Like Father, Like Son.

A chain, we are told, is as strong as its weakest link. The weak link in the long chain of Assyrian provinces was the fact that whenever a new king came to the throne, if he happened to be away, fighting in the field, he had to hurry back to the capital, backed by the complete military force under his command, in order to establish himself firmly in his dominions.

Immediately upon the withdrawal of the king's armies from the field, all the provinces that hated Assyria bitterly, rebelled. Naturally, all the work of conquest had to be done over again. Then, when another change took place in the rulership of Assyria, the new king met the same conditions and the same difficulties.

When Tiglath-Pileser died, Shalmaneser IV., who laid siege to Samaria, was forced to reconquer all the Syrian and Palestinian tributaries. The great Sargon, who reduced Samaria and carried its inhabitants captive into the northern part of the Assyrian Empire, left his successor, Sennacherib, no better legacy.

With Sennacherib's ascension to the throne in the year 704, therefore, the usual thing happened—rebellion broke out all along the line of his possessions.

In Palestine, King Hezekiah of Judah became the leader of a movement for a strong organization of all Palestinian and Syrian states and cities with the purpose of concerted rebellion against the new king.

So strong was the patriotism aroused among the various peoples that Padi, king of the city of Ekron, who would not join the proposed coalition, was captured by the citizens, bound in chains and handed over a prisoner to Hezekiah in Jerusalem.

It did not take Sennacherib long to make up his mind what to do. His predecessors had shown him the way. He organized a strong force, composed mostly of mercenaries, and marched at once into Phoenicia.

City after city fell before his prowess and he worked his way rapidly into Palestine. Unfortunately for Hezekiah and his allies, no concerted action could be agreed upon by them. Each one feared for himself; each one tried to be on the safe side.

Sennacherib took advantage of the situation in this rebellious district of his empire. He marched his armies, victorious throughout Phoenicia, into Palestine, meeting with success after success. The city of Tyre resisted most nobly on its own account, but it was no match for the Assyrians. Immediately after that Ekron, too, fell, and Judah itself was overrun by Sennacherib's troops.

The great disappointment of the Palestinian allies in this struggle for independence during the years 703-701, was that the help they looked for from the Arabian tribes to the south was very meagre, and that the horses and chariots they counted upon from Egypt did not materialize at all.

In Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah counseled against the proposed rebellion from its very beginning. He warned Hezekiah, the leaders in Jerusalem, and even the nations who were entering into the coalition with Hezekiah, of the folly of this step. Knowing, as he did, the situation, the weakness of the leaders, the corruption within Judah and the demoralization of the army and the people generally, because of greed and oppression, he understood that Sennacherib's forces would rout the Palestinian forces unmercifully.

He wanted no coalition. He wanted Hezekiah and the Judeans to trust wholly in God. "Quietness and trust" was his motto and "Abiding faith in God" his standard.

"By repenting and remaining quiet you shall be delivered;
In resting and in trusting shall your strength consist."

Hezekiah, like his father, Ahaz, however, placed his trust in himself and in the power of his armies. There was no doubt in Hezekiah's mind but that the assistance that would come from Egypt would strengthen him sufficiently to defeat Sennacherib and gain complete independence for Judah.

Isaiah, who knew differently, preached openly against Hezekiah; but he had no more influence with the king than he had had with his father:

"Woe to the rebellious sons, is the oracle of Jehovah,
Carrying out a plan which is not mine,
Establishing a treaty contrary to my spirit,
So that they heap sin upon sin;
Who would set out for Egypt without asking my decision,
To flee to the shelter of Pharaoh,
And the refuge in the shadow of Egypt.
The shelter of Pharaoh will be your shame,
And the refuge in the shadow of Egypt your confusion."

While Isaiah's position among the people, and his standing in the community in Jerusalem, made Hezekiah fear to do him bodily harm, or even to arrest him, the king and his counselors, who were, naturally, eager to gain all the assistance possible from the people at home, sent out men who were in favor of fighting Assyria to refute the opinions and arguments of Isaiah.

These men also called themselves prophets of God; but Isaiah saw in them only false prophets:

"For it is a rebellious people, lying sons,
Sons who will not heed Jehovah's instruction,
Who say to the seers, 'See not!'
And to those who have visions, 'Give us no vision of what is right!
Speak to us what is agreeable, give us false visions!
Turn from the way, go aside from the path,
Trouble is no more with Israel's Holy One.'"

When Sennacherib's armies finally came into Judah, Isaiah still saw the possibility of saving the country from the horrors of devastation, and he warned the king and people in these words:

"Therefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel,
Because ye reject this word,
And trust in perverseness and crookedness and rely thereon,
Therefore this guilty act shall be to you
Like a bulging breach in a high wall about to fall,
Suddenly, in an instant, will come its destruction;
Yea, its destruction shall be as when one dashes an earthen vessel
in pieces, shattering it ruthlessly,
So that not a potsherd is found among the pieces
With which to take up fire from the hearth or to draw water from
a cistern."

Notwithstanding the utter failure that faced Hezekiah in his course, neither he nor his counselors gave heed until Sennacherib had captured and destroyed forty-six fortified Judean cities and towns and had actually begun preparations for a siege of Jerusalem.

It was then that Hezekiah came to his senses. When Sennacherib was at Lachish, Hezekiah sent him a message which was almost a duplicate of the one sent by Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser:

"I have offended; withdraw from me; whatever you lay on me I will bear."

The tribute that Sennacherib laid on Hezekiah was three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To meet this, Hezekiah was forced to ransack the Temple in Jerusalem and the treasure-chamber of the royal palace. He was even forced to strip the doors and pillars of the Temple of their gold decorations in order to make up the enormous tribute to send to Sennacherib.

Judah once more lay a helpless tributary at the feet of Assyria. Sennacherib withdrew his armies and returned to Nineveh. Hezekiah had proved himself both a coward and a traitor; a traitor because he did not do all in his power to assist such allies as Tyre and Ekron; a coward because, unlike Tyre and Ekron, he did not fight Sennacherib to the bitter end.

It was only after his own country had been terribly devastated by the Assyrian mercenaries that he followed the advice which Isaiah gave him in the first place. Had he followed it before, he would have saved not alone his country and his people from the ravages of war, but he would have been spared the payment of so large a tribute and the desecration of the Temple.

The real reason why Sennacherib withdrew from before Jerusalem was the fact that, while he was engaged in Palestine, all the Babylonian provinces rebelled. He, therefore, received Hezekiah's message with a great deal of pleasure. In truth, he was eager to act upon it, for he had to hurry to Babylonia to subdue the rebels there.

Immediately after the Assyrian troops were out of Palestine, however, Hezekiah returned to his old policy and began a war to regain the forty-six cities which Sennacherib had conquered and in which he had left Assyrian governors.