CHAPTER 17
1. In the twelfth year of Akhaz, king of Yehudah, Hoshea the son of Elah became king over Israel [and reigned] nine years at Shomron.
Hoshea was the original name of Y’hoshua as well, but this king did not act accordingly at all.
2. But he did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, only not like the kings of Israel who had come before him.
Not like: apparently in intensity, but it was already too late; the descent of the defiled nation had picked up too much momentum to reverse. As their fear of foreign powers grew, the seeking of security in pagan religion only increased. Most recently, they were trusting in foreign kings—a major slap in YHWH’s face.
3. Against him, Shalmaneser, the king of Ashur, came up, and Hoshea became a servant to him, and in return [sent] him tribute.
Shalmaneser V (known as Ululayu before his accession to the throne and Sulmanu-asharid in his own language) was the son of the Tiglath-Pileser of chapter 15. His first known public office, while his father was still alive, was as the governor of Zimirra in Phoenicia. Menander records his mention in the archives of Tzur (Tyre), stating that during the reign of the Tyrian king Eluleus, Shalmaneser had besieged the city. Ashur means “blessing”, “advanced” and “progressive”, but was such progress in the right direction?
4. But the king of Ashur discovered a conspiracy in which Hoshea had sent messengers to So, the king of Egypt, and had not sent the tribute belonging to the king of Ashur up year by year, so the king of Ashur detained him and locked him up in prison.
So: Some identify him with Osorkon IV of the twenty-second dynasty, who reigned from 727 until 720 B.C.E. and did not dispatch aid or troops to assist Hoshea, but rather sent tribute himself to Sargon II (see below) to avoid a confrontation with him.
5. Then the king of Ashur went up into the whole Land, then went up to Shomron and besieged it for three years.
Three years is a very long time for a siege to last (though that of Tzur/Tyre lasted five because they were able to dig wells in the city). It appears that after the last unsuccessful siege, in which YHWH bailed the king out because of Elisha (6:26-29), they fortified the city greatly so that it could hold out for this long. One of the common things to do in this era was to fully enclose a spring so besieging enemies could not have access to it, and channel its water into a collection pool accessible from inside the city. Of course, they would need huge stores of grain as well. Still, as had taken place in the first siege, they may have reached the point of eating their own offspring, as threatened in Lev. 26:29.
[Year 3278 from creation; 722 B.C.E.]
6. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Ashur captured Shomron, and took Israel into exile in Ashur. He resettled them in Khalakh and Khavor by the River Gozan and [in] the cities of the Medes.
The king of Ashur: Shalmaneser has been mentioned only once, and this phrase was substituted thereafter. Why? Because just before the siege met with success, Shalmaneser died, and Sargon II seized the throne under suspect circumstances which make it appear that he killed Shalmaneser, though many think Shalmaneser was his father. (The later king Sennakheriv was also killed by his sons, and it is only fitting that YHWH used a nation in which sons overthrew the fathers to punish Israel, in which the children were rejecting the ways of their righteous ancestors.) Sargon took credit for the success of the siege, and a Babylonian chronicle also credits him with destroying what it called “Samara’in”, though he only got in on the tail end of it when all the real work had already been done. Sargon (“true king”) was born Sharru-kin, and he accused Shalmaneser of depriving the city of Ashur of its ancient rights because he imposed a call to arms and a tax on them, so Sargon repealed these and revived the privileges of the aristocracy and priesthood. He made Khorsabad his new capital, though he patterned it after the old capital at Nimrud. Though he lost control of Babylon after about a year, he added Syria, Urartu, Karkhemish, Kilikia, and many other lands to his empire. Little else is known about Shalmaneser, because Sargon destroyed most, if not all, of his known inscriptions, and he may not have had time to make a memorial wall as was the custom in ancient lands due to his early death. 19th-century British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard confirmed the Assyrians’ fierce domination of the Near East from the 9th through 7th centuries B.C.E. Sargon claimed only to have taken 27,290 captives from Shomron, though this may only reflect those he thought of as important—those with wealth or reputation—and may thus have included thousands more peasants, herdsmen, etc., whom he found of no account. Of course, many thousands more had been taken in the first deportation. But a large number of Israelites from outside the capital had fled during this siege and settled elsewhere in the world before they could be captured, in many cases along the trade routes of the Phoenicians who were their allies, and ceased to be thought of as Israelites. On a brighter note, in the fourth year of Hizqiyahu, king of Yehudah, he reinstated the practice of Passover, and because there was a substantial number who were unclean and unable to participate in the feast at that time, as the Torah permitted, Hizqiyahu allowed them to keep the feast a month later, and also sent invitations to all of Israel; as well as Yehudah, calling the people back to the worship of YHWH, telling those who had survived the first deportation that if they repented, YHWH would make their captors compassionate and allow the rest to return home.Most laughed his messengers to scorn, but some from Asher, Z’vulun, Menashe, and Efrayim did humble themselves and come participate. (2 Chron. 30:1-11; 31:1) The fact that, as Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi discovered, the population of Yerushalayim swelled from 7,500 to 24,000 as the eighth century drew to a close suggests strongly that many or most of them remained with Yehudah. In fact, at the time of the birth of Y’shua, we read of a woman from the tribe of Asher being at the Temple (Luqa 2:36) But after the Babylonian exile only Yehudah, Binyamin, and Levi are mentioned among the returnees (Nekhemyah 11:3-36), so this minimal return of people from the Northern Kingdom clearly does not account for all the prophecies YHWH gave of His end-time mercy on the “Lost Sheep of the House of Israel”. Cities of the Medes: Undoubtedly, he had settled the Medes elsewhere.
7. Now this took place because the descendants of Israel had sinned against their Elohim (who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out from under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt) and feared other elohim
Because: This leaves no doubt about why this dispersion took place. It was not ultimately about there being a stronger king in the region or even Hoshea’s neglect of the tribute. Out of Egypt: Yet here, Hoshea had gone back to the king of Egypt for help. Forgetting what YHWH had done, we went back into bondage.
8. and walked in the customs of the nations that YHWH had expelled from the presence of the descendants of Israel and the kings of Israel that they had ordained.
Notice that it was not YHWH who was said to have ordained the northern kings, though some of this may have been the scribe’s point of view because Israel had not lived up to what we had been given. YHWH did say the split between the two kingdoms was His idea (1 Kings 11:29ff; 12:22-24), probably because, as Batya Wootten pointed out, everything in Israel is established by two witnesses. But not to the same degree that He had set the line of David on the throne on his holy mountain. (Psalm 2:6) The throne of David is something He still recognizes as an authority over both houses of Israel. (Y’hezq’el 34:23-24; 37:24-25; Hos. 3:5)
9. And the descendants of Israel had covertly done things that were not right in regard to YHWH their Elohim, but built for themselves cultic worship-platforms in all of their cities, whether [merely] a watchmen’s tower or a fortified city.
Even the tiny outposts where there might have been only one building had them too; the Land was saturated with them. They were trying to make sure “all their bases were covered”. Covertly: Though there was a façade of worshipping YHWH on the surface, under cover they were actually building up other households. On top of the idolatry, they added pure deception. (Some of this has lasted until our own day, when finally the blinders have been taken off our eyes that the Church perpetuated by hiding from us what we were actually worshipping; compare Y’hezq’el 8:6ff.) Right: literally, the same, or positive.
10. They also set up for themselves memorial-pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every flourishing tree,
Asherim: a masculine plural for the feminine Asherah—a seeming grammatical impossibility. What it boils down to is that these were phallic symbols intended as “husbands” for the fertility goddess.
11. and burned incense there at all the cultic platforms, like the nations that YHWH had removed from before their face, and did things that were evil, angering YHWH.
12. That is, they served the [rolling] idols, of which YHWH had told them, “You must not do this thing!”
13. And YHWH was bearing witness in Israel and in Yehudah, [warning over and over] by the hand of all His prophets [with] every vision, saying, “Turn back from your evil ways, and keep My commandments, My prescribed customs, according to all the instruction [by] which I gave orders to your ancestors, and which I sent to you by the hand of My prophets!”
14. But they did not listen, but [rather] stiffened their necks, like the necks of their ancestors who did not remain faithful [to trust] in YHWH their Elohim,
Stiffened their necks: They were not looking around to see what they had broken and how they might make reparations. They went back to the very influences that Moshe tried so hard to remove them from.
15. but kept rejecting His prescribed boundaries and His covenant, which He cut with their ancestors, and His testimonies [by] which He bore witness against them, and walked after the vain thing and became an empty vapor, and after the nations that surrounded them, about whom YHWH had ordered them to refrain from acting like them.
This shows that there was some truth to the idea the ancients had that an elohim was tied to certain geographical boundaries. YHWH appears to have put each kingdom under a spiritual prince of sorts. (Dani’el 10:13, 20) And YHWH was clearly more offended when He was not recognized by people dwelling in a Land that was especially His.
16. And they abandoned all the commands of YHWH their Elohim, and formed for themselves poured-metal images—two calves—and made an Asherah, and bowed themselves to the whole army of the heavens, and served the Baal,
All the commands: Even where they might still be coincidentally doing something the Torah commanded, they were doing so unintentionally, so it was not to their credit. The cup of judgment was now full.
17. and made their sons and daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and whispered [incantations], thus selling themselves to carry out what was evil in YHWH’s eyes, to [provoke] Him to anger.
Here is an overt link between Baal and Molekh through the same practice. (v. 16) And again, YHWH only punished Israel by means of a door Israel had opened up ourselves, for Shalmaneser means “fire-worshipper”. He was sent to take Israel away because of a sin of the same type. The punishment fit the crime. We must be careful what doors we open! As the Miranda law states today, “If you choose not to exercise your right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law!”
18. And YHWH became so exasperated with Israel that He had them removed from His presence; none was left, except the tribe of Yehudah alone.
From His presence: literally, from over His face—reminiscent of the kh’ruvim on the ark of the covenant.
19. Even Yehudah did not guard the commandments of YHWH their Elohim, but walked in the customs of Israel, which they had prepared.
20. So YHWH began to despise the whole seed of Israel, and brought them low and handed them over to plunderers until He had expelled them from His presence--
21. because He tore Israel from being associated with the House of David when they made Yarav’am the son of N’vat king, and Yarav’am thrust Israel aside from following YHWH, and caused them to commit a great sin.
22. And the descendants of Israel walked in all the sins of Yarav’am; whatever he did, they did not turn away from
23. until YHWH removed Israel from His presence, just as He had spoken by the hand of all of His prophets, and Israel was taken off its own Land and into exile in Ashur to this day.
In Yeshayahu 10:5, YHWH called Ashur the “rod of His displeasure” because they were His instrument of punishment, but He then punished them as well because they enjoyed the conquest too much in their cruelty.
24. Then the king of Ashur brought [people] from Bavel, from Kuthah, from Aua, from Hamath, and from Sfarwayim, and settled them in the cities of Shomron in place of the descendants of Israel, so that they took possession of Shomron and lived in its cities.
Bavel: or Babylon, which was not yet a major power in the region, though it soon would be. Kuthah: a place in Persia identified by a river with the same name. These settlers were known in Greek as Samaritans, but in Hebrew as Kutheans.
25. But as they were beginning to settle there, they had no reverence for YHWH, and what took place is that YHWH sent the lionesses among them, and they were killing some of them.
Lionesses: They do more actual hunting than male lions. This may be part of what was prophesied in Lev. 26:32.
26. So they spoke to the king of Ashur to say, “The nations that you have carried into exile and made to settle in the cities of Shomron have not been familiar with the customs of the Elohim of the Land, and He has sent lionesses among them, and look! They are killing them when they lack knowledge of the customs of the Elohim of the Land.
Customs: or, legal procedures.
27. So the king of Ashur gave an order, saying, “Have one of the priests whom you exiled from there go there, and they can go ahead and live there and teach them the customs of the Elohim of the Land.”
28. So one of the priests whom they had exiled from Shomron came and lived in Beyth-El and started teaching them how they should show reverence for YHWH.
29. That is, [each] Gentile nation was fashioning its own elohim and depositing them inside the cultic worship-platforms that the Shomronites had made—nation [by] nation in their cities where they had settled:
Shomronites: that is, Israelites of the Northern Kingdom, not those later known as Samaritans. So our ancestors even perpetuated idolatry in the Land after we were gone from it! Yet the key to understanding what is being said here is that pagans would often carved out niches in the walls of temples or other shrines as a place to stand idols. The fact that they brought their own idols to existing shrines indicates that these niches were left empty, which can only mean that the Israelites who were being carried into exile had taken their own idols along with them! Even by the time He took them out of the Land, they had learned nothing from YHWH’s discipline! It therefore became a punishment. Our mother Rakhel had died for doing the same thing when she left her father’s home.
30. (The men of Bavel had made the “booths of the daughters”, and the men of Kuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima,
Nergal means “hero”. Ashima is a foreign word meaning “guiltiness” or “I will make desolate”.
31. and the Auites made Nibkhaz [“the barker”] and Tartaq [“prince of darkness”], and the Sfarwites were burning their children in fire to Adramelekh [“majesty of the king”] and Anammelekh [“image of the king”], the elohim of Sfarwayim.)
32. When they started fearing YHWH, they were making for themselves, from those on their extremity, priests of the cultic platforms, and they were acting on their behalf in the house of the cultic platforms.
Extremity: edge, possibly the “fringe”, or the lowest of them.
33. They came to be fearing YHWH, yet they served their own elohim according to the custom of the nations from where they had exiled them.
Syncretism: This is too common around the world even today, where people will add the worship of YHWH to their “pantheon”, yet hold onto their former ways as well, and the result of that is always the same:
34. To this day, they do according to the earliest custom; they lack a fear of YHWH, and they neither act according to their own prescribed ordinances or customs nor according to the Torah nor by the commandment which YHWH gave the sons of Yaaqov, on whom He conferred his name, Israel.
This is the next logical step. If they were also worshipping idols, they were not really worshipping YHWH. They lost both sides because they could not go whole-heartedly into either.
35. YHWH also cut a covenant with them and gave them orders, saying, “You must not fear other elohim, nor bow yourselves to them or serve them, or make slaughters for them,
36. “but [rather] YHWH your Elohim, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great capability and a stretched-forth arm—Him you shall fear and to Him you must bow, and to Him you must slaughter.
There is a play on words in this verse and the previous one—“You must not” is lo’ and “to Him” is lo.
37. “And the prescribed customs and legal procedures and the instruction and the commandments that He wrote for you, you must be careful to do all the days, and you must not fear other elohim.
38. “And the covenant that I have cut with you, you must not forget, and you must not show respect for other elohim.
39. “Rather, you must fear YHWH your Elohim, and He will snatch you up out of the hands of your enemies.”
Did He repeat Himself often enough to be clear? But this begs the question, if this was a true cohen, capable of teaching the Torah, what had he been doing in Shomron rather than Yerushalayim, to be carried off into exile?
40. But they did not listen, but did according to their former customs.
41. And what took place is that these nations feared YHWH, but served their images—both their sons and their sons’ sons. As their ancestors did, [so] they are doing to this day.
What irony. Their “ancient way” was already corrupt. And such a mixture is the history of the Church, which still allows the customs of the nations to remain intact even while it “converts” them. Should the priest have simply taught them wrongly so that they would have perished more quickly? Yet the even stranger thing is that there are still Samaritans in the Land today—a few thousand—who, despite having a very different interpretation of some parts of the Torah, in other ways have done a better job than even Yehudah in preserving certain aspects of it. They are the only major group that still offers a lamb at Passover, for instance. By the time of the historian Josephus, they were already claiming to be true, pure Yoseyfites rather than the mixed breed that they were (and an opinion that the Qur’an of the Muslims carried on), but only when the Jews were prosperous; at other times they denied any connection with Yehudah. No wonder Jews had cut off relations with them by the time of Y’shua. (e.g., Yochanan 4) Yet Y’shua saw in them some connection with Israel that made them worthy of an offer of redemption (Acts 1:8)—possibly the fact that they did keep the Torah to a great degree and were thus living as Israel whether or not they had any blood connection. Much of what this priest had taught them “stuck”.
CHAPTER 18
[c. year 3284 from Creation; 716 B.C.E.]
1. Now what came about during year three belonging to Hoshea the king of Israel was that Hizqiyahu the son of Akhaz, king of Yehudah, began to reign.
The tone of the text points to something momentous taking place. Just as the Northern Kingdom is about to “tank”, at last, there is a change in the air in the Southern! And with Hizqiyahu’s invitation, at least there was now a place for anyone who still feared YHWH to go for refuge.
2. He was twenty-five years old when he took the throne, and he reigned in Yerushalayim for twenty-nine years, and his mother’s name was Avi the daughter of Z’kharyah.
Took the throne: as sole regent; he had been co-regent with his father since 729 B.C.E. Avi means “my father”. It might have been short for “Avigayil” or a similar name, but at face value, what it suggests is that when one looked at her, they saw her father. She made herself “invisible” for her son’s sake, for her father Z’kharyah was the prophet some 60 years prior to whom was credited Uzziyahu’s success. (2 Chron. 26:5), and in turn his influence through his daughter made Hizqiyahu who he was.
3. And he did what was right in the eyes of YHWH, in accordance with all that his ancestor David had done:
This is the first time one of David’s descendants is said to have been as righteous as he was. Others were righteous with the qualification that they had not taken it as far as David had. Thus Hizqiyahu was a man after YHWH’s own heart as well, and many times he, like David, would receive more favor than his choices deserved because his heart was in the right place even when his head was not.
4. He removed the cultic worship-platforms and shattered the memorial pillars and cut down the Asherah. He even crushed the bronze serpent that Moshe had made, because by those days it had turned out that the descendants of Israel were burning incense to it! And he called it, “[That] bronze thing”.
