands of his sons, but he rediverts all the Assyrian strategy and energy and military efforts in other directions, so that Assyria no long is a threat to Judah. In fact, Judah has rather a free hand for the next couple generations. Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son, will kind of play footsy again with the Assyrians and get in trouble with them as a result, but there’s no immediate threat to Jerusalem until Babylon comes along. So God fulfills his promise. He takes care of his people.

This is one of those rare times in history where God says, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” Sometimes God wins with little minor things, like someone can’t sleep and calls for the chronicles. Sometimes it’s through raising up some great man like Judas Maccabeus or David the son of Jesse, who changes the course of history. Sometimes it’s through the slow development of technology, the development of stirrups or an atomic bomb or the printing press. It’s sometimes through God’s control of nature – an untimely storm, a bank of fog.

But then sometimes in the history of the world God has intervened, and it’s impressive and sometimes we tend to think, “Well, that’s how God works.” Well, that’s how God has worked a few times. There was this flood that destroyed the world. There was the tower of Babel. There was this complete destruction of Egypt by ten plagues. There was the sun standing still in the sky. And there was this.

God can and does interrupt his normal faithful covenantal providence and do things that by our standards are absolutely spectacular, but that’s kind of because we’re jaded. We don’t think that God making the sun rise every day is all that big a deal because we’re so used to it. It doesn’t take any more for God to stop the sun than for him to make the sun go up, but one we’re used to and the other we’re not.

The God who daily calls to judgement millions of souls around the world, i.e., God kills people every day in the millions – here he kills 100,000 and we go, “Whoa, wow! What a God!” Yes, but consider. We are too easily impressed by the spectacular, but at the same time we should certainly be thankful when God does do cool nifty things that help our weak faith.

It’s not so much that we shouldn’t be impressed by what we would call miracles. It’s that we should be impressed every single day with the ordinary stuff.

The miracles remind us that God is in control.

I was acquainted with an educational movement in Christian circles that liked to talk about the providence of God. The problem was that none of these people were Calvinists, so they actually had no idea what providence actually meant. I asked two of the sons of one of the leaders of the movement, “You keep talking about providence. What is providence?” and what they came up with was, “It means that sometimes God steps into history and does really nifty things that are wild and unusual, and then he steps back out.” That’s not the biblical doctrine of providence.

He steps back out? I just can’t get over that.

Yeah, this is like Deism with a pause button. God sets up the natural laws that run the universe, and occasionally he interrupts them to do something nifty, and that’s providence.

Now, I don’t know that all the leaders of this movement would have said that, but these were the sons of one of the leaders and they both said the same thing, and they had no idea that what they were saying was wholly unbiblical.

Out of curiosity, do you know if there’s overlap between this movement and the movement that claimed that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were inspired by God?

I didn’t know there was a movement outside Mormonism that did that, so you apparently are familiar with something I’m not familiar with. But did they place a high standing on those documents? Oh, absolutely. In fact, the movement began when a couple of nice older ladies discovered the sterling character of America’s founders and wanted to find out what principles they adhered to that allowed them to set this nation on its course. So having discovered these, they then went back to the Bible and tried to find the biblical source for these things.

The gentleman I’ve talked about is one of their leaders and I asked him point blank, nicely, but I said, “Am I describing this accurately?” and he said, “Oh yeah, that’s it.”

“So you came up with the principles, and then you tried to find them in the Bible. How is this not blatant humanism?”

It’s kind of like the mindset that says, “Well, this is from before 1850 and all that terrible modernism, so it must be good.”

Yeah, like the McGuffey’s Readers or Leave It To Beaver, because that was before 1963.

So it was before everything in the world went wrong. It’s unsoiled by modernity.

Anyway, the point is that God has a plan. God is in control. God executes his plan day by day, moment by moment. He makes the grass grow. He makes the sun shine. He makes our hearts beat. And he overthrows the wicked on his schedule. And he calls people to faith in his Son by his divine power.

Does that mean, “Then we’re puppets and we don’t have anything to do.”? I don’t know about you, but I have a lot to do. God works through human beings, and we have tasks. Hezekiah kind of went through the wringer on this, and yet ultimately what did he do? Prayed. He didn’t fight any battles. He didn’t draw a sword. He didn’t even actually personally get up on the wall and say, “Na-na-na-nanna-na. Go away or we will taunt you again.” None of that, he just trusted God with the faith God gave him, prayed, and stood back and God did it all, because ultimately that’s the nature of salvation. Perhaps that’s why God puts in the Bible three times.