Finally someone who did what all his predecessors had neglected! He removed the backup securities and returned Israel fully to Plan A--YHWH. He would no longer allow his people to trust Asherah for their fruitfulness. But how many would have been willing to destroy the bronze serpent? It was a national historical artifact, the equivalent to America’s liberty bell! Yet he was settled in his conviction because of what it had become. YHWH had not said to keep it or to destroy it, but it obviously lent itself to becoming an idol in the present politico-religious climate, so he reasoned, according to Torah, that he must rid the Land of this too. In addition to being a reminder of YHWH’s merciful intervention (Numbers 21), and therefore a thing of life in its season, it was also a reminder of our sin and the death that resulted, so it was really a shameful thing to have preserved after all. Michael Card compared this “symbol of our suffering” to what the cross has become today. What is now called the “church” was once a life-saver to millions of Israelites as well, but it developed a life of its own like cancer cells (whose growth gets out of control when they forgot how to die if they are no longer needed). Y’shua himself—YHWH’s greatest gift to exiled Israel—has also become an object of worship that goes beyond what he is due as our king, so even he must be put back in his place, as much of a tightrope that is for Israel today to walk. “That bronze thing” (Heb., nehushtan) can also mean a fetter or shackle—something that was now binding them, and bronze is a symbol of stubbornness. (Yeshayahu 48:4)
5. He put his trust in YHWH the Elohim of Israel, and after him there was none like him among all the kings of Yehudah, nor [among those] who had come before him.
Put his trust: or, found his security.
6. And he stuck with YHWH; he did not turn away from [following] after Him, and kept His orders—[those] that YHWH had commanded Moshe.
He did better than those before him who started well and ended badly.
7. And YHWH was with him; in every [place to] which he went out, he prospered. He also rebelled against the king of Ashur, and would not serve him.
Went out: The term has a special connotation of going to war. Prospered: includes the nuances of acting wisely, having success, being circumspect, having insight, and teaching it to others. He was the embodiment of the man spoken of in Psalm 1. Rebelled: A masterful place on words, because it is from the same root word as the Assyrian capital, Nimrud (also called Kalah), which in Hebrew means “rebelled against”! He recognized that Israel was not meant to be enslaved to other peoples.
8. He beat the Filistines [back] as far as Azzah and its territories, from the watchmen’s tower to the fortified city.
Azzah: that is, Gaza, the home of the Filistines (the Palestinians’ own name for themselves) once again. This means he must have driven them out of Gath, Eglon, Ashqelon, and Ashdod, their other four major cities! Watchmens’ tower…fortified city: exactly the types of places the Northern Kingdom had built the kid of cultic platforms Hizqiyahu had just torn down. (17:9) Thus it is an idiom for “every part of their territory”.
9. And it was in the fourth year of King Hizqiyahu (that is the seventh year of Hoshea the son of Elah, the king of Israel) [that] Shalmaneser the king of Ashur had come up against Shomron and imposed a siege on it.
Seventh year: a number of completion. YHWH had had all He could put up with from Hoshea. We tend to make excuses for our shortcomings by pointing to those who have done worse than we, but now in Hizqiyahu there was a much better example up against which He could hold him to show what a king was capable of, so he had no excuse to not know he had been weighed and found wanting. Thus while Hizqiyahu opened the door for great blessing in Yehudah, he opened the door for YHWH to judge Israel:
10. And they captured it at the end of three years, in Hizqiyahu’s sixth year (that is, the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel), and Shomron was taken.
11. And the king of Ashur took Israel captive [into exile] in Ashur, and had them settled in Khalakh and in Khavor [by] the Gozan River, as well as in the cities of the Medes,
Medes: Heb., Madai. They are known today as the Kurds.
12. on [account of the fact] that they had not listened to the voice of YHWH their Elohim, and transgressed His covenant—all that He commanded Moshe the servant of YHWH: that is, they neither listened nor carried [it] out.
Transgressed: crossed a line in regard to.
13. Now in the fourteenth year of King Hizqiyahu, Sankheriv, the king of Ashur came up upon all the fortified cities of Yehudah and was capturing them.
Sankheriv: more commonly known as Sennacherib, he was known as Sin-Ahhe-Eriba in his own language, he was the son of Sargon II (Sharru-kin), but not the eldest, and came to the throne in 705 B.C.E. He was more cruel than his father, the one against whom Hizqiyahu had actually rebelled. This event took place in 702-701 B.C.E. It was at this time that Hizqiyahu blocked access to the Gihon spring from outside the city so that Sankheriv would not be supplied with water during a siege. His men followed the natural fissure in a rock beneath the City of David and carved out the tunnel one can still walk through today, linking it to what would become the Pool of Shilkoakh where the Tyropean Valley meets the Hinnom. He then walled it off so the water source would be inside the city, built a wall on the hill to its west, which has been excavated, and fortified additional walls that were in disrepair. (2 Chron. 32:30)
14. So Hizqiyahu, king of Yehudah, sent [word] to the king of Ashur at Lakhish, to say, “I have done wrong; turn back from upon me. Whatever you assign to me, I will bear.” So the king of Ashur imposed on Hizqiyahu the king of Yehudah 300 kikkar of silver and 30 kikkar of gold.
Lakhish was the strongest of the fortress cities on the Sh’felah (foothill region) that defended the routes to Yerushalayim. Its inner and outer walls and gate complex have been excavated. In it was found a letter that was never able to be sent from Lakhish, describing how the light in a neighboring city had gone out. The significance of this was that there was no longer anyone nearby to come to their aid. The Filistines and Egyptians relied on chariots to threaten their enemies. The Greeks and Romans won battles through engineering, organization, and tenacity. Assyria’s greatest weapon was the terror they struck in the hearts of those they were attacking. During a siege they would impale any prisoners caught, while still alive, to demoralize those still inside the city who could see them, then when they died, they skewered their heads in a row on a pole. They used primitive battering rams at Lakhish, according to a frieze carved into Sankheriv’s palace. But they would also attack several cities near one another simultaneously so that none of them would be able to come to rescue another, and this was why those at Lakhish had despaired. There is nothing more fearful than being truly alone, as even YHWH recognized upon creating Adam. This is why it is such a serious matter to be “cut off from one’s people” as is the consequence for certain sins in the Torah. Mikha, who wrote like an on-site reporter as one city after another was falling to the Assyrians. The reason Lakhish in particular had to be taken was that she was “the beginning of sin to the daughter of Tzion; the transgressions of Israel [the Northern Kingdom] were found in [her]”. (Mikha 1:19) I.e., she had been the city that opened the door for idolatry to spread in Yehudah. It seemed anachronistic when a pagan temple was found here by archaeologist David Usishkin on the strata known to be from the time the Jews held the city. But this verse solved the riddle. But the reason Hizqiyahu sent messengers to him at Lakhish was that once Lakhish fell, there was nothing left to hold the Assyrian king back, and it was inevitable that he would set his sights on Yerushalayim, the capital.
15. So Hizqiyahu gave all the silver that [could be] found in the House of YHWH and in the treasuries of the king’s palace.
We might question the scribe’s claim that Hizqiyahu put his trust in YHWH (v. 5) at this point. But he did not do this casually as his predecessors had; it was a desperate measure. It does not say he did not consult YHWH, so we must surmise that YHWH accepted his motive as giving credit where credit was due, to an emperor whom YHWH had allowed to rule.
16. At that time Hizqiyahu cut off the doors of the Temple of YHWH and the [door] supports that Hizqiyahu, the king of Yehudah, had plated [with gold] and gave them to the king of Ashur.
Cut off the doors: or, chopped off… This probably means he only removed the overlaid gold from the doors and supports, and left the doors themselves there. He took back only what he himself had put there, though it had become holy when he did.
17. But the king of Ashur sent the field-marshal, the highest official, and the chief cupbearer to Hizqiyahu at Yerushalayim from Lakhish with a heavy force. And when they had come up and arrived at Yerushalayim, they went up and entered and took their stand at the conduit of the upper pool that was on the raised [road] of the launderer’s field.
Field marshal: or, the one in charge in his absence. Chief cupbearer: from a word for “drinking”. Since Josephus says all three of these men were his best generals, this term (rabshaqeh in Hebrew) may be more figurative, stating instead that he was the most “bloodthirsty” of them all. Josephus (Antiquities 10:1) says Sankheriv had led them to believe he would leave them alone if they paid what he asked, but he had no regard for truth. They gave him an inch and, seeing it as weakness, he dared to take a mile. A remnant of this conduit has been located, along with the dam across the Beyth-Tzetha Valley north of the Temple Mount from which water was released in controlled measure from it. It ran along the eastern wall of the Mount and into the north end of the City of David. It was 3 feet deep and 30 inches wide. However, Hizqiyahu had closed off its flow before the Assyrians arrived. (2 Chron. 32:2-5)
18. Then they called out to the king. And Elyaqim the son of Khilqiyahu, who was over the household, and Shevna, the accountant, and Yoakh the son of Asaf, the recorder, went out to them.
Recorder: literally, one who causes to remember—somewhat of a historian, or at least a stenographer who could keep track of every word that would be said. Note that, like Elisha with Naaman, Hizqiyahu himself did not give them the dignity of a personal visit from himself. Or it may be that this was the time in which he had a deadly illness, since it is about 15 years before his death. (2 Chron. 32:24) Soon after this, Sankheriv himself was the absentee king, since he went to fight Egypt while his armies besieged Yerushalayim. Elyaqim means “Elohim sets up”. Khilqiyahu means “YHWH is my portion/ share/ possession.” Shevna means “vigorous growth”. Yoakh means “YHWH is a kinsman”, and Asaf means “He has gathered/added.”
19. And the chief cupbearer said to them, “Please tell Hizqiyahu, “This is what the great king, the king of Ashur, says: ‘What is this hope in which you were [so] confident?
It appears he was reneging on Hizqiyahu’s first request by now wanting yet more.
20. “‘Are you saying, “Only words of the lips”? Advisement and bravery are for the battle! On what are you relying now, since you have rebelled against me?
21. “‘Now look here! Are you relying on the support of this cane that is splitting—on Egypt, which, if a man leans on it, it will go through [the palm of] his hand and pierce it? That’s what Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is to all those who set their hopes on him.
This sounds as if it might have been said by any of YHWH’s prophets! It may be that although Hizqiyahu had not directly sent ambassadors to Egypt for help, he had never officially ended the alliance that his father had forged. This may be what Hizqiyahu meant by admitting his error in verse 14. Ashur is at least a Semitic nation, and that alone would make it the lesser of the two evils, because alliances with Egypt were YHWH’s pet peeve. He constantly told us not to go back to our former captor for help. So Sankheriv may have had a valid point here.
22. “‘Now if you say to me, “Toward YHWH our Elohim we have placed our confidence”, isn’t it He whose worship-platforms and altars Hizqiyahu has removed, and has said to Yehudah, “Before this altar you must bow yourselves—in Yerushalayim”?
Again, he had done some of his homework, but not enough! But there were undoubtedly some who had said, “If only we had kept them there, we would have all our bases covered!” and the word spread to Sankheriv.
23. “‘So now, please exchange pledges with my master, the king of Ashur, and I will give you 2,000 horses if you are able to put riders on them!
24. “‘And how will you turn back the face of a governor—one of the least of my master’s servants—and rely for yourself on Egypt for chariots and for war-steeds?
25. “‘Now, is it apart from YHWH that I have come up against this place to lay it waste? YHWH told me, “Go up against this Land, and lay it waste!”’”
He was using psychological warfare to demoralize the people, making them think their own Elohim had turned against them, as He had against the Northern Kingdom, but he definitely overstepped his rights here.
26. But Elyaqim the son of Khilqiyahu, Shevna, and Yoakh said to the chief cupbearer, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it, and do not speak to us [in the] Jewish [language] in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
Jewish: No, this is not the first reference to Yiddish! But he does not say “Hebrew”, for after over two centuries of a split kingdom, it would have certainly diverged into at least two dialects, as so often takes place when groups who speak the same language are mostly isolated from one another. (We see an example of the different tribes each having different speech patterns all the way back in the “shibboleth” incident, Judges 12:6.) This man might have been one of the captives from Israel, now turned wholeheartedly to Ashur, at least politically. In any case, he spoke the language well enough to even know the local colloquialisms. But the point here is that they wanted to minimize the fear their words might strike in the hearts of those who did not have to hear and make decisions such as they, who had been given the greater responsibility, could not avoid.
27. But the chief cupbearer said to them, “Has my master sent me to say these things to your master or to you, and not to the people who are sitting on the wall who are [going] to eat their own droppings and drink their own urine—along with yourselves?”
He does just the opposite of what they asked for, raising his voice in mockery so they would be sure to hear him. He was trying to start the fear playing on the imaginations of the grass-roots masses so that they would pressure their leaders into surrendering without a battle.
28. Then the chief cupbearer stood up and started to speak, calling out with a loud voice [in the] Jewish [language], saying, “Hear the word of the great king—the king of Ashur!
29. “Thus says the king: ‘Don’t let Hizqiyahu beguile you, because he is not able to rescue you out of his hand!
30. “‘And don’t let Hizqiyahu [persuade] you to trust in YHWH, saying, “YHWH will certainly deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Ashur!”’
He was trying to disarm him of both their last weapon and their only hope. Hizqiyahu had said this long before (2 Chron. 32:6-8), and the people “rested on his words”.
31. “Don’t listen to Hizqiyahu, because this is what the king of Ashur says: ‘Do [homage] to me [by] bending the knee, and each of you will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree and drink from his own well
Eat from his own vine and his own fig tree: an idiom for being at peace, because these crops ripen so quickly that one must be watching them every day to be sure when they are ready, and harvest them quickly. If they were away at war, they could miss the entire harvest if gone merely a few days.
32. “‘until I arrive. Then I will take you to a land like your own Land—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive tree [with] glistening oil and honey—and you will survive and not die! So don’t listen to Hizqiyahu when he entices you, saying, “YHWH will rescue us!”
Like your own: He thinks this will appeal to Yehudah as it might to any other people who were not tied inextricably to their land. At that time it was a luxuriant Land, but that was not why they wanted to hang onto it. What a picture of Christianity—willing to accept substitutes that are similar to the truth, and having a “king” who tries to persuade us to leave Torah behind.
33. “‘Has any of the elohim of the nations at all rescued his land from the hand of the king of Ashur?
34. “‘Where are the elohim of Khamath or Arpad? Where are the elohim of Sfarwayim, Hena, or Iwah—since they delivered Shomron from my hand?!
These may be the particular elohim that the northern Kingdom had been worship most recently. But this was his final jab, meant to go straight to the heart, because the people of Shomron were supposedly YHWH’s as well, and they were clearly not spared any more than these other countries. It was thus completely sarcastic, showing that he truly cared nothing for the truth, but only for another victory.
35. “‘Who are there among all the elohim of the lands that have rescued their lands from my hand, that YHWH should rescue Yerushalayim out of my hand?’”
His next mistake was to class YHWH with all the rest of the elohim, as if He were of no higher rank than they. He was certainly asking to be taught a big lesson! He had challenged YHWH, and He does not usually ignore such questions. He did not realize that he could not really afford such an affront to YHWH’s honor.
36. But the people kept silent and did not answer him a word, because that was the king’s order --to quote, “Do not respond to him!”
He gave them a safeguard and they obeyed! This might have been a first for a king so used to striking terror in his victims’ hearts. By remaining confident and at least tacitly approving of their king’s wishes, they took away his greatest weapon. But if they had let fear in the door, they would have lost the battle already.
37. Then Elyaqim the son of Khilqiyahu, who was over the household, and Shevna, the accountant, and Yoakh the son of Asaf, the recorder, came to Hizqiyahu, having torn their garments, and recounted to him the words of the chief cupbearer.
What a cliffhanger! When we are alone, we cannot indulge our pride and fail to ask for help.
CHAPTER 19
[Year 3299 from creation; 701 B.C.E.]
1. And when Hizqiyahu heard [it], what he [did was] tear his garments and covered himself with burlap, and went into the house of YHWH.
Torn garments and burlap were the most vivid ancient Hebraic symbols of mourning or humbling oneself before YHWH. In addition to the huge sums of precious metals listed in the last chapter, Sankheriv had also taken Hizqiyahu’s daughters, his harem, his male and female musicians, and cut off several cities from his land and gave them to the Filistines.
2. And he sent Elyaqim, who was over the household, and Shevna the scribe, and the elders [among] the priests, covered with burlap, to Yeshayahu the prophet, the son of Amotz.
Yeshayahu himself told his version of the story in chapter 37 of his writings.
3. And they said to him, “This is what Hizqiyahu says: ‘This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and an occasion for contempt, because the children have come as far as the breaking-forth, but there is no strength to give birth!
Distress: or trouble, being in dire straits, pressure, or a tight spot—like a child about to be born, as in the very analogy Hizqiyahu makes here. Rebuke: or chastisement, correction. As fear comes upon children who think they are about to be punished, he quickly takes stock of the situation and assumes he must have done something wrong, though he had tried harder than all his predecessors since David. But the main purpose of this event was so that YHWH would gain the greater recognition. (Compare Yochanan 9:2-3.) His analogy seems to be an allusion to the fact that he had essentially brought Israel to the point of the Messianic kingdom, but now all hope for the very survival of the holy nation seemed lost. At the end of the previous chapter, we saw the people doing what the king said to do, but not taking any further initiative, and it may be that they were resting too heavily on his strength. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Much had been accomplished by the king, but the people also needed to stand up and take up their part of the load. If the “baby” was not born, it would not be his fault. Yeshayahu 66 seems to be a direct answer to his quandary here. YHWH says, “Shall I bring to the birth and not give delivery?” It will come to pass, He says; if you do not shoulder the burden, He will let someone else bring it. Indeed, the Kingdom did not come at that time, except in the form of a small foretaste. Zerubbavel and Y’shua made excellent starts as well, and the Apostles were on a strong and sure path, but those who came after them did not maintain the momentum. Over 2,700 years later this “baby” still has not been born. Thus this passage is certainly prophetic of the “Time of Yaaqov’s Trouble” which is yet to come. (Yirmeyahu 30:7) YHWH often brings us to the point of great suspense and no natural way out before He acts, so that it will be clear that no one else can take credit for His deliverance. (Just look at the Reed Sea crossing!) Undoubtedly at that time we will have some very close calls, and it is the knowledge of our history and the remembrance of what YHWH has done for us at such times that will enable us to face them—and the lesser trials that precede them—with expectation instead of fear, especially when they correspond with appointments He has prescribed. (The Talmud says this event took place at Passover, and it certainly mirrors that event in Egypt.) It is up to us to take up the challenge and push on like this point where the woman in labor must regather her strength. When she gets to this point, her body actually takes over and makes her push since it is the only option at this point. We need to be very familiar with the Torah so we know what our part is and when “the ball is in YHWH’s court”.
4. “‘Maybe YHWH your Elohim will listen to all the words of the chief cupbearer with which the king of Ashur, his master, has sent him to defy the living Elohim, and judge the words which YHWH your Elohim has heard, when you lift up a prayer for the remnant that is found.’”
Defy: or taunt, reproach. This is what the chief cupbearer was “handing Yehudah to drink”. Judge: reprove or rebuke. He utilized Yeshayahu’s clout. Yeshayahu had warned him not to ally with Egypt (Yesh. 31:1), which may be why he was ashamed to ask YHWH for this favor himself. Remnant: Recall that Yerushalayim is one of few major cities left in Yehudah that have not been affected already by Ashur’s army.
5. When the servants of Hizqiyahu came to Yeshayahu,
6. Yeshayahu told them them, “This is what you must say to your master: ‘This is what YHWH says: “Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard by which the servants of the king of Ashur have reviled Me.
His first words are, “Do not be afraid”, because, although Hizqiyahu was acting courageously, YHWH knew there was still fear operating in him. We have heard the true story of a woman in labor who simply could not deliver the baby, though the time was full. The midwife realized there must be some psychological block, and indeed it came to light that the woman’s mother had once told her, “You’ll never have a baby.” She had been cursed, and only when the midwife reminded her of the reality that this was simply not true and she was indeed having a baby could she get past that fear and deliver the baby.
7. “‘“Watch as I put a spirit within him, and he will hear a rumor and return to his land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.”’”
Watch: YHWH wanted to remind Yehudah of what He had been able to do at the Reed Sea, and that He had not grown weaker since then.
8. When the chief cupbearer returned, he found the king of Ashur fighting against Livnah, because he had heard that he had set out from Lakhish.
Livnah was a Levitical city a few miles north of Lakhish, and another important defense city, apparently the only one that now stood in the way of his reaching Yerushalayim. .
9. Now when he had heard it said of Tirhaqah, the king of Kush, saying, “Look! He has come out to fight you!”, he again sent messengers to Hizqiyahu, to say,
This is the rumor (or report) of verse 7. Though he struck terror in the ears of most whom he threatened, YHWH knew that Sankheriv had his own fears, for here was a king whose threat was more than mere words. Tirhaqah (also known as Taharka or Tarakos, from his longer name Nefer-atmu-Ra-chu, "Nefer-atmu-Ra protects.") has been the subject of much research especially in just the past year. He has received much less press than Sankheriv, since he was a black man, but he was actually one of the wealthiest and most powerful rulers in the world in the period just after this, yet he still led his own armies out to battle, and thus one of the most feared warriors. He was born in the Nubia (now Sudan, one branch of Kush) as one of the sons, and apparently the favorite, of Piankhy II. He left his mother, and the city Napata, at the age of 20; and when she followed him northward, she found him crowned as king of Egypt (the third and last of the 15th –some say 25th—or “Ethiopian” dynasty and the brother-in-law of So, the pharaoh seen in chapter 17), though he was not Egyptian, because he saw that the Egyptians were becoming slack in the worship of their deities, so he conquered Egypt so its religions could be restored! At this time (prior to about 690 B.C.E.) he was only prince of Kush, as his own Kawa stela (IV:7-8) states, but still called “his majesty”. His brother, the reigning Pharaoh Shebitku, had summoned him from Nubia when he was about 20 years old, and acted on his brother’s behalf, leading an army to defend Eqron (a Filistine city) against Sankheriv. In the latter's inscriptions, the battle with "the king(s) of Mucuru (Egypt) and the bowmen, chariots, and cavalry of Meruhha" (Meroe or Ethiopia) took place in the neighborhood of Eltekeh. He claims to have captured the sons of the king of Egypt and the charioteers of the king of Meruhha, and then, having taken Eltekeh, Timna, and Ekron, he brought out Padi from Yerushalayim, and re-seated him on the throne of Eqron. Sankheriv’s attacks on Yehudah were mainly attempts to clear the way to conquer Egypt, but he did not get that far. According to the Babylonian chronicle (as summarized by W.F. Petrie), his son Esar-khaddon would finally attack Egypt 27 years after this, and though this attack failed, he was able three years later to capture and sack Memphis after three battles, defeating Tirhaqah, who fled to Thebes. Twenty petty kings installed in Egypt by Esar-haddon were restored by Assur-bani-pal (son of Esar-khaddon, who died on the campaign), but they feared Tirhaqah’s revenge after the Assyrian army left, and made a pact with him. When this news reached the Assyrian king, he sent his army back to Egypt, abolished the petty rulers, and set Necho king of Memphis and Sais on the throne, as ruler in Athribes. On hearing of the success of the Assyrian armies, retreated into Ethiopia, where he died, after reigning 26 years.
10. “This is what you must say to Hizqiyahu, the king of Yehudah, and I quote: ‘Do not let your Elohim in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Yerushalayim will not be given into the king of Ashur’s hand.”
Another direct challenge to YHWH. He did not realize that he was “playing with the Big Boy now”—and “hardball” was what he would get—something he never imagined.
11. “‘Look here! You have heard what the kings of Ashur have done to all the countries to completely destroy them, and will you be rescued?!
12. “‘Have the elohim of the nations that my fathers have ruined delivered them—Gozan and Kharan and Retzaf and the sons of Eden who were in T’la’sar?
13. “‘Where is the king of Khamath or the king of Arpad, of the king of the city of Sfarwayim, Hena, or Iwan?’”
14. So Hizqiyahu received the documents from the hand of the messengers and read them, then went up to the House of YHWH. And Hizqiyahu spread it out in YHWH’s presence.
Went up: This is what we need to do when we are in dire straits: ascend! But not just anywhere; to YHWH’s dwelling place.
15. And Hizqiyahu prayed in YHWH’s presence, to say, “O YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, whose abode is [between] the kh’ruvim! You are the one, the only Elohim for all the dominions of the earth! You have made the heavens and the earth!
16. “O YHWH, cup Your ear and listen! Open Your eyes, and take notice! Hear the words of Sankheriv, which he has sent to defy the living Elohim!
17. “Undoubtedly the kings of Ashur have made the nations and their lands desolate,
18. “and have put their elohim into the fire, because they were not Elohim, but rather the workmanship of human hands, wood and stone, so they have been making them vanish.
19. “But now, O YHWH our Elohim, please save us from his hand, so that all the dominions of the earth will know that You alone are Elohim, O YHWH!”
His purpose was not selfish, as when Moshe had pleaded with YHWH so that YHWH’s reputation would be upheld.
20. Then Yeshayahu the son of Amotz sent [word] to Hizqiyahu, to say, “This is what YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, says: ‘What you have prayed to Me in regard to Sankheriv, the king of Ashur, I have heard.’
In regard to: literally, toward, and interpreted by some as “against”—i.e., asking YHWH to not just spare them from him, but to leave him in shame, to slap him in the face, just as the Israelites slaughtered sheep right in front of the Egyptians at the end, though it was something they forbade. If we are not praying against the enemies of Israel, why should YHWH act against them? When it is a time for war (Qoheleth 3:8), we should not pray for peace, but for victory and the death of YHWH’s enemies.
21. “This is the word that YHWH has spoken concerning him: ‘The virgin daughter of Tzion has held you in contempt and laughed you to scorn; the daughter of Yerushalayim has shaken her head behind you[r back].
Though Sankheriv has made so many claims about what he had destroyed, YHWH is telling him, “There is a little girl laughing at you, and you will not even be able to catch her!”
22. “‘Whom have you defied and reproached? And over whom have you raised your voice and arrogantly lifted up your eyes? Over the Holy One of Israel!
Lifted up your eyes: possibly in the sense of rolling one’s eyes in skepticism.
23. “‘By means of your messengers you have taunted YHWH and have said, “By the [sheer] abundance of my chariots I have come up to the [lofty] heights of the mountains—to the recesses of Levanon—and I will fell the stature of its cedars, from its choicest cypress trees, and I will enter the lodging place of its extremity, its most fruitful forest!
Fruitful: or densest, or even the proper name, “the forest of its Karmel”.
24. “‘“I have dug for and drunk foreign waters, and dried all the canals of Egypt up with the sole of my footfalls!”
25. “‘Haven’t you heard it from far away? I have prepared it! From ancient times I arranged it; now I have brought it about, to cause you to make fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins.
YHWH had had plans for this Semitic nation, Ashur, since its inception.
26. “‘And their inhabitants were cut short of hand, shattered, and disconcerted. They were the grass of the field, the green garden herb—hay on the rooftops, blighted before it can grow into grain.
27. “‘But I have been aware of [when] you sit down, when you go out, and when you come in, as well as [when] you perturb yourself against Me,
28. “‘because your perturbing yourself against Me and your arrogance has come up into My ears. So I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle on your lips, and I will turn you back onto the way by which you came.
Georges Roux writes, “Sargon's descendants …governed Assyria in unbroken succession for almost a century (704-609 B.C.), bringing the Assyrian empire to its farthest limits and the Assyrian civilization to its zenith. Yet the wars of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, which through the inflated language of the royal inscriptions look like glorious wars of conquest, were, at their best, nothing but successful counter-attacks. At the end of Sargon's reign the Assyrians ruled, directly or indirectly, over the entire Fertile Crescent and over parts of lran and Asia Minor. They had a window on the Mediterranean and a window on the Gulf; they controlled the entire course of the Tigris and the Euphrates as well as the great trade routes crossing the Syrian desert, the Taurus and the Zagros. Supplied with all kinds of… commodities by their subjects, vassals and allies, they lived in prosperity and could have lived in peace, had it not been for the increasingly frequent revolts provoked by their oppressive policy and encouraged… In reality, the attention of Sennacherib was almost entirely absorbed by the extremely serious rebellions which had broken out in the Mediterranean districts and in Babylonia as soon as the news of Sargon's death was made public.” I.e., Sankheriv’s battles were reconquests, not new conquests; he was really just putting out fires. Now YHWH stops speaking as if to Sankheriv, and again addresses Hizqiyahu directly.
29. “‘And this will be the sign for you: this year you will eat the volunteer growth, and the second year, what grows on its own, and the third year, you will sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
This means that this year was the shmittah (Lev. 25:4ff), and the next year—700 B.C.E. (indeed a multiple of fifty) would be the yovel year. And after this event, there would certainly be cause for jubilation. What this implies, of course, is that they would remain in the Land instead of being taken to the land “like” their own that Sankheriv had “offered” them. However, while Hizqiyahu had removed many of the “thou shalt nots”, was he following the positive commands? This was a reminder to observe these two different forms of Sabbath for the Land, but it appears that he did not end up doing so, because the stated reason for the Babylonian captivity was that for 490 years the people did not obey the command about leaving the land fallow in the Sabbatical year. That exile ended after exactly 70 years, fulfilling YHWH's promise to the day. (Lev. 26:34-35; Yirm. 25:11-12; 2 Chron. 36:21)Hizqiyahu may have been one of the few who observed these two different forms of Sabbath for the Land, because the stated reason for the Babylonian captivity was that for 490 years the people did not obey the command about leaving the land fallow in the Sabbatical year. That exile ended after exactly 70 years, fulfilling YHWH's promise to the day. (Lev. 26:34-35; Yirm. 25:11-12; 2 Chron. 36:21) Sanheriv’s father Sargon himself corroborates this concept by documentating the fact that he finally broke through into the city of Azekah during Hizqiyahu’s “seventh time” (Nadav Na’aman), possibly because the year of release would appear an excellent time to besiege the city because food stores would not be replenished and normal production would be suspended. (Onstott)
30. “‘And the remnant that escapes from the House of Yehudah will again take root downward, and produce fruit upward,
Downward: or, to spread out, making the “tree” secure and firm.
31. “‘because from Yerushalayim, a remnant will go out, as well as what escapes out of Mount Tzion. The jealousy of YHWH [Master of Armies] will accomplish this.’
Jealousy: This was his “wife”, so He would fight harder to protect her than He had for the Northern Kingdom or even the rest of Yehudah.
32. “Therefore, this is what YHWH says [in regard] to the king of Ashur: ‘He will not enter this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor [advance to] confront it with a shield, nor pour out a [siege] mound against it.
33. “‘By the way by which he came he will go back, and he will never come to this city,’ declares YHWH,
34. “‘and I will defend this city to preserve it, for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.’”
YHWH was declaring that while Sankheriv might have had just claim to Lakhish (Mikhah 1:19), he had no just cause to conquer Yerushalayim.
35. Now what took place that night was that a messenger of YHWH went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of Ashur, and when they got up early in the morning, lo and behold, they were all dead corpses!
They had clearly come very close to Yerushalayim. There are many interesting theories as to just who—or what-- this unnamed messenger was. Herodotus says it was accomplished “by a legion of rats gnawing everything in the weapons that was made of rope or leather” (such as bowstrings) because of the intervention of Sethos, the king-priest of Lower Egypt, according to the Egyptian account. Berossus tells us it was “by a pestilential sickness”. The Talmud says their “souls were burnt, though their garments remained intact” (much like Aharon’s sons in Leviticus 10). There may be a clue in this very chapter. Some manuscripts are even missing the verses between 9 and 35, which suggests a direct link between the mention of Tirhaqah and this destruction. Was he himself the messenger spoken of here, coming to seek revenge for his recent defeat? Herodotus (2:141) supports his role in at least diverting Sankheriv from Yehudah, and Yeshayahu’s description of Kush as “the land shadowing with wings” (18:1) may correlate to Yeshayahu 31:5, whose context is this very deliverance. The intervening text (verses 10-34), which gives more detail, may have then been interpolated from Yeshayahu 37 by a scribe who was aware that Yeshayahu (31:1) had pronounced woe upon anyone who turned to Egypt for help, for even if Tirhaqah was not technically Egyptian, he was leading Egypt’s army. The main point is that YHWH would deliver through a thoroughly unexpected source, not based on previous arrangement by Hizqiyahu (the arm of flesh), though everything looked hopeless (just as He did when the messenger of death came upon Egypt at night), and that Yehudah was to trust His word in spite of all appearances to the contrary—an approach we, too, must take in every such situation. If He specified too clearly the means He used, we might tend to trust the tool (which in many cases perishes with the use) rather than the One accomplishing the deliverance. Ultimately it was YHWH, not the messenger, who caused Sankheriv’s downfall. (Yesh. 31:8)
36. So Sankheriv, the king of Ashur, pulled up stakes and went and returned and lived in Ninweh,
Compare Yeshayau 31:9. Ninweh: Recall that its response to Yonah’s message extended the life of this city about 54 years earlier under Ashurbanipal, and it could be that Sankheriv learned a little bit from that history, for he never did come back to the Land of Yehudah.
[Year 3319 from Creation; 681 B.C.E.]
37. and it turned out that when he was bowing himself in the temple of Nisrokh, his elohim, his sons Adrammelek and Shar’etzer, attacked him with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat, and his son Esar-khaddon became king in his place.
This was poetic justice for one who tried to make it look as if Yehudah’s Elohim had turned on them. (v. 10) He mocked, saying YHWH could not defend Hizqiyahu, but now his own elohim could not even save his life when he was in its immediate presence! This took place twenty years later than the event of verse 35. Esar-khaddon, whose Akkadian name was Aššur-ahhe-iddina ("Ashur has given a brother to me") reigned from 681 through 669 B.C.E. When, despite being the youngest son, he was named successor by his father, his elder brothers tried to discredit him. Oracles had named Esar-khaddon as the person to free the exiles and rebuild Babylon, the destruction of which by Sennacherib was felt to be sacrilegious. Esar-khaddon remained crown prince, but was forced into exile at an unknown place beyond Hanilgalbat (Mitanni or the Euphrates), most likely somewhere in what is now southeastern Turkey. He returned to the capital of Ninweh in forced marches and defeated his rival brothers in six weeks of civil war. He was formally declared king in spring of 681 BC. His brothers fled the land, and their followers and families were put to death. (Armenian records confirm that they were received there as refugees and allotted lands there.) In the same year he began the rebuilding of Babylon, including the well-known Esagila (sometimes identified with Tower of Babel). The statues of the Babylonian gods were restored and returned to the city. The first military campaigns of Esar-khaddon were directed against nomadic tribes of southern Mesopotamia, the Dakkuri and Gambulu, who had been harassing the peasants. In 679 BC the Cimmerians, who had already killed his grandfather Sargon, reappeared in Cilicia and Tabal under their new ruler Teushpa. Esar-khaddon defeated them near Hubushna, and defeated the rebellious inhabitants of Hilakku as well. The Cimmerians withdrew to the west, where they were to destroy the kingdom of Phrygia in 676, together with Scythian and Urartun help. (The Cimmerians and Scythians had large numbers of former Israelites among them, so now Ashur was still affecting them, though they might have been among those who had initially escaped the country before the Assyrians captured it.)