Here was a time when Jerusalem and Judah desperately needed salvation. When the Messianic line that ran through Hezekiah’s loins needed to be spared so the world could be saved, God was the salvation. He didn’t trust in anybody else.

This whole section that we’ve been passing through as we go through Isaiah, we’re seeing as the backdrop Assyria and then later Babylon. These are nations that clamored for a New World Order that they would bring about, based on the idea of continuity of being, all reality is one, and it’s concentrated in the hands of the State and thus it is the State’s job to establish perfect unity among all the peoples of the world. But as one character says in a Star Trek episode, “Yeah, but I’ve gotta be the unity.” So each one comes to the stage of history wanting to be the unity in this noble project or reuniting humanity, as they tried at Babel.

And you know what? We still face it today and we still have Christians who look at this and tremble, are terrified, and either say, “Well, all it means is that the Rapture is coming really soon,” or “Well, the bad guys are going to win, but we’re going to go down trying to get people to believe us, although it’s absolutely futile.”

I don’t want to belong to either of those camps, thank you. I’d rather believe what the Bible says, that God is our Savior and that he works salvation in the earth and that he’s got us covered.

The last thing Hezekiah probably had on his list of possibilities for the next morning was, “The Angel of the Lord comes and kills 180,000 people.” I bet that wasn’t on his possible itinerary list. That was just something God did out of nowhere.

Sometimes God does things out of nowhere, and sometimes, as I said, it’s that some king can’t sleep and calls for the royal records, or someone invents moveable type, or someone discovers a verse, “The just shall live by faith,” or someone sails the wrong way and discovers the world is bigger than he thought, and “Oh look, there’s America.”

God has all kinds of ways, and when we try to pin God down to, “Well, if I was God I would do it this way,” we are already idiots and we need to have a greater faith that says, “God’s got a plan. I don’t need to know what it is. I don’t have to be able to tell you how God’s going to turn all this around, how long it will take, what it will look like, or how much we will suffer and be persecuted along the way. But I know that God is good.” So if there is a lesson, I suppose that’s one of the main ones in all of this story.

Cool. That’s a good place to wrap up. Do you have any recommendations?

I do. It comes from something my wife was dealing with earlier today. I recommend teaching your children the whole Bible, in order, passage by passage, verse by verse.

We come back to this one periodically.

We do, because again and again I am reminded how many parents and how many churches and Sunday School programs and even Christian school programs don’t do this.

First of all, Dear Listener, have you read the Bible all the way through cover to cover in order – either the order it appears in or chronological order, which can also be very useful? If the answer is no, the question is why not? If the answer to that is, “Well, I have other things to do,” let me suggest that you don’t, that you have your priorities wrong, because if you want to know God, you have to know him in the context of what he’s written.

If you get a love letter from your best beloved, you don’t pick some of the sentences near the end and the close-off and say, “I’ve read the letter. All that other stuff, eh, I know the kind of stuff he says or she says. I don’t need to read that.”

How about when your great-grandfather is dying and there’s some mention up there, something about money, but you’d rather read the last few jokes he included at the end because that seems more relevant right now.

We don’t treat any other important document that way. When someone hands you a contract to sign, you don’t just read the last third of it. You want to know what are the conditions that set up the last third, so I know what I’m actually dealing with.

If you’re serious about knowing God, you need to read the whole Bible. Once you’ve done it, you can then turn to your spouse or your children and say, “I challenge you. Read the Bible. Begin at the beginning. Let’s make it a family thing. Let’s challenge each other. Let’s have a contest. Let’s say every night at dinner time we’re going to talk about what we read, and we’re going to talk about…” – and this is what my wife was kind of dealing with today – “We’re going to be in the beginning of the Bible, and we’re going to talk about rape and incest and mass murder and war and destroying all life on the planet, and it just goes like that for a while.”

Such a sweet wholesome book.