CHAPTER 20
1. In those days Hizqiyahu became deathly ill, and Yeshayahu the prophet, the son of Amotz, came to him, and told him, “This is what YHWH says: ‘Set your house in order, because you will die and not survive.’”
Those days: By tradition, three days before Sankheriv’s army was destroyed; it could not have been the same time Esar-khaddon took the throne, because Hizqiyahu had already died by that time. Set in order: or, bring order to. Not survive: not a redundancy, but emphasizing that he would have no surviving seed. Tradition says that because of a prophecy that his sons would not be as righteous as he was, Hizqiyahu had deliberately not married. Now, apparently, he was having second thoughts.
2. So he turned his face toward the wall and prayed to YHWH, saying,
3. “I beg you, YHWH, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is right in Your eyes!” And Hizqiyah wept with a tremendous overflow.
He knew that Yeshayahu was not one whose word would fall to the ground, yet he appears to be saying, “O YHWH, is this really true? I have done what You told me to do; are You sure You want to do this? Didn’t You promise an everlasting throne to David if there was a righteous person on the throne?” More than anything else, the prophets had told him, “Do not be afraid!” So he was bold; had he just said, “Oh, well, I guess I’m going to die” and let the matter drop, that is what would have occurred. But he goes even beyond Avraham and says, “If there is just one righteous, will you let me live?” In one departure from the way of his ancestor David, he does not even consider the possibility that he had done something wrong to deserve this “sentence” of death.
4. And it turned out [that] Yeshayahu had not [yet] gotten out of the city center when the word of YHWH came to him to say,
City center: some read it as “central courtyard”, thinking khatzer was erroneously copied as ha-ir. The letters are similar, and the latter reading appears to fit better grammatically. In any case, the point seems to be that the word of Hizqiyahu’s impending death did not have time to get out before being called back in.
5. “Go back and tell Hizqiyahu, the ruler of My people, ‘This is what YHWH, the Elohim of your ancestor David, says: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Indeed, I will heal you. On the third day you must go up to the house of YHWH.
YHWH would not have relented had his heart not truly been toward YHWH.
6. “‘“And I have added fifteen years onto your days, and I will snatch you and this city from the hand of the king of Ashur, and I will defend this city for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.”’”
Fifteen years: Correlates with the fifteen cubits which the flood prevailed over the mountains (the highest of which was then the Temple Mount, as it will again be), making it adequate for the ark to clear them all. (Gen. 7:20) Aside from allowing the ark to clear every mountaintop, this fifteen cubits would have put the waters just below the top step to where the Temple would later stand, leaving one safe place on earth. An enemy army is also seen figuratively as a flood (Yeshayahu 59:19; Yirm. 46:8). Psalm 124, one of the psalms of ascent to the Temple, speaks of how the waters did not overwhelm us because YHWH was on our side. This whole psalm can be easily applied to this very scenario. If we do the math, we can see why fifteen is a number of adequacy: When we compare the age of Hizqiyahu’s son who succeeds him, assuming he is the only or eldest son, we can see that Hizqiyahu’s main concern was not that he would die but that he did not yet have an heir to David’s throne, so it appeared that the righteous line of David would be lost forever. Having these additional fifteen years would allow him all the time he needed to father a son and raise him to an age when he could have at least some degree of maturity in ruling. You and this city: further evidence that this took place simultaneous to the threat from Sankheriv in chapter 19. Defend: or cover, surround.
7. Then Yeshayahu said, “Get a cake of pressed figs.” So they took a cake of pressed figs and laid it over the inflamed area, and he began to recover.
Margaret Barker points out that from ancient times, the only known remedy for the usually-deadly bubonic plague was a fig poultice! It was mentioned by Pliny in the first century C.E., and was even recommended in London as recently as 1636. It is also known to remove the stench of cancerous ulcers. An Israeli doctor is currently studying the effects of figs on anthrax and skin cancers. Barker suggests that a flea carried by Sankheriv’s officers might have infected Hizqiyahu if one Jewish tradition that what killed the Assyrian army was a plague brought by mice is true; the bubonic plague was most commonly spread by fleas from rats and mice. Yeshayahu 10:16 suggests that the Assyrians would perish because of a wasting sickness. In any case, what took place here is very much like a resurrection from the dead. If the passage in Acts 8 about Philip and the Ethiopian official was not interpolated later because of prevailing polemics, then some parts of Yeshayahu 53 probably apply to Y’shua in a secondary manner (as there are parallels with his life in the lives of many of his ancestors as well as other people), but they do not therefore carry across the board. Has Y’shua “seen his seed”? Maybe allegorically, but not directly. But reading the “servant song” from Yeshayahu 52:13 through 54:17 in light of the event described here shows that every aspect of it applies in a primary sense to Hizqiyahu, whom we have already seen is the primary fulfillment of Yeshayahu 7:14, which is also often used to prove Christian doctrine to the Jews. Now, non-Messianic Jews were the first to suggest that Yeshayahu 53 is a messianic prophecy. But still this is man’s idea, because YHWH nowhere makes it watertight that it is, though it is taken by many as an absolute given today. When we learn to reason as a Hebrew, we can recognize that some aspects of Hizqiyahu’s life do teach about Y’shua, but not every part has to. When we make assumptions, read things back into the prophets from the New Testament rather than interpreting the New Testament by the parameters set by Torah, or are dogmatic about something that is not absolutely solid like the Torah, the baby ends up being thrown out with the bathwater. We become guilty of the blood of those who reject Y’shua as Messiah because they cannot accept the underlying agenda of the doctrine that he is deity. The context of this chapter is Yehudah, when Y’shua said his mission was only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (the Northern Kingdom). That is what the prophets emphasize in regard to him, though to a smaller degree he had some reparations to make for the sins of his ancestors.
8. But Hizqiyahu said to Yeshayahu, “What [will be the] sign that YHWH will heal me, so that I can go up on the third day to the House of YHWH?”
Did he think he needed to present something authoritative to persuade the priests to let him into the Temple when he had a boil that looked like one of the signs of “leprosy”? (The same term for “the inflamed area” in verse 6 is used in Lev. 13:19, etc.) Is that also the day he took the letter from Sankheriv’s officers to lay before YHWH in the Temple? But Y’shua said it is a wicked generation that seeks a sign.
9. So Yeshayahu said, “This [will be] the sign for you from YHWH that YHWH will do the thing that He has said: Will the shadow advance ten steps, or should it go back ten steps?”
Steps: or degrees, ascents. (The same word is used for the psalms sung when ascending to the Temple for the pilgrimage feasts.)
10. And Hizqiyahu said, “It would be an easy thing for the shadow to bend downward ten degrees. No! Rather, let the shadow revert backward ten steps!”
Bend downward: or incline, extend, or stretch out. I.e., this is still the normal direction it would move. It always went forward, so how would he know he had not just dozed off while the shadow advanced as usual? He wanted something much more out of the ordinary, like Gid’on’s fleece.
11. So Yeshayahu the prophet called out aloud to YHWH, and He made the shadow revert backward ten steps on the stairs [on] which it had [already] moved downward at the stairway of Akhaz.
Stairway: probably a form of sundial. Paula Tobenfeld of Neot Kedumim Biblical Landcape Museum in central Israel, recounts how in the late 1990s, Neot Kedumim staff and archaeologist Y’hoshua Dray built a sundial of this step style using ancient stones dismantled by the Israel Archaeological Authority in nearby Modiin, the hometown of the Maccabees. They based the construction on a discovery in Egyptian by Israel’s foremost archaeologist, Yiga’el Yadin. It keeps time very accurately as the shadow moves across well-defined stones and incorporates a staircase into the design. Did YHWH “turn back the clock” to a point where he could make a different choice and allow for a different outcome? But how could the shadow go backward? Would it not require the rotation of the earth to be disturbed? Geo- and astrophysicists Patten, Hatch, and Steinhauer have a theory. They found that all known early calendars were based on a 360-day calendar: the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Chinese, Mayans, Hindus, Carthaginians, Etruscans, and Teutons--typically, twelve 30-day months, which is why we still have 360 degrees in a circle. The Biblical year is also based on a 360-day year reckoning. (Genesis 7:24; 8:3,4, etc. In Revelation, 42 months = 3½ years = 1260 days, etc., per Sir Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince , Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1894. Anderson focuses in particular on the "70 Weeks" prophecy of Daniel 9.) In 701 B.C.E. (the same year being spoken of here), Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, reorganized the original calendar of 360 days per year by adding five days per year. It was also at this time that Hizqiyahu reorganized the Jewish calendar by adding an extra month 7 out of every 19 years. Until 364 B.C.E., the Roman year began with March, the month named after Mars. Most of the early cultures organized their calendars around either March or October. Why was this change universally necessary after 701 B.C.? As Chuck Missler summarizes, “the recent discovery of ‘orbital resonance’--the tendency of orbits to synchronize on a multiple of one another--has led scientists Patten, Hatch, and Steinhauer to conjecture that the orbits of the Earth and the Planet Mars were once on resonant orbits of 360 days and 720 days, respectively. A computer analysis has suggested that this could yield orbital interactions that would include a near pass-by on a multiple of 54 years, and this would occur on either March 25 or October 25. Such near pass-bys would transfer energy, altering the orbits of each. Stability appears to have been attained during the last near pass-by in 701 B.C., resulting in Earth's and Mars' present orbits of 365¼ days and 687 days, respectively.” Kings used to schedule battles round the predictable catastrophes, hoping the massive earthquakes this caused would break down city walls for them. The Talmud, quoted by Ginzberg in Legends of the Jews, says Sankheriv’s astrologers had assured him that his siege of Yerushalayim would be successful with the help of their god Nergal (Mars!) if he was able to arrive by this time. On this occasion, Mars came so close to the earth that a major storm of “thunderbolts” took place, and these scientists speculate that one of them struck the Assyrian soldiers on their way to Yerushalayim, using their iron armor as a “lightning rod” to divert destruction away from Yerushalayim! They also theorize that there was a precession of the spin axis of the earth (much like the wobbling of a spinning top, as also seems to have occurred on the “long day of Y’hoshua”) due to the gravitation of Mars which, according to the computer model they created, came within 30,000 miles of the earth at this time, throwing both planets into their present, very different, orbits. Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi) says that some of the “false lovers” of Israel mentioned in Hoshea 2:9 had been the stars and signs of the zodiac. On the previous flyby, Israel may have, like Sankheriv, been depending on their aid rather than YHWH’s, so this time YHWH ended that whole process once and for all. With the sun now in a different position in the sky, it may have been obvious to Sankheriv that he could no longer count on this advantage, which may be another reason he turned tail. Missler continues, “Provocative, but where's the evidence? …That Mars made pass-bys near the Earth, would seem to be corroborated by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) … In his third voyage, [his fictitious character] Gulliver visits the land of Laputa, where the astronomers brag that they know all about the two moons of Mars. Their highly detailed description includes the size, the rotation, the revolutions, etc., of each of the two moons. What makes this particular allusion so provocative is that the two moons of Mars were not discovered by astronomers until 151 years after Swift's publication of Gulliver's Travels in 1726. It was in 1877 that Asaph Hall, using a new telescope at the U.S. Naval Observatory, shocked the astronomical world by discovering the two moons of Mars. What makes the two moons so difficult to see is that they are only about 8 miles in diameter and have an albedo (reflectivity) of only 3%. They are the darkest objects in the solar system: they are almost black… For Swift to have "guessed" these correctly is absurd. Yet the telescopes of his day were inadequate to have actually seen these objects. But then how could he have known what the astronomers of his day did not? Swift, in order to embroider his satirical fiction, undoubtedly drew upon ancient records he probably assumed were simply legends, not realizing that they were actually eye witness accounts of ancient sightings when Mars was close enough for the two moons of Mars to be viewed with the naked eye!” The latitude of Yerushalayim may have also changed (one of the reasons Israel’s climate used to be more temperate and rainy than it is now), causing the sun’s direction of striking the sundial to permanently change as well. There may be evidence for this in the fact that both the first and second Temples were aligned due east, but the remnants of the second Temple were at an angle about 6 degrees different from those of the first. (This event took place a little over a century before the destruction of the first Temple.) Thus it also appears that Hizqiyahu’s healing was simultaneous with the destruction of the Assyrian army.
12. At that time, Bero’dakh-Bal’adan the son of Bal’adan, the king of Bavel, sent letters and a tribute to Hizqiyahu, because he had heard that Hizqiyahu had been ill.
Tribute: or present, contribution, possibly even an offering to YHWH. 2 Chronicles 32:31 says he (though there his name is spelled Mero’dakh-Bal’adan) sent the envoys also to inquire about the wonder done in the Land of Israel. Tradition says he had been napping when the event took place, and awoke to see it morning again. He nearly killed all of his courtiers for letting him sleep for a day and a half, but they told him it was because “the sphere of the sun went back!” Known in his own language as Marduk-apla-iddina (“Marduk has given me an heir”), he was the chieftain of the small Chaldean tribe of the Yakin on the shores of the Persian Gulf, but in 721 B.C.E., he usurped the throne of Babylon (Bavel) and made the Chaldeans the dominant caste in Babylonia (throwing off the yoke of Sargon of Assyria). He maintained independence from Assyria in the face of the latter’s military supremacy for about 12 years, then, after defeating his allies, including Yehudah, Sargon drove him out. About 8 years later, after Sargon’s death, he rebelled against Sankheriv and recaptured the throne, and reigned for only nine months before being defeated near Kish, after which he escaped to Elam and died in exile a few years later. The events of this chapter were during his latter reign (703-702 B.C.E. by most reckonings, but it is not hard to see how the dating would be off by about a year because of overlapping reigns and different calendars). This was the time when he really needed allies, and Josephus notes that he was not only congratulating Hizqiyahu on his recovery when he sent his gift, but also seeking an ally.
13. And Hizqiyahu gave them his consent, and showed them the whole storehouse of his valuable things—the silver, the gold, the spices, and the pleasant ointment—as well as his armory and all that was found in his treasuries. There was not a thing in his house or in his whole dominion that he did not show them.
Gave them his consent: or simply, listened to them. Ointment: or, oil—possibly anointing oil, essential oils, or even the special mixture used exclusively in the Temple.
14. Then Yeshayahu the prophet came to King Hizqiyahu and said, “What did these men say, and from where did they come to you?” And Hizqiyahu said, “They have come from a far-off land—from Bavel.”
Bavel: that is, Babylon. He thought it was harmless to boast of his great treasures to someone from so far away—possibly recalling the time the Queen of Sheva visited his ancestor Shlomoh. Bavel had already broken away from Assyrian rule, but was not yet a superpower as it would be within a few generations, so Hizqiyahu probably thought it was no threat. He should have recognized by their name that they were a people of confusion and been cautious, but 2 Chronicles tells us that Elohim had withdrawn from him to test what was really in his heart—to see what he would do, whatever he might have said or believed.
15. And he said, “What did they see in your house?” And Hizqiyahu said, “They saw everything that is in my house! There wasn’t a thing in my treasuries that I did not show them.”
He was like a child (probably because of his great joy at being given a new lease on life), excited to show off his great riches. He does not seem to think this will be of much consequence, but in light of the note on verse 7, Yeshayahu 42:19 asks, “Who is as blind as My servant?” (How could that be applied to Y’shua?) Had he not asked for such an ostentatious sign, the Babylonians might never have even come. This is a warning to us to not let down our guard when we are rejoicing over a great act of YHWH. That is often the time Amaleq attacks.
16. But Yeshayahu said to Hizqiyahu, “Listen to the word of YHWH:
17. “‘Behold, the days are coming when everything that is in your house and that your ancestors have stored up until this day will be carried to Bavel; there won’t be a thing left,’ says YHWH.
18. “‘And some of your descendants who proceed forth from you—whom you will father—will be taken away and made court officials in the palace of the king of Bavel.’”
In this case, his “loose lips” would definitely “sink this ship”. This was not, however, the only reason Scripture gives us for the Babylonian captivity. The failure to keep the law about leaving the Land fallow every seventh year was another. (Ex. 23:11) Both reasons, however, were Yehudah’s fault; YHWH had said that if we were fully obedient, no foreign sword would even pass through out Land. (Lev. 26:6-8) Court officials: or eunuchs: the word is used in both senses, because in many cases both were the case, but here it is more likely the former. Palace: or even “temple”. It would not be this king who would thus betray Yehudah after wishing its king well, but his successors would remember where the “loot” was.
19. And Hizqiyahu said to Yeshayahu, “The word [from] YHWH that you have uttered is appropriate,” and he said, “Isn’t it, if there will be peace and stability in my own days?”
This seems a rather short-sighted way of taking comfort, and possibly even selfish, but maybe all he noticed about Yeshayahu’s words was “your descendants”. He was going to have children after all! And, knowing how his ancestors had “screwed up” and imperiled the Land, he may have even reasoned that they would be better off in another nation’s court; Yeshayahu had said nothing about the rest of the people being taken away. In my own days: Indeed, this prophecy would not be realized for over 100 years. Tradition says that Hana’El, Misha’El, and Azaryah, friends of the prophet Dani’El (Dan. 1:6), were among these descendants. The names Nebukhadnetzar gave them do reflect royalty.
20. Now the rest of the words of Hizqiyahu, as well as all of his heroism, and how he prepared the pool and the watercourse and brought the water into the city—aren’t they recorded in the Scroll of the Chronicles of the Kings of Yehudah?
The water: from the Gihon spring, which he closed off access to and had his men widen a natural fissure in the mountain underlying the city (2 Chron. 32:30) when the Assyrians threatened to besiege the city. (This would serve two purposes: denying the enemy access to an easy drink, and enabling the city to ride out a siege.) An inscription where the two groups of laborers met when hewing from both ends was placed in a museum in Turkey (since it was discovered during the Ottoman rule), but a replica is in the Israel Museum. A wall connecting the City of David with the hill to the west also served as a dam to trap the water that now flowed through this tunnel into what came to be known as the Pool of Shiloakh, which would also catch water runoff from the Tyropoean Valley between the same two hills. Only a tiny remnant of that pool is still connected to the tunnel today, but a corner of the original pool has just been excavated in the last few years. One can easily still wade the whole length of the tunnel, in which the water is about chest-deep.
21. When Hizqiyahu lay down with his ancestors, his son M’nasheh became king in his place.
Let us now look back and examine what the servant song of Yeshayahu actually does say. “His face was marred.” (Yesh. 52:14; 53:3) Yeshayahu had an unsightly sore, possibly on his very face, which may be another reason he did not go out to meet Sankheriv’s envoys face to face. A report about wonders went out to the nations (52:15; 53:1; see note on v. 12 above.) He grew up as a root out of dry ground. (Hizqiyahu’s father was not righteous, but Hizqiyahu turned out to be righteous.) He bore his people’s griefs, and was afflicted on their behalf. (Hizqiyahu had done all the work; see note on 19:3 above. Hizqiyahu alone seems to be afflicted by the disease, and none of his countrymen are.) He had no descendants to speak of (53:8), yet he would “see his seed” (53:10; see v. 19 above). It pleased YHWH to bruise him. (Compared Hizqiyahu’s own account in Yeshayahu 38:15) There was no violence or deceit in his mouth, but he was imprisoned in his own city. (53:9) YHWH vindicated him after bringing him great bitterness for the sake of ultimate peace (53:5; compare 38:17). He would see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. (53:11) This is the very same language of childbirth in which Hizqiyahu spoke in 19:3 above. The seed of one who had been childless would inherit the nations. (54:1-3) Here is one place Y’shua fits into the prophecy—yet again this is still unfulfilled. He (and his people with him) was forsaken for a brief moment, but given great mercy. (54:7-8; see verses 1-5 above.) And 54:9 even brings us full circle to the analogy of the flood of Noakh. (See note on v. 6 above.) Like his ancestor David, he then sang praise to YHWH using stringed instruments! (38:20)
CHAPTER 21
[Year 3314 from creation; 686 B.C.E.]
1. M’nasheh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Yerushalayim, and his mother’s name was Kheftzivah.
Khetzivah means “my delight is in her”. She must have been very pleasant from the time of her very birth!
2. But he did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, comparable to the disgusting things the Gentiles whom YHWH drove out from the presence of the descendants of Israel [had done]
Hizqiyahu probably had little hand in his discipline, and a son needs a father for that. Being born very late in his father’s life, he may have been raised mainly by his mother, and often had his own way. By her name, she, too, might have been a spoiled child, though by tradition she was the daughter of the prophet Yeshayahu because he gave Yerushalayim the same name in Yesh. 62:4. His father might also have given him a stronger name to live up to; though the tribe of M’nashe was in general worth emulating, at this time, they were already in deed forgotten (which is what M’nashe means)—and M’nashe did forget his father’s ways. Being raised royally ca either make someone noble or make him a snob with a sense of entitlement. The worst thing about this is that it reflects back unfavorably on his ancestor David, since he was not living like he did.
3. [in that] he came back and rebuilt the cultic worship-platforms that his father Hizqiyahu had done away with, and raised up altars to Baal and made an Asherah, as Akh’av the king of Israel had done, and bowed down to all the armies of the heavens and served them.
He probably reasoned that his father had been an extremist to destroy these “sites of historical interest”. Armies of the heavens: sometimes called “hosts”—the stars and planets that others worshipped. If the theory about Mars (see note on 20:11) is true, then the planetary help that nations had counted on to assist in battle was now defunct since in 701 B.C.E. the “war planet” had been pushed into a new orbit. By the old pattern another “flyby” would have been predicted within the time of M’nashe’s reign, but now there was no longer even a threat to himself, let alone any aid that could come from it in battle. If trying to placate the planets had been a futile exercise before, it was especially so now.
4. He also built altars in the House of YHWH, of which YHWH had said, “In Yerushalayim I will set My Name.”
5. That is, he built altars to the whole army of the heavens in two of the courtyards of the House of YHWH.
That is: or possibly, “and…”, i.e., he built both kinds of altars, although Josephus says he held YHWH in contempt..
6. And he caused his son to pass through the fire, and practiced witchcraft, divination, and necromancy, and dealt [with] soothsayers. He increasingly did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, [which] caused Him to be angry.
He had a penchant for the flashy, spectacular, or mysterious “twilight zone” experiences, much like today’s youth, who prefer video games or Harry Potter novels to the more solid science and wisdom. It was a hunger for such “hocus pocus” that allowed paganism to get a foothold in the “church”.
7. And he set a carved image of the Asherah that he had made in the House which YHWH had told David and his son Shlomoh, “In this House, and in Yerushalayim, which I chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will set My Name forever,
There were many who associated Asherah with YHWH, as if He needed a wife. But notice that with this idol in place, YHWH no longer calls it His house, only a place He had once had something to do with.
8. “And I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander from the ground which I gave to their ancestors, [but] only if they are careful to act in agreement with all that I have commanded them, and [pay close attention] to the instruction [by] which My servant Moshe gave them orders.”
Ground: or soil, reminding us of Adam’s expulsion from the original holy place when he was not careful to obey.
9. But they did not listen, and M’nasheh misled them into doing more evil than the Gentiles that YHWH had caused to be annihilated from before the descendants of Israel.
Misled: or seduced. More evil: possibly not in a quantitative sense, but measured by how weighty M’nashe is as heir to David’s throne—and even to righteous Hizqiyahu’s. He has much further to fall, and therefore his sin is a much more grievous violation than the compounded actions of many who know of no other alternative. It takes many Emorites to measure up to him—and even to us, for “to whom much is given, of him much is required.” (Luke 12:47) The people therefore no longer met the criteria given in verse 8, and YHWH therefore gave a foretaste of exile to the king himself. (2 Chron.33) Did this idolatry grow from a seed planted by the visitors from Bavel (20:12ff)? It is almost as if M’nashe is preparing the people for life in Bavel, probably since Hizqiyahu was told that his descendants would be taken there. This may even have been one of the reasons Hizqiyahu showed him too much favor. Had he been held to a higher standard, he might have risen to it.
10. So YHWH spoke through His servants the prophets, saying,
The prophets: specifically, Nakhum and Havaqquq, though they do not use M’nasheh’s name directly in their writings, because he was so wicked.
11. “Because M’nashe, king of Yehudah, has done these repulsive things of wickedness more than what the Emorites who were before him did, and has also led Yehudah to sin with his [rolling] idols,
Rolling idols: Heb., gilulim. Ephraim Frank says the same word was used for “balls of dung”. The connection may be the scarab beetle, worshipped by the Egyptians, which pushes around such balls of excrement in which it has laid its eggs. (The term was used as early as the Exodus.) Or it may simply be a pejorative term YHWH uses for idols in general.
12. “this is therefore what YHWH, Elohim of Israel, says: ‘Watch as I bring [such] trouble on Yerushalayim and Yehudah that both ears of anyone who hears [about] it will tingle!
Tingle: or quiver, as from fear; resound or ring (having the same root word as “cymbal”). I.e., it would leave them very jarred.
13. “‘And I will stretch out over Yerushalayim the measuring-line of Shomron and the plumb-weight of the House of Akh’av, and will wipe Yerushalayim [clean] just as one wipes a bowl—he wipes it and turns it over on its face!
Plumb weight: or “bob”, hung on a string to ensure that a wall is straight. I.e., I will no longer give Yerushalayim an “unfair” advantage over the Northern Kingdom, but will use the same measure I used with Israel, and if I find the same things here that I found there, there will be the same consequences. Even David’s merit is no longer enough to prevent judgment from coming. Since M’nashe had removed from them the ability to judge properly (v. 9), YHWH brought the standard back.
14. “‘And I will cut loose what is left of My inheritance, and hand them over to their enemies, and they will serve as plunder and spoils for all their enemies,
Cut loose: let drop, forsake, cast off, reject, or leave alone.
15. “‘since they have perpetrated wickedness as I see it, and have provoked Me to anger, from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day!
16. “‘And moreover, M’nasheh has shed so much innocent blood to the point that he has filled Yerushalayim end to end, apart from the sin that he caused Yehudah to commit—to do what was wrong in YHWH’s eyes.’”
End to end: literally, mouth to mouth. The historian Josephus gives the details that M’nashe barbarously slew all the righteous among the Hebrews and did not spare the prophets, but killed some every day. His own grandfather, Yeshayahu, might have been among them, as we are told by tradition that Yeshayahu died a martyr’s death. Havaqquq also ended his prophesying in M’nasheh’s day, so he may have been another of the victims. (Yirmeyahu and Ts’fanyah survived, possibly not yet being old enough to begin prophesying publicly.) This is why Akh’av’s yardstick is applied to him (v. 13), for Akh’av and his wife did exactly the same thing. Y’shua accused Yerushalayim of killing the prophets when some of its inhabitants were acting “high and mighty”. (Mat. 23:37) Even foreigners had greater honor for Eliyahu and Elisha than the king of Israel did, and today Muslims have reverence for the prophets of both Judaism and Christianity. This is one example of Yehudah’s being worse than the Gentiles (the tendency noted in verse 9).
17. Now the rest of the words of M’nasheh and all that he did, aren’t they written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Yehudah?
Those chronicles show a more positive ending to his life, as he repented, though it took a lot to bring him to do so. (2 Chron. 33) He had to be taken captive by the Assyrians into Bavel (the initial fulfillment of the prophecy of Yeshayahu to his father), and there he humbled himself and begged YHWH not to return to his position, but simply for mercy from his captors—probably since he had heard that Bavel would make some of Hizqiyahu’s descendants eunuchs! YHWH not only did this, but even returned him to the Land of Yehudah, at which point he did recognize YHWH’s hand on him, and reversed many of the things he had done previously—but not before his son had already learned his former ways:
18. When M’nasheh lay down with his ancestors, he was buried in the garden [at] his house—in Uzza’s garden—and his son Amon became king in his place.
Uzza: possibly the same man who had tried to steady the Ark of the Covenant when the cattle pulling its cart stumbled. (2 Shmu’el 6:6) David was upset that YHWH had killed him for touching it, and may have given Uzza the dignity of a burial near the palace for this, or at least named the garden in his honor. M’nasheh also did what he saw as right, just as Uzza did. This scribe mentions none of the other great building projects of M’nashe or even his repentance. He repaired breaches in the wall of Yerushalayim and enclosed the City of David in yet another wall with very high towers, possibly in part to close in the conduit from the Upper Pool, a reservoir outside the city. (Suggested by Yeshayahu 22:11.) He built additional garrisons outside the city. But the scribe seems to focus on the worst about everyone, possibly to explain the rationale for YHWH sending His people into exile a century after this. Or it may simply be that he still did not see M’nasheh as righteous despite all of his reforms, because his own son turned out as he did. A garden is full of fruit, and one’s children are often the truest measure of someone’s righteousness, and this fruit turned out to be rotten:
19. Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned two years in Yerushalayim, and his mother’s name was M’shulemeth the daughter of Kharutz of Yotvah.
Amon: Was he named after an Egyptian deity by the same name (cf. Nakhum 3:8), or was his father thinking of the Hebrew term, which means “a skilled workman” or “master architect”? It also seems related to “amen”, which means to be firm, well-founded, and trustworthy. It all depended on which way he took it, and he clearly chose the former option. M’shulemeth means “friend” or “woman of peace”. Kharutz means “zealous, strict, or having a sharp point”. Yotvah means “place of gladness”. It may be the same place later called Yotvatah, on the southern Sharon.
20. But he did what was wrong in YHWH’s eyes, just as his father M’nasheh had done,
21. and he walked in all the way that his father had walked, and he served the [rolling] idols that his father had served, and bowed down to them,
This may be because M’nashe left one thing undone; like most of his ancestors, he failed to remove the cultic worship-platforms when he made all of his other reforms. (2 Chron. 33:17)
22. and he abandoned YHWH, the Elohim of his ancestors, and did not walk in YHWH’s path.
23. Then the servants of Amon conspired against him, and killed the king in his own house.
24. But the people of the Land killed all those who conspired against the king, Amon, and the people of the Land made his son Yoshiyahu king in his place.
As we shall see, they had a reason to want him to be king besides simply keeping a descendant of David on the throne. It could be that these people deserved a righteous king, and YHWH honored their righteousness. Or it could be that they killed the conspirators because the latter were honoring YHWH, and they preferred to keep a liberal king on the throne (rather than letting these “extremist zealots” put one of their own in place), assuming Yoshiyahu would maintain his father’s policies. After all, he was only eight years old, and they might assume they could tell him what to do. If so, YHWH often lets the wicked set traps for themselves.
25. Now the rest of the things that Amon did, aren’t they written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Yehudah?
26. And they buried him in his tomb in Uzza’s garden, and his son Y’oshiyahu reigned in his stead.
M’nasheh may have prepared tombs for more than himself when he had his built. (v. 18)
CHAPTER 22
1. Y’oshiyahu was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Yerushalayim, and his mother’s name was Y’didah the daughter of Adayah from Bawtzqath.
Y’oshiyahu means “whom YHWH supports” or "whom YHWH heals". Y’didah means “beloved”. Adayah means “YHWH has adorned Himself.” Bawtzqath means “rocky height”, or “to swell and become blistered”. It was in the low country of Yehudah, toward the Filistine territory.
2. And he did what was upright in the eyes of YHWH, and walked in the whole path of his ancestor David, not veering [to the] right or left.
Y’oshiyahu’s father was 16 years old when he was born, so was he raised by his grandfather, M’nasheh? Did M’nashe recognize that Amon was already too far gone, and focus his hopes and his teaching efforts on his grandson instead? Or was Yoshiyahu simply grateful for being the son not sacrificed to Baal? (21:6) Or was he simply curious about his nation’s history, and wanted to emulate his ancestor David when he found out about his illustrious life? Whatever the case, he did not make the excuse that his heritage or upbringing prevented him from changing his ways.
3. Now what took place in the eighteenth year belonging to King Yoshiyahu [was that] the king sent Shafan the son of Atzalyahu, the son of M’shullam, the scribe, to the House of YHWH, saying,
Shafan means “rock badger”(also known as a coney or rock hyrax), or possibly even “rabbit”). This may have been a nickname, but the root meaning of the word is “to conceal or treasure up”. Atzalyahu means, “YHWH has held in reserve”. M’shullam means “friend” or “man of peace”. Y’oshiyahu’s grandmother had the feminine version of this name, M’shulemeth. Scribe: or, accountant (based on the word for counting or writing).
4. “Go up to Khilqiyahu the high priest, so that he may finish [counting up the total] of the silver that is brought into the House of YHWH that the guards of the threshold have collected from the people,
Khilqiyahu means “YHWH is my inherited portion”. This was a very suitable name for the high priest. (See Numbers 18:20.)
5. “and have them give it to those who do the work—those who are entrusted with oversight in the House of YHWH, then let them give it to the ones doing the work which is in the House of YHWH, to firm up the cracks in the House--
Those who do the work: specifically, Levites of the House of Q’hath (Numbers chapter 4). Cracks: or leaks, fissures, breaches—wherever the wall was damaged by earthquakes or other forces. There had been an earthquake in the days of King Uzziyah. (Amos 1:1) But this damage seems to have come largely from neglect.
6. “to the craftsmen and the builders and the stone-masons, and to buy timbers and cut stone to repair the House--
Craftsmen: artisans, engravers, or carpenters. Stone-masons: or wall-builders.
7. “although the silver that is given into their hand will not be accounted for with them, because they are dealing with trustworthiness.”
What an awesome compliment and commentary! Josephus adds that with whatever silver was left over they cast cups, dishes, and bowls for use in Temple ministrations.
8. Then Khilqiyahu the high priest said to Shafan the scribe, “I have found the scroll of the Torah in the House of YHWH!” And Khilqiyahu gave the scroll to Shafan, and he read it [aloud].
One tradition says the scroll was found hidden under a layer of stones where it was hidden when King Akhaz (father of Hizqiyahu) was confiscating and burning copies of the Torah. One reason Israel was far more literate than most peoples was the emphasis on the study of Torah by everyone in the nation. After only two generations of widespread neglect of the Torah, had it reached the point where only the scribes could read? (Compare verse 10, in which he reads it even to the king.) Another possibility was that, since M’nasheh was taken captive to Bavel, and we are not told for how many years, he may have adopted the Babylonian script still used in Hebrew today even before the Babylonian captivity (since the Babylonian language was quickly becoming the regional lingua franca), and the majority of the people might have no longer been able to read the original Hebrew script, the “Phoenician” style known as Paleo Hebrew, just as is the case today even among the most serious Torah scholars. (In the Dead Sea Scrolls, YHWH’s name appears in this script, showing that it was considered most holy, even when the rest of the scrolls were written in the block letters used today, which originated in Bavel.)
9. Then Shafan the scribe came to the king, and brought word back to the king, saying, “Your servants have poured out the silver that was found in the House, and have given it into the hands of those who are doing the work—those who are entrusted with oversight in the House of YHWH.”
Poured out: or, melted down.
10. Then Shafan the scribe told the king, “Khilqiyahu the priest has given me a scroll!” And Shafan read it [aloud] in the king’s presence.
11. And what took place as the king heard the words of the scroll of the Torah [was that] he tore his garments.
Tearing one’s garments is a symbol of mourning or extreme agony. Garments are a picture of our works, and as we see in 1 Kings 11:29-32, a king’s garments in particular are prophetic of the condition of the nation as a while. He realized that the works of none of the people meet the standard, and is overwhelmed. He is responding in a manner similar to that of King Y’hoash in chapter 12. Y’hoash did well except for one area of neglect; the difference with Y’oshiyahu may be that he was a year more mature than Y’hoash at the beginning of his reign.
12. And the king gave orders to Khilqiyahu the priest, to Akhiqam the son of Shafan, to Akhbor the son of Mikhayah, to Shafan the scribe, and to Asayah the king’s servant, saying,
Apparently the Urim and Thummim were also misplaced, or the high priest simply no longer knew how to use them.
13. “Go, and consult YHWH on my behalf and on behalf of the people and on behalf of all of Yehudah, in regard to this scroll that has been found, because YHWH’s fury that has been kindled against us is great, since our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to act according to all that is written about us!”
This does not seem to have been the entire Torah, but one of its five books—probably Deuteronomy (Dvarim) or possibly Leviticus (VaYiqra), both of which delineate the blessings and cursings YHWH will bring for obedience to or abandonment of His covenant. The curses do not appear until the end of Leviticus, which may be why Y’oshiyahu did not weep until the reading was finished. But Deuteronomy is the more complete summary of all the commandments laid out in the Torah. By tradition, Jews have read it as the fulfillment of the command to read the Torah aloud at the feast of Sukkoth. (Deut. 31:11) It is unlikely that this was the only copy of the Torah left anywhere, because it does not appear to have included the other four books. But it may have been the only one available in Yerushalayim after all the persecution of the last two generations, or may have been an authorized edition of some sort, having been found in the Temple itself. Undoubtedly the schools of the prophets in other towns had copies of the Torah, but they may have kept them hidden away since they had been declared contraband. Whatever the reason, Y’oshiyahu has never heard the words of the Torah in their fullness in his whole life. But he had acted on what he knew, which, as with our own generation, was the Temple, and as he did, more truth came to light.
14. So Khilqiyahu the priest and Akhiqam, Akhbor, Shafan, and Asayah went to Khuldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tiqwah the son of Kharkhas, the keeper of the garments. (Now she lived in Yerushalayim, in the Second [District].) And they spoke to her.
Akhiqam means “my brother raises up”. Akhbor means “one who weaves a network”. Asayah means “YHWH has acted” or “accomplished”. Shallum: possibly the uncle of the prophet Yirmeyahu. (Yirm. 32:7) His name means “retribution”, but his father’s name means “hope”. Second District: Heb., Mishneh, that is, the part of the city added after the Temple complex was built, on the western hill between the Tyropean and Hinnom Valleys. An alternate reading could be that she lived in the “second Yerushalayim”—the mystical “new Jerusalem” that sits above the physical city. The rabbis say that Psalm 122, which says “Yerushalayim is a city compact together”, means that this is the place where “heaven” and earth meet. She may have been in hiding, since it appears that there may have been another mediator who led the emissaries to her. (Compare v. 15 with v. 18.) But Khuldah’s husband came from a priestly line, as seen by the fact that his grandfather had been the keeper of the (holy) garments. Were there no male prophets? Or were most of the priests still corrupt or simply out of practice?
15. And she said to them, “This is what YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, says: ‘Tell the man who sent you to me,
16. “‘“This is what YHWH says: ‘Indeed, I will bring calamity on this Place and on its inhabitants—all the words of the scroll that the king of Yehudah has read,
17. “‘“‘because they have abandoned Me and have burned incense to other elohim, for the purpose of angering Me with all the works of their hands. That is why My fury has been kindled in this Place, and it will not be extinguished!’”
This is not the word of comfort that so many would expect today. It seems they are locked into a course bound for catastrophe with no way out. Apparently, despite the king’s acting to bring restoration, the majority of the people were still involved in idolatry. If they did not respond to his righteous rule, no headway is made. When Israel becomes more unrighteous than other nations, YHWH cannot withhold His judgment.
18. “‘But to the king of Yehudah, who sent you to enquire of YHWH—this is what you must say to him: “This is what YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, says: ‘[In regard to] the words that you have heard--
To the king: Because he had acted on behalf of all of his people, was he now considered to be operating as more than a man? (Compare her form of address in v. 15.)
19. “‘“‘since your heart was tender and you have humbled yourself due to the presence of YHWH when you heard what I had pronounced in regard to this Place and in regard to its inhabitants—[that it would] come to be an appalling wasteland and an object of execration—and have torn your garments and wept before Me—so I Myself have also heard,’ declares YHWH.
Humbled yourself: or, brought yourself into subjection, from a word for being down low on one’s knees. Neither he nor Hizqiyahu was too proud to cry. Both have a deep emotional response to YHWH, and He honors it with a promise in both cases. The curse only remains on those who continue to walk in it. He will at least receive a preview of the Kingdom in his lifetime, even if the fullness cannot come yet.
20. “‘“‘Therefore, behold, I will add you onto your ancestors, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not look upon all the calamity that I will bring upon this Place.’”’” And they brought [this] word back to the king.
Add you: He will not just be gathered to his fathers, but his merit as a righteous king will make the “pile” of the House of David’s merit even taller in YHWH’s eyes. This was some consolation. Yet was all he worked so hard for doomed to only be destroyed again? As we see in the account of Yonah, such prophecies are often given with the intention of relenting if those to whom they are directed repent. As we see with Avraham and Moshe, the pleas of the righteous can also stave off His wrath, at least to some extent. YHWH says that if we seek His face with all of our heart and turn from our wicked ways, He will forgive and heal our Land. We, who are in exile, which is the last of the curses listed in the Torah, implemented only after all of the others are spent, have no way to go but up, so if we are departing from the lies our ancestors bequeathed to us, we should also take hope in the words YHWH then spoke specifically to Y’oshiyahu. Repentances have come even when we did not know we were Israel, and they do count. The homelands where large percentages of the Northern Kingdom have been comparably the most righteous until very recently. Certainly we must get our own house in order first, but He does not leave us without hope that what is broken can be fixed. Now there is a generation to whom much more understanding has been restored, yet still it retains one stronghold of idolatry in the worship of Y’shua as deity rather than recognizing him as YHWH’s anointed representative who came to make it possible for us to focus again on the Father rather than himself. If we remember that our place of exile, as pleasant as it may be in so many ways, is nonetheless still a prison, and work hard to obliterate every last bit of idolatry, the reunification of Israel and the final withdrawal of the curses on the Land and the people can indeed come within our lifetime.
CHAPTER 23
1. So the king sent [word], and they assembled for him all the elders of Yehudah and Yerushalayim.
2. Then the king went up to the House of YHWH, and every man of Yehudah and all the inhabitants of Yerushalayim [went] with him—the priests, the prophets, and all the people from small to great, and he read in their hearing all the words of the covenant document that was found in the House of YHWH.
In their hearing: literally, in their ears. When Yaaqov told his family to put away all foreign elohim, he had them take their earrings out of their ears. (Gen. 35) When someone wants to express a lifelong commitment to his master, he has his ear bored with an awl. (Ex. 21:5) Yaaqov could not ascend if anyone in his household was committed to anything but YHWH. Nor could this king, Y'oshiyahu, ascend unless he “had the ear” of all his people. For the covenant to work, everyone involved must be familiar with it. The word for “read” in Hebrew also can mean “to confront in a challenging way.” He was putting the people in a position where they had to decide for or against YHWH. The scroll had probably been hidden to keep it safe from the evil king M’nasheh, but how suspenseful it must have been to anticipate hearing it for the first time in many decades!
3. And the king stood atop the pillar and cut the covenant in the presence of YHWH to walk after YHWH and to guard His commandments, His [objects of] witness, and His prescribed customs with a whole heart and with all [his] appetite, to establish [and make binding] the words of this covenant that were written on this document. And all of the people stood at the [cutting of the] covenant.
Stood atop the pillar: He again followed the custom that Y’hoash had utilized. (2 Kings 11:14) Only a descendant of David was permitted to sit in the Court of Israel, where this pillar stood. But he was standing, probably out of respect for the Torah. From this “high ground” he could look out over all of the Temple courts and see what was idolatrous and what was not, so that he could not just agree to the covenant, but carry it out right as it was spoken! He could point out the various pagan items that were left and tell the people where to take them to burn, what to crush into dust, etc.
4. And the king ordered Khilqiyahu the high priest and the priests of the second [shift] and the threshold guards to bring out from the Temple of YHWH all the vessels that had been made for Baal, for Asherah, or for any of the armies of the heavens, and he burned them outside of Yerushalayim in the cultivated fields of the Qidron, and carried their ashes to Beyth-El.
Beyth-El was apparently where the Tabernacle once rested (Judges 20:26; 1 Shmu’el 7:16; 10:3), but it was just across the border from Binyamin’s land in Efrayim’s. It had been one of the two places Yarav’am set up alternative worship sites with golden calves. (1 Kings 12:29) So he was in a sense “returning” the ashes of these idolatrous items to the place from which Yehudah had been influenced to sin in this way. (16:3)
5. And he put a stop to the kindlers whom the kings of Yehudah had appointed to burn incense on the cultic worship-platfoms in the cities of Yehudah and the environs of Yerushalayim, and those burning incense to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the armies of the heavens.
Kindlers: or, black-robed, masochistic priests who emphasized self-denial and asceticism. Because of their many similarities, Jews have used the same term for Christian priests. Constellations: that is, the twelve signs of the zodiac, or possibly simply the planets. The zodiac had begun as a set of pre-Avrahamic messages about YHWH which David, in Psalm 19, compared with the Torah, saying these were available anywhere in the world. The Arabic names of the stars in each preserve the story in the best form we have extant today. But these “messengers” from YHWH were profaned and degraded by idolatrous usage (self-centered attempts to know how the supposedly direct the details of one’s individual life), which has continued to our own day in the form of horoscopes.
6. And he removed the Asherah from the House of YHWH [and took it] outside Yerushalayim to the Qidron Valley, and burned it in the Qidron Valley, and threw its ashes on top of the graves of the sons of the people.
Again, the Asherah was a female deity that some people idolatrously associated with YHWH based on the pagan practices of Baal-worship.
7. He also tore down the houses of the male pagan prostitutes who were in the House of YHWH, where the women were weaving “houses” for the Asherah.
Apparently they would carry out their sexual acts of “worship”on site at specific stages of completion of their craft.
8. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Yehudah and defiled the cultic platforms where the priests burned incense from Geva to Be’er-sheva, and he tore down the cultic platforms of the gates which were at the opening of the Gate of Y’hoshua, the ruler of the city, which were on a man’s left [side] at the city gate.
Defiled: or profaned. Geva: near Mitzpah on the extreme northern edge of Yehudah’s territory. Be’er-sheva: on the southern edge of the arable, and hence inhabited, part of Yehudah’s territory, though the city itself was deeded to Shim’on. Thus he is referring to the whole land of Yehudah. Platforms of the gates: They guarded their gates with superstition rather than with the Torah as commanded. (Deut. 6:9) Ts’fanyah, who prophesied at this time, spoke of YHWH’s hand being stretched over Yehudah to cut off the idolatrous priests and their names as well.
9. Only, the priests of the cultic platforms did not come up to the altar of YHWH in Yerushalayim, though they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.
These were not foreigners but actual Levitical priests who had a right to eat of the offerings brought to the Temple because of who they were; that was the only sustenance allotted them, but they were in a state of repentance, and recognized that they were not worthy to serve in YHWH’s Temple because they had defiled themselves with idolatrous priesthood. They did not wish to remind YHWH that they had caused Yehudah to sin, so they stayed away while they still had the stench of paganism on them. (Compare Lev. 10:19 and Lev. 21:17-23; these priests had spiritual defects, not physical.)
10. And he defiled Tofeth, which was in the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, so that no man could pass his son or daughter through the fire to Molekh.
Tofeth is based on the word for drumming or percussion, so named because the pagan priests would bang on drums to drown out the groans of the childrens burned by the super-heated hands of the idol. This site became a dump where rubbish was burned, because it was worthy of no nobler use after having such a heinous purpose. The fires kept burning there day and night were corrupted into Dante’s idea of hell because of a misunderstanding of some of Y’shua’s words.
11. And he put an end to the horses that the kings of Yehudah had donated to the sun at the entrance to YHWH’s House toward the chamber of Nathan-melekh, the eunuch who was in the open apartments, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.
The Horse is, in pagan tradition, sacred to the sun. We are told that “the horse inspired such awe in ancient man that he often thought of the horse as the power behind certain natural elements.” In the Hindu Pantheon, the sun is depicted as drawn by seven horses with the Dawn as charioteer. The ancient Greeks depicted the sun as a charioteer driving four horses across the sky, and the Romansand Rhodians adopted a similar story. A sun-chariot drawn by a single was depicted in a bronze sculpture found in Denmark which has been dated to the 18th to 16th century B.C., contemporary with Yitzhaq or Yaaqov. The Persians and Spartans sacrificed horses to the sun. The Babylonian god Shamash (“sun”) likewise had his chariot and horses--especially in vogue at this time, and this is probably where this particular form of the custom came from. The chariot has been seen in modern times as the vehicle of divine light associated with UFOs and “lower extraterrestrial races overrunning the earth and the will of humanity”, and “Jesus the Christ” is brought into this scenario, teaching people to “choose to ascend” and “experience the higher light frequencies and evolutionary biological upgrading taking place at this time”! Who knows but that they did not use such lofty language in the days of Y’oshiyahu’s predecessors as well? Compare the Torah’s and prophets’ commands in regard to horses and chariots. (Deut. 17:16; Psalm 20:7; Yeshayahu 31:1; 36:9) Eunuch: or simply court official or chamberlain, but possibly someone who had brought this life-defying custom into Israel as well. Open apartments: a structure attached to the west side of Shlomoh’s Temple.
12. And the king tore down the altars that were on the roof of Akhaz’s upper room, which the kings of Yehudah had made, and the altars that M’nashe had made in both courtyards of the House of YHWH, and hurriedly [removed them] from there, and had their debris thrown into the Qidron Valley,
The king: He is not mentioned by name, possibly to indicate that he was acting on behalf of the King, and that YHWH was indeed in agreement. Roof: clearly not one weakly-constructed of mere timbers and thatch! Into the Qidron Valley: There is nothing new under the sun; the Muslims recently did the same to remnants of the Second Temple bulldozed up for one of their construction projects on the Temple Mount.
13. as well as the cultic platforms that were on the face of Yerushalayim—[those] that were on the right hand [side] of the Mount of Destruction, which Shlomoh the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth , the repulsive thing of the Tzidonians, for Khemosh, the abomination of Moav, and for Milkom, the abomination of the descendants of Ammon.
On the face of Yerushalayim: possibly facing the city from across one of the valleys, or right up against the city’s walls. Some say it was the Mount of Olives, but it is more likely the one known as the Hill of Evil Counsel (a name used commonly for “bad advice” in modern Hebrew), for it was where Shlomoh built the palaces for his foreign wives. The United Nations has its regional headquarters there today! These platforms had probably been left because of everyone’s high regard for Shlomoh; because of his greatness, many held all of his building projects in awe, but Y’oshiyahu was brave enough to make distinctions between which were worth preserving and which were not.
14. He also smashed the memorial columns and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men.
15. And even the altar that was at Beyth-El, the cultic worship platform that Yarav’am the son of N’vat, who caused Israel to miss the target, had made—both that altar and the platform he tore down, and he burned the platform and crushed it into fine dust, and burned the Asherah [image].
Beyth-El was an abandoned site; the Samaritans were not using it. But it was too close to the border of Yehudah, so he wanted to remove the temptation to travel there. Y’oshiyahu could have said it was no use going to all the trouble of making all these reforms, because it was all going to be gone in a few generations anyway. But he lived in the moment and acted as if this was the only opening anyone would ever have to do the job.
16. When Y’oshiyahu turned [his face], he noticed the tombs that were there on the mountain, and he sent and had the bones taken out of the tombs, and he burned them on the altar, thus defiling it, according to the word of YHWH which the man of Elohim who uttered these words had announced.
The allusion is to 1 Kings 13:1-5. Y’oshiyahu was mentioned by name 300 years earlier! The prophet’s name is not. It is doubtful that Y’oshiyahu was familiar with this prophecy (see v. 17); his father would not have been likely to have given him this name if he had known about it either, since he had no regard for YHWH. The prophecy Y’oshiyahu did know about was that Yehudah was doomed, and he probably hoped YHWH would have mercy.
17. That is, he said, “What is that monument that I am seeing?” And the men of the city said to him, “The grave of the man of Elohim who came from Yehudah and announced these things that you have done in regard to the altar of Beyth-El!”
The local people seem to be the only ones who remembered the prophecy; after all, it was their “claim to fame”, as well as something they had long been hoping to see fulfilled. As the Persian king Qoresh would later be impressed with the prophecy directed toward him and treat the Jews well because of it, Y’oshiyahu also honored this prophet:
18. So he said, “Let him remain! Not a man may disturb his bones!” So they let his bones escape [defilement] along with the bones of the prophet who came out of Shomron.
This allusion is to 1 Kings 13:11-32, in which the lion and donkey remained standing on the road over his dead body. The second prophet had told his sons to bury him with the prophet he had tricked, since he knew the latter’s grave would be left undisturbed, and he hoped he could therefore be spared the end these false priests.
19. And Y’oshiyahu even removed all the houses of the cultic worship-platforms that were in the cities of Shomron, which the kings of Israel had made, to anger YHWH and did to them the same kind of things he had done in Beyth-El.
He could have used the excuse that these territories were beyond his jurisdiction, being governed now by the rulers appointed by Assyria. He could have avoided them for fear of being killed for doing so. But he went beyond the bare minimum and acted like a true son of David, the king of both houses of Israel, foreshadowing the Messianic kingdom yet again. He cleaned up all of YHWH’s Land. And it may be because of his boldness that no one interfered since YHWH saw what He was willing to do and therefore brought even more factors to his aid. Since the death of Emperor Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE (around the 13th year of Y’oshiyahu’s reign, or about the time Yirmeyahu started prophesying), Assyria had been in a slow decline and Babylon was taking advantage of this and building up its power with the aim of becoming the next regional empire. The Babylonians were not as cruel as the Assyrians, and thus Yehudah’s exile would not be nearly as painful as Israel’s. But this interim beforehand was a period when Assyria and Bavel were struggling with one another, and therefore, neither was particularly focused on Eretz Israel, giving Y’oshiyahu the space to take authority over what the kings of Israel had left and Assyria had not done away with. He was therefore able to succeed in cleaning up all of YHWH’s Land.
20. And he slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the cultic platforms who were there, thus burning human bones upon them. Then he returned to Yerushalayim.
Slaughtered: The same term used for the animals that would have been slaughtered at these altars before that.
21. Then the king gave orders to all of the people, saying, “Prepare a Passover [offering] for YHWH your Elohim, as it is written on this document of the covenant!”
22. Because a Passover like this had not been prepared since the days of the judges who ruled Israel, including all the days of the kings of Israel as well as the kings of Yehudah!
Judges: Shmu’el in particular, who held the feast at Mitzpah (1 Shm. 7:5-6). It must have even surpassed the big celebration Shlomoh hosted.
23. But in year eighteen of King Y’oshiyahu, the Passover was prepared for YHWH in Yerushalayim.
Like Hizqiyahu, he apparently issued an invitation for not just Yehudah but all of Israel to participate in the renewed celebration of Passover. Rashi says some of the exiles returned from the ten tribes through Yirmeyahu. He does not elaborate, but Steve Collins’ research has turned up the fact that some Scythians, who had by this time moved from Persia into what is now part of Russia, all the while continuing to keep much of the Torah in their exile, actually came back during the time of Y’oshiyahu’s reforms in Yehudah, and lived at Beyth-She’an, though they had conquered much of Central Asia. In Greco-Roman times, the city’s name was changed to Scythopolis to commemorate their having been there. Year eighteen: The first phrase in Scripture with the numeric value of 18 is Adam’s explanation,“I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10). Y’oshiyahu was working hard to reverse that shameful blot on humanity’s history. 18 is also the value of the Hebrew word for “life”, whose first letter was constituted by the blood on the doorposts at the first Passover.
24. And also, those who evoked the dead or had familiar spirits and [any] household healing shrines and [rolling] idols or disgusting things that appeared in the Land of Yehudah and Yerushalayim, Y’oshiyahu burned, so that he might establish the words of the Torah that were written on the scroll that Khilqiyahu the priest had found in the House of YHWH.
Establish: cause to stand, ratify, carry out, make binding and effective. Healing shrines: Heb., t’rafim, the same kind of idol Rakhel brought from her father’s home. Rashi says they were images that could speak through sorcery; the ones who made them determined by incantations the one hour in the year that would be fit for this practice.
25. And before him there was no king like him, who turned back to YHWH with his whole heart, with all his motivation, and with all his forcefulness, according to all of the instruction of Moshe, and after him none like him [ever] arose!
Is this scribe saying he did even better than David? Possibly so, because not one error is recorded in regard to him except the tactical gaffe that would cost him his life, and even that is smoothed over below in this account, because it was not a sin against YHWH as such.
26. Nonetheless, YHWH did not relent from the fierceness of His intense anger with which His nostrils were kindled against Yehudah because of all of the provocations with which M’nasheh had angered Him.
Khuldah had said in 22:16 that YHWH’s wrath would not be quenched; there was nothing Y’oshiyahu could do to stop it, however positive his actions, since Yehudah’s cup was now full, and the blame is all laid on M’nasheh. There were many other evil kings, but he was held more accountable because of how righteous his father was—and Y’oshiyahu’s sons received very little patience from YHWH because they had no excuse.
27. And YHWH said, “From Yehudah, too, will I turn away My face, as I turned away from Israel, and I will abhor the city, Yerushalayim, which I have chosen, and the House of which I said, ‘My Name shall be there.’”
Whether Y’oshiyahu still had hope of preserving the Land from destruction, or simply wanted to do the right thing regardless of what had to come after his death, only YHWH knows.
28. And the remainder of the words of Y’oshiyahu and all that he accomplished, aren’t they recorded in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Yehudah?
29. In his days, Pharaoh Nekhoh, the king of Egypt, came up in regard to the king of Ashur along the River Prath. When Y’oshiyahu went out to meet him, he killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.
Archaeological finds tell us that, in 609 BCE, Nekhoh was trying to get to Haran to assist the Assyrians who were being besieged by Bavel after Nineweh fell to the Babylonians with the help of the Medes. River Prath: that is, the Euphrates. Megiddo was on the most logical route by which one would travel from Egypt to the fertile crescent, following the Way of the Sea (Via Maris) from the coastal plain across the only easy pass through Mt. Karmel. Megiddo was just on the other side of the pass. It was not even in Yehudah’s territory.Nekhoh had warned him that he was only going to pass through his land—that this was not his battle—but Y’oshiyahu tried to interfere anyway. Y’oshiyahu might have felt he could escape harm because he had been told he would go to his grave in peace (22:20), and so stood up to someone much stronger than he. A blessing from YHWH should not be taken as a promise if we do not respond to it properly. He never consulted YHWH or even a prophet about this, as even David (a much greater warrior) had made it a practice to do before going to war; there must be a clear mandate. His job was to build a people for YHWH, not get involved in a squabble between Gentiles. He put himself in the wrong place. But this scribe does not emphasize that aspect of the story. He does not seem to blame Y’oshiyahu for this blunder, probably because YHWH “had a fire to kindle and wanted to get it over with”—a sentiment Y’shua would echo—and he needed Y’oshiyahu out of the way to be able to do so. He died at 39; he could not be permitted to live to 40, the number of transition, for YHWH had already declared that judgment had to come on the people who did not live at the same level their king did. But Y’oshiyahu may have even been the one who opened a door for a major shift in world politics. And though it cost him his life, Y’oshiyahu’s interference with Nekhoh’s advance slowed him down enough that Babylon was able to gain the victory, and four years later Babylon decisively defeated Nekhoh, thus even avenging Y’oshiyahu’s death. The cruel Assyrian empire was now essentially out of the picture.
30. And his servants carried him away from Megiddo dead by chariot and brought him to Yerushalayim and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the Land took Y’ho’akhaz the son of Y’oshiyahu and anointed him, making him king in his father’s place.
His own tomb: One already prepared. Ironically, the kings of Israel must have to a small extent followed the Egyptian practice of building their own tombs before they died, and the practice spread throughout the population among those who could afford it, like Yoseyf of Ramathayim, who had a tomb ready for Y’shua to use because he had prepared it for himself. People of the Land: Those who considered themselves bound to the Land itself as the Torah encouraged us to do. Y’ho’akhaz means “YHWH has taken a firm hold.” This was indeed what took place in the albeit short lifetime of Y’oshiyahu.
[Year 3391 from Creation; 609 B.C.E.]
31. Y’ho’akhaz wasa twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Yerushalayim, and his mother’s name was Khamutal the daughter of Yirmeyahu of Livnah.
He was born when his father was only sixteen years of age! Khamutal means “the covering of a father-in-law”. Yirmeyahu means “the one YHWH has exalted”. This is not Yirmeyahu the prophet, who lived at Anathoth, much closer to Yerushalayim than Livnah, which is near Lakhish. He was also too young to be father-in-law of Y’ho’akhaz, though he intensified his prophesying at just this time.
32. And he did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, [doing] just like all his ancestors had done.
He was not granted a change of heart; the door was closed. Like Lot at S’dom, now that Y’oshiyahu was out of the line of fire, judgment could finally come. Y’ho’akhaz was not even reckoned here as a son of Y’oshiyahu, who had not acted this way. Just as Y’shua called some “sons of the devil” when they claimed Avraham as father, it is clear that YHWH saw there as having been two lines of David, one righteous and one unrighteous.
33. So Pharaoh Nekhoh bound him [with cords] at Rivlah in the territory of Khamath while he was reigning in Yerushalayim, and he imposed [a tax] on the Land—a hundred kikkar of silver and a kikkar of gold.
Rivlah means “fruitfulness” or “fertility”. Khamath means “walled fortress”. The fact that he was in Khamath might mean he, too, was meddling beyond his area of jurisdiction in the affairs of other nations’ wars. The outcome was that matters became worse for the whole nation. Nekoho might not have had the authority to do this if Y’oshiyahu had not interfered, but YHWH had already determined that this was necessary. The limit of “seventy times seven” had been reached. (Lev. 26:35, 43; Yirm. 25:11) The shepherd was struck, and the sheep would be scattered.
34. And Pharaoh Nekhoh made Elyaqim the son of Y’oshiyahu king in the place of Y’oshiyahu his father, and turned his name into Y’hoyaqim, but took Y’ho’akhaz away to Egypt, where he died.
At least Nekhoh left a descendant of David on the throne; he knew the limits of what would or would not cause the people to revolt violently. His name essentially still meant the same, but now it specified that the El who was exalted was YHWH in particular. Again, Nekhoh probably did this for political reasons, possibly to make his name sound more like his father’s, and to get in favor with what he saw as the local deity. Sometimes emperors changed the names of kings to show ownership of them, but most kings received a new name upon accession to the throne. With a name reflecting YHWH’s, it might have been easier for Y’hoyaqim to rule a people who had by and large returned to YHWH under Y’oshiyahu.
35. And Y’hoyaqim gave the silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the Land to give the silver onto Pharaoh’s mouth; he exacted the silver and gold from the people of the Land to give to Pharaoh Nekhoh, each according to his [proportional] worth.
Taxed: literally, ordered. Exacted: or pressured. Worth: or value, assessment; literally, order.
36. Y’hoyaqim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Yerushalayim, and his mother’s name was Zvidah the daughter of P’dayah from Rumah.
Zvidah means “bestowed with a dowry”. P’dayah means “YHWH has redeemed”. Rumah means “raised up high”, but its exact site is not known.
37. And he did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, [doing] just like all his ancestors had done.
Since Y’oshiyahu’s successors were evil and most of the land had been filled with foreigners by the Assyrians, the Scythians decided they could do just as well to go back to the vast open steppes, and abandoned their homeland after this brief reunification. The timing was just not right for the fullness of the Kingdom. But for a short time there was a true foretaste of the Kingdom. Both kingdoms were to some extent together again under the Messianic king, even returning to the Land to live. Though it didn’t last very long, because it wasn’t enough (didn’t he do any of the other festivals?), and judgment still had to come because of his predecessors, Y’oshiyahu went all-out to do the right thing whether it would turn YHWH’s wrath away or not. It’s up to YHWH to determine when we have done enough to merit returning to the Land. And we have no control over what our descendants may do, except in the kind of foundation we give them to work with. But whatever they may do, and whatever YHWH chooses to do after our time, let’s have our history be recorded as a generation that brought restoration with no reservations, like Y’oshiyahu. Today is all we are assured of, so like him, let’s act as if there never will be another, whether it looks like there is room to do so or not. In doing so, we, like Y’oshiyahu, just might create the space we--and all Israel--need.
CHAPTER 24
[c. year 3400 from Creation; 600 B.C.E.]
1. In his days, Nevukhadne’tzar, the king of Bavel, came up, and Y’hoyaqim became a servant to him for three years. Then he turned around and rebelled against him.
2. And YHWH sent the troops of the Khasdim, the troops of Aram, the troops of Mo’av, and the troops of the sons of Ammon against him. That is, He sent them against Yehudah to destroy it, in accordance with the word of YHWH that He had spoken by means of His servants, the prophets.
We would think Nevukhadne’tzar would be the one hiring these troops, and certainly he reacted to this “match” that lit the tinder. But ultimately it was YHWH who orchestrated events so that these armies had an excuse to do what they were created to do—to serve Israel, this time in a punitive way, because that is what Israel needed at this time—not to annihilate Yehudah, but to take away its sovereignty for a time so it would learn its role better. And He sent relatives—nations related to Israel, who had more background in the knowledge of YHWH than Bavel, to judge them, because in a sense they had more right to criticize. The Khasdim (Chaldeans) were not Babylonians as such, but from further south in what is Iraq and Kuwait today. They had usurped the Babylonian throne at times, but the Chaldeans were a Semitic people, because Avram had been born a Chaldean. Aram was where Yaaqov’s wives came from, and Mo’av and Ammon were nations descended from Avram’s nephew Lot. The latter three were also near neighbors, so they had more of a “right” to expect Israel to be a light to them. When Israel/Yehudah were not, they in a sense had a right to be upset with them. Destroy: literally, cause it to be lost. They would not annihilate the Jews, but would annihilate their status as a sovereign nation for a time.
3. That’s right! Upon the mouth of YHWH [this] came upon Yehudah, to remove them from His presence in the errors of M’nashe, which he had perpetrated,
Nevukhadne’tzar was called YHWH’s servant in Yirmeyahu 25:9, and He commanded Yehudah to surrender to Bavel at this time, and promised to be merciful to them if they would do so. (Yirm. 27:6-17; compare Yirm. 29:7.) Errors of M’nasheh: detailed in 21:5-16. This was not something YHWH did on a whim or in a sudden rage, but was long-standing unfinished business that could no longer be delayed.
4. and also [for] the innocent blood that he had shed, because he filled Yerushalayim with innocent blood, and YHWH was not willing to excuse [it].
YHWH takes the witness of blood seriously, saying it “cries out” to Him for justice when it is wrongly spilled. Though M’nasheh repented and changed his ways, he had no way to restore to their families all the souls he had executed for no valid reason, and his descendants had to answer for it in his absence since other than Y’oshiyahu they did not carry on the changes that he had begun to implement. There was nothing anyone could now do to remedy this injustice other than accepting YHWH’s judgment for it. Exile is exactly the same punishment YHWH imposed on the first shedder of innocent blood, Qayin. (Gen. 4:9ff)
5. And the rest of the words of Y’hoyaqim and all that he did, aren’t they recorded on the document of the Chronicles belonging to the kings of Yehudah?
[c. year 3403 from Creation; 597 B.C.E.]
6. When Y’hoyaqim lay down with his ancestors, his son Y’hoyakhin became king in his place.
He died as his ancestors had, but he was not buried with them. Yirmeyahu said he would receive “an ass’s burial” (Yirm. 22:19), and indeed, Nevukhadne’tzar bound him with copper chains to take him to Bavel, but ended up having to drag h im, and he died from injuries sustained while he resisted.
7. (Now the king of Egypt never again left his own land, because the king of Bavel had taken everything from the River of Egypt all the way to the River P’rath that had belonged to the king of Egypt.)
Nekhoh ended up under “house arrest”, free to come and go but only within his own country, because of his defeat by Nevukadne’tzar at Carchemish on the P’rath (Euphrates), and he spent his last days outfitting a fleet of Phoenician vessels that circumnavigated Africa and trying to reopen a defunct canal between the Reed Sea and the Nile so that their could be uninterrupted shipping from Egypt in all directions. (See Yirmeyahu 46:2.)
8. Y’hoyakhin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Yerushalayim. Now his mother’s name was N’hushta, the daughter of El-Nathan of Yerushalayim.
N’hushta means “brazen”—an appropriate name since she named her son “YHWH will establish” or “set up” in the face of the clear judgment of YHWH on M’nasheh’s descendants. El-Nathan means “Elohim has provided”. Elohim is the name used for YHWH when His judgmental facet is being emphasized. Ironically, the Tower of Bavel was built to escape YHWH’s judgment, and the very
9. But he did what was wrong in the eyes of YHWH, just like everything his ancestors had done.
Again, YHWH gave him a very short space of time to prove what was really in his heart, and when it became clear, He had no patience with him, and wasted no time in letting his actions be the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for Yehudah:
10. At that time the servants of Nevukhadne’tzar the king of Bavel came up over Yerushalayim, and the city came [under] siege.
11. Then Nevukhadne’tzar the king of Bavel arrived upon the city, and his servants besieged it.
12. And Y’hoyakhin the king of Yehudah went out on account of the king of Bavel—he and his mother, his servants, his officers, and his court officials. So the king of Bavel took him in the eighth year of his reign.
Went out: not to battle this time, but to surrender. His reign: that is, Nevukhadne’tzar’s.
13. And he brought out from there all the treasures of the House of YHWH and the treasures of the king’s palace, and he chopped up all the golden vessels in the Temple of YHWH that Shlomoh, king of Israel, had made, as YHWH had said.
These were not the original Temple vessels, but some added by Shlomoh. Others had already been carried away by Pharaoh Shishaq (1 Kings 14:25), and more were taken intact to Bavel, because we know from Dani’El 5 that it was the overstepping of authority by profaning of those vessels by Nevukhadne’tzar’s son that would be the “last straw” in Bavel’s downfall. The bare minimum was left, but there was no longer abundance of any sort.
14. And he took all of Yerushalayim and all of the leaders and all the military heroes—10,000 captives—into exile, along with all the engravers and smiths; none were left except the poorest people of the Land.
Smiths: or, fasteners; some take them as the sentries who closed the gates. People of the Land: often an idiom for peasants. The Babylonians were known for absorbing the wisdom of all they conquered, and putting the “best and brightest” (like Dani’El) in high positions; he did not want to bring home those he considered “losers”. The “brain drain” of many other nations to America in our day is but one of many ways this nation follows in the pattern of Bavel—a fact that may help us interpret many prophecies. It is noteworthy that the United States now has a command center based right at the restored ruins of Nevukhadne’tzar’s palace. But the fact that there were so few great men in Yehudah to be carried away also highlights the growing gap between rich and poor as the kings became more corrupt and more wealthy at the expense of the rest. But that they were left at home was an example of the humble inheriting the Land. (Psalm 37:9, 11)
15. And he exiled Y’hoyakhin to Bavel, along with the king’s mother and the king’s wives, his court officials, and the strong men of the Land, and he had the exiles walk from Yerushalayim to Bavel.
Strong men: or dignitaries. (Yirmeyahu 24:5) Walk: could be read as simply “go”, but forcing them to walk the approximately 500 miles would be part of their humbling. King’s wives: After a time of rehabilitative incarceration, Y’hoyakhin was treated well in Bavel. (Yirm. 52:31-34) His son She’alti’El had a son in Bavel, and his name was Zerubbavel—“sown in Bavel”. He figures prominently in the books of Ezra and N’khemyah, though there we are only told he was the “governor of Yehudah”, not that he would have been the king in the line of David had there been a throne. But the fact that there was no throne (Yirm. 22:30), and he therefore had to be an “offshoot” (Yeshayahu 11:1), gave Zerubbavel space to prove his nobility without the distracting accoutrements of royalty. The “manure” of this exile also brought renewed fertility to the righteousness latent in Yehudah. The kings had been able to intimidate those who would rebuke them just because they could claim lineage from David. Now that the playing field had been leveled—the royals themselves were among the exiles—this advantage was neutralized, and the righteous had room to stand up. (Yirm. 24:5-7) Two generations in this kind of climate was all that was needed to re-nourish the line of David as well. That the rightful king (Zerubbavel) now had to answer to someone and even get permission to return to the Land helped rid him of his excess pride and kept him accountable so that he could demonstrate what a real leader in Israel was meant to be without the official title standing in the way. We, too, need to make the most of our remaining time in exile. Now, like those in Bavel, we have space and time to learn Torah well; when we get back to the Land, things will be very busy and we will have to have a solid foundation of familiarity with its commands to be able to put them into effect promptly.
16. And all the men of the army [numbered] 7,000, [and] the engravers and smiths, 1,000; they were all heroes who [could] do battle. Thus the king brought exiles from Yerushalayim to Bavel.
Men of the army: or, men of valor, capable men. How does this 8,000 relate to the 10,000 in verse 14? The breakdown listed in Yirmeyahu 52:24-30 may clarify some details.
17. Then the king of Bavel made Mattanyah, his uncle, king in his place, and changed his name to Tzidqiyahu.
This time Nevukhadne’tzar was demonstrating his sovereignty over the suzerain king by changing his name. Even Bavel seems to have some insight into Yehudah’s true position. His name went from “gift of YHWH” to “YHWH is righteous”, emphasizing the justice that was coming rather than the more pleasant side of relationship to YHWH. It could also be read as “May YHWH justify”—i.e., may He vindicate me for doing what I am doing against Yehudah, because Yehudah needs this lesson—much like the terrorist leader Abu Zubaida today who says that is why the Muslims are attacking Israel (really Yehudah) so often. Nevukhadne’tzar may have also wanted a more mature leader in position—one less likely to be as unstable as his nephew had been.
18. Tzidqiyahu was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Yerushalayim for eleven years. And his mother’s name was Khamutal, the daughter of Yirmeyahu of Livnah.
This means he was the brother of Y’ho’akhaz (and the half-brother of Y’hoyaqim) and the son of Y’oshiyahu. During his reign Y’hezq’El began to prophesy. He was among the first wave of captives taken to Bavel (v. 14; Y’hezq’el 1:1) and being the captives’ spiritual leader.
19. But he did what was wrong in YHWH’s eyes, just like everything that Y’hoyaqim had done,
20. because on account of YHWH’s anger [this] took place in Yerushalayim and Yehudah—that Tzidqiyahu rebelled against the king of Bavel—until He had cast them away from His presence.
YHWH had put a spirit of rebellion in the king so that he would anger a king stronger than he, to ensure that nothing could get better in the Land when justice was due for all the blood that cried out to Him and all the idolatry that had defiled the Land. If He allowed things to go on as normal, there would be no justice.
CHAPTER 25
[c. year 3412 from Creation; 588 B.C.E.]
1. So what took place in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, [was that] Nevukhadne’tzar the king of Bavel—he and his whole army--came upon Yerushalayim and encamped against it, and they built a siege wall around it on every side.
Siege wall: or bulwark, intending that no one could leave any of the gates of the city and get past their guards. The book of Lamentations describes the horrors of this siege, which lasted at least 15 months, in detail. During part of the siege, its author, Yirmeyahu was already in prison, called both mad and unpatriotic for prophesying that Tzidqiyahu should surrender this time. They put him in a pit full of mire up to his neck, thinking he would suffocate on his own and die but not at their hands. The king later released him secretly during the siege because personally he liked Yirmeyahu, but was afraid of all the other politicians. Yirmeyahu’s own account of these events is in chapters 39 and 52 of his book.
[c. year 3414 from Creation; 586 B.C.E.]
2. And the city came [under] siege until the eleventh year of king Tzidqiyahu,
Eleventh: here, a less common way of writing the number is used in Hebrew, one which emphasizes the idea of an afterthought—i.e., tenth plus another.
3. on the ninth of the month, when the famine was severe in the city, and there was no [longer any] bread for the people of the Land.
No bread: There might have been other food, but the staple grain had run out. From this account it appears to be the ninth of the first month—just before the day the Passover lamb is chosen. YHWH did not even allow His people to celebrate Passover that year, because the opposite of the Exodus from Egypt was taking place. Yirmeyahu 52:6 says it was the fourth month.
4. Then the city was broken through and all the men of war [came out] that night by way of the gate between the pair of walls that were above the king’s garden, but the Khasdim were up against the city on every side, so he went in the direction of the Aravah.
He: the king as commander of the army. The Aravah is the Great Rift Valley, which begins about twelve miles east of Yerushalayim.
5. And the army of the Khasdim chased after the king, and caught up with him in the transitional zones of Y’rikho, and all of his army was scattered from [having been] over him,
Transitional zones: where desert is still interspersed with vegetation—the plural form of the word Aravah seen in v. 4. According to Joseph Good, the events of the last several kings of Yehudah foreshadow events in the time of Yaaqov’s trouble. Tzidqiyahu somehow got a whole army past the Babylonian bulwarks. One tradition that Rashi heard says they escaped by way of a cave that ran all the way from inside the city to the edge of the Aravah—the Rift Valley, and that when the Babylonians chased a deer that was running above where the cave ran, they caught Tzidqiyahu when he came out. The tradition from which Josephus drew said there was a fortified ditch, and that it was deserters who tipped the Babylonians off to the fact that he had bolted, leaving his own people unguarded. Whatever the case, the king’s garden is thought to have been at the base of the very tip of the City of David, close to the Pool of Shhiloakh—makes sense because it would be well-watered there. The double wall there, probably built by both Hizqiyahu and M’nasheh, may have served as a dam for the pool as well. If he got out in this area, he would have gone straight down the Qidron Valley and come out just south of Qumran by the Dead Sea, where the valley ends. Good says this is the prophetic part—that he was captured near the Dead Sea. (The Plain of Y’rikho includes the Dead Sea.) Tzidqiyahu was not the one in the direct line to be king by the succession of firstborns, so he is a picture of the Counterfeit Messiah. (In verse 27, which takes place 26 years after this, Y’hoyakhin is still called the (true) king of Yehudah.) Revelation tells us that the Counterfeit Messiah will be thrown alive into the Lake of Fire. Christians have interpreted this as “hell”, but as we know from the story of S’dom, there was a lot of petroleum here before it was a lake. The Nabateans later harvested the globs that rose to the surface by coagulating them into tar and sold them at high prices. The Romans even called this the Asphalt Lake. The source of that seepage was closed off by an earthquake in 1840, but lightning used to actually light it on fire, so the Dead Sea used to be colloquially called the Lake of Fire. There will be a major earthquake again right at the time Y’shua reaches the Mount of Olives, and it might be what reopens this source of flammable material, allowing the usurper to literally be thrown into the Lake of Fire!
6. so they arrested the king and the king of Bavel took him up to Rivlah and they rendered judgment on him:
Rivlah: in the territory of Khamath, north of Levanon on the main route to Bavel--the same place Pharaoh Nekhoh had captured Y’ho’akhaz. (23:33) Apparently it was Nevukadne’tzar’s regional administrative center. (Compare verse 21.)
7. They slaughtered the sons of Tzidqiyahu before his own eyes, then they blinded the eyes of Tzidqiyahu and bound him with bronze [fetter]s, and made him go [to] Bavel.
Blinded: apparently by burning them so that a callous would form over them, because the term comes from the word for “skin”—unless they sewed his eyelids shut! Thus the last thing he ever saw was his sons being butchered. (Compare Shimshon’s experience in Judges 16:20.) Yirmeyahu had warned Tzidqiyahu over and over that if he simply surrendered to the Babylonians, and all would go well—as well as it could for those doomed to go into exile so the Land could rest. Tzidqiyahu himself was inclined to listen to Yirmeyahu, but his advisors persuaded him to do their bidding instead, and listen to the ear-ticklers who said this would not take place. They told him the Egyptians would defeat the Babylonians, and there would be nothing to worry about. The critical factor for him was what he thought was a contradiction between what Yirmeyahu and Y’hezq’el, both claiming to speak for YHWH, predicted. (Y’hezq’el was already in Bavel, but sent a message back to Tzidqiyahu.) Although they agreed on every other point, Yirmeyahu (chapters 32 and 34) said Tzidqiyahu himself would be taken captive to Bavel, while Y’hezq’el (12:3) said Tzidqiyahu would not see Bavel, yet he would die there. This didn’t make sense to Tzidqiyahu, so he reasoned that they were both wrong about the whole thing, and placed his bet on Egypt instead. Egypt did indeed come up to help, and drew the Babylonians away from Yerushalayim for battle (Yirm. 37), but then were defeated. At that time the false prophets persuaded him that the Babylonians wouldn’t bother them anymore. Yirmeyahu kept countering their words with YHWH’s true words, and sure enough, Nevukhadne’tzar came back. Had he not let his own logic get in the way, Tzidqiyahu might have evaded some of the calamity YHWH had foretold. Since he didn’t believe either prophet, the words of both came true: he did look into the eyes of the king of Bavel—that’s the point at which Yirmeyahu had stopped. But he also was taken to Bavel but indeed never saw it—because his eyes were put out. He didn’t trust YHWH “outside the box”. He was one of the sons whom Y’oshiyahu had been told would be taken to Bavel; Y’hoyakhin was another.
8. Then in the fifth month, on the seventh of the month (it was the nineteenth year of King Nevukadne’tzar, the king of Bavel), Nevuzar’adan the chief of the executioners, the servant of the king of Bavel, arrived at Yerushalayim.
Nevuzar’adan means “Nebo has given offspring”. Executioners: or simply, captain of the guards, but the latter term connotes ruthless butchering.
9. And he burned the House of YHWH, the king’s palace, and all the houses of Yerushalayim—that is, every large house—he burned with fire.
This is why there is so little archaeological material left from before the Captivity—only stone walls in some places. Large house: or, house of dignitaries. Apparently it took him two days to get into the inner fortress which the Temple Mount constituted, since by tradition both this Temple and the one Herod built over its ruins were destroyed on the ninth day of the fifth month. This is traditionally a fast day on which to openly mourn, but when the third Temple is built, it will become a feast day. (Z’kharyah 8:19)
10. And the whole army of the Khasdim who [were with] the chief of the executioners tore down the wall of Yerushalayim on every side.
They did not want it to be easily rebuilt. It is as if Nevukahdne’tzar started to walk away, but then realized it was just not enough. He had to go back and make it even more of a wasteland, so that no one would even want to live there. YHWH’s reason for this was that it was time for the Land to lie fallow (Lev. 26:34), since for 490 years (since about 75 years before David), the Land-sabbath law had not been observed. But worse, YHWH had told David that as long as his sons walked in His Torah, he would never fail to have a descendant on the throne “in My presence”. (1 Kings 2:4) Every king had been compared to David, and when Y’oshiyahu reflected him so well, it made M’nasheh’s sins look all the darker in contrast, and the “left hand” got the better of the “right” this time. The darkness was so great that it sucked the light right out of Yehudah. Now they were not only consistent Torah-breakers, but were not even decent people, so YHWH no longer wanted them in His presence (24:20), for they had not even been trying to keep up with His “cloud” (Numbers 9:15-23) for many years; Yehudah’s kings had been trying to put the people under every other possible covering but the right one. If they had continued to defile His Land, He would have become even angrier, and would have again been tempted to put a complete end to Yehudah, let alone the Northern Kingdom. So He literally said, “Get them out of My face!” He did not even want the buildings to remain to remind Him of the things that had gone on there. They must have thought that surely He would not destroy anyone in David’s dynasty, which had now lasted about 425 years (when we take al the co-regencies into account). But the sad truth was that even David’s merit had run out—at least for a time, and so can Y’shua’s, if we continue to do what we want instead of obeying.
11. And the rest of the people who remained in the city as well as the fallen ones who had fallen into [the hand of] the king of Bavel and the remnant of the [noisy, confused] multitude, Nevuzar’adan, the chief of the executioners, took captive.
King Tzidqiyahu and the army, who were to defend these people, had simply abandoned them to try to spare their own lives! Fallen: traditionally taken to mean deserters who defected to the obviously-stronger king, probably again to spare their lives, but possibly because of this reprehensible decision of their king.
12. But the chief of the executioners left some of the poorest of the Land to be vintners and farmers.
He still wanted to get some use out of this Land he was draining of its population.
13. But the Khasdim broke up the bronze pillars that were in the House of YHWH, as well as the pedestal-bases and the bronze “sea” that was in the House of YHWH, and they carried away the bronze [from] them into Bavel.
Now that these items were broken up, all that they were was bronze—which when seen alone is a picture of stubbornness. (Yeshayahu 48:4) Interestingly, the first mention of bronze in Scripture (Gen. 4:22) is just after Qayin was sent into exile. One of his descendants, who was the first to develop bronze-craft, was named Tuval-Qayin. His name means “You will be brought out of possession”—a prophecy of exile if we continue in our stubborn ways.
14. They also took the cauldrons, the shovels, the wick-trimmers, the hollowed-out pans, and all of the bronze implements with which they attended [to YHWH].
15. The chief of the executioners also took the firepans and the pitchers that were [completely] gold or [completely] silver.
16. The two pillars, the single “sea”, and the pedestal-bases that Shlomoh had made for the House of YHWH—there was no way to weigh the bronze of all of those vessels.
No weigh to weigh: or simply, no weighing.
17. The height of [each] pillar was 18 cubits, and the capital atop it was of bronze, and the height of the capital was three cubits, with a network [of vines] and pomegranates on every side of the capital. All were of bronze, and the second pillar atop the network was just like these.
18 is the numeric value of the Hebrew word for “alive”, and the life was being drained away as well.
18. And the chief of the executioners took Serayah, the head priest, and Tz’fanyah the second priest, and the three threshold guards,
Second: or, double, possibly a backup or alternate in case the head priest was ritually unclean when certain ceremonies had to take place.
19. and he took from the city a certain court official who was appointed [to be] over the men of war, and five men from among those who looked on the king’s face who were found in the city, as well as the chief accountant of the army, who made the people of the Land go out [to war], and 60 men of the people of the Land who were found in the city,
20. and Nevuzar’adan, the chief of the executioners, took them and had them go to Rivlah on [account of] the king of Bavel.
21. And the king of Bavel struck them down and killed them at Rivlah in the land of Khamath; thus he exiled Yehudah from its Land.
Nevukhadne’tzar’s main purpose was not to kill anyone, especially within this city; he appears to have deliberately selected only those few who were directly responsible for or in agreement with the rebellion, and he must have had someone report to him about who they were.
22. Now the people who remained in the Land of Yehudah, whom Nevukhadne’tzar the king of Bavel had left—over them he appointed G’dalyahu the son of Akhiqam the son of Shafan.
G’dalyahu came from a very noble family. Shafan was the scribe or accountant who first read to King Y’oshiyahu from the Torah scroll found in the Temple, and Akhiqam was among those Y’oshiyahu sent to enquire of Khuldah the prophetess about the penalties for not having kept the Torah all the years before that (chapter 22).
23. When all the commanders of the army—they and the men—heard that the king of Bavel had appointed G’dalyahu, they came to G’dalyahu at Mitzpah—that is, Yishma’el the son of N’thanyah, Yokhanan the son of Qareakh, Serayah the son of Tankhumeth the N’tofathite, and Ya’azanyahu the son of the Maakhathite—they and their men.
24. And G’dalyahu swore [an oath] to them and to their men, and told them, “Do not be afraid due to the servants of the Khasdim; stay in the Land and serve the king of Bavel, and it will go well for you.”
Do not be afraid due to: or possibly, do not be afraid to be… He clearly believed Yirmeyahu.
25. But what took place during the seventh month [was that] Yishma’el the son of N’thanyah the son of Elishama, from among the royal seed, and ten men with him, came and struck down G’dalyahu so that he died, along with the Jews and the Khasdim who were with him in Mitzpah.
Royal seed: possibly