And then there’s the whole Tamar story, and Lot’s daughters, and Sodom and Gomorrah and homosexuality, and God burning people up with fire from heaven. It’s in the Bible. Do you know where? Do you know why? Do you know how it’s part of the storyline and why it’s important?

How about circumcision? Have you talked to your kids about that one yet? God put it there and God ordered Israel that when they came together at the Sabbath year and the Feast of Tabernacles they were to read it out loud to everyone, including the women and children. That’s a great privilege.

What if you went to church this Lord’s Day and the pastor said, “Well, you know, the Bible says some hard and difficult things, and we no longer want to offend the ears of the young and the innocent and those of a sensitive nature, so when we read anything of that sort we’re going to ask the women and children to leave the auditorium, out of love and kindness and appreciation for their delicate nature.”

Emily, how would that go over with you?

It wouldn’t, let me tell you. All the cultures throughout history who have consistently denied education to women – it sounds like that.

Except this is worse. It’s not just education. It’s specifically the knowledge of God as he’s revealed himself.

Yeah, the education that counts, in other words.

“You can know the good and sweet things about God, but there’s other stuff about God and you can’t handle the truth, so we’ll protect you from it. We’ll protect you from God and from his Word.”

So read the whole Bible. Get your spouse to read it. Get your children to read it. Make it a priority. If we’re going to see revival in this country, it’s not going to come because we all went to some conference and got up and jumped around and spread our hands to heaven and played really cool music. It’s going to come because we get serious about knowing God. He’s given us this love letter called the Bible. We need to read it, all of it. What’s your recommendation?

What, you expect me to follow that? My recommendation is staying consistent with a Bible reading plan, because I have not done that, so per usual in September I am catching up on May’s readings. I just finished 2 Kings.

The plan that I’m using this year has Old Testament and New Testament readings for each day, and as I’m catching up I’m sort of chunking the Old Testament, so I’ll read the whole book in the Old Testament and then I’ll go and read the whole book in the New Testament, and sort of switch back and forth.

I can’t imagine why you’re so far behind. I mean you’re home now and you have a baby, so what could possibly be eating your time up? I don’t know.

They’re all excuses.

Read it out loud to Gretchen so she gets to hear it while she’s still little. Do you have a Bible plan you’re recommending then, or just find one?

Just find one. The one that I’m using, I’m using because it’s printed in the back of my Bible. I’ve used other plans. I really like the one that’s not a daily breakdown, but in this month read these books, because every day you find different lengths of time that you’re able to read, so I prefer that sort of long chunks of assignment.

During the summer I regularly found myself going beyond my normal two chapters a day, reading three or four or five. Now that school has started and I read in the morning, staying with two is sometimes challenging, but it’s been okay. But I have started a new practice. When I finish reading a chapter, I read two or three verses into the next chapter, just in case there’s some major connection that the chapter division is obscuring that I’ve never caught before. There are some places like that where if you would go back and look at the verse that came in the previous chapter, this would make a lot more sense.

As I’m catching up, that is why I prefer reading the whole book as fast as I can. I’m the sort of person who can’t really keep current with television, because between one week and the next I forget what happened and I don’t really care anymore. I have to watch shows that have already been released.

Yes, so you can watch them all very quickly – bingeing, I think we call it.

I prefer to think of it as keeping the whole arc in view. So I recommend that. It’s a suitable follow-up for yours, if anything is.

We should say something about Bryan.

We miss Bryan. He wasn’t able to make it tonight, but I’m sure by now the listeners know that’s kind of how it goes around here. We’ve all got stuff going on.

Sometimes I’m just afraid if we don’t mention that someone is gone it’s like, “Has there been some kind of schism amongst the people here?” No, we’re fine.

Yeah, if that happens we’ll let you know.

In some suitable polite way, but it’s not going to happen, Lord willing.

Lord willing. It’s our job to try to not let that happen.

Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s always great to especially go through these historical bits that don’t make it into the Jesus storybooks, speaking of reasons to read the Bible.

Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thanks to you, our listeners. We appreciate you tuning in. If you’d like to get in touch with us you can send us an email at [email protected].

Thank you very much to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling. There are a couple of ways you can support us if you would like. You can visit our website, anchor.fm/haltingtowardzion, or you can visit our Patreon, which is patreon.com/haltingtowardzion.

Thank you so much and see you next time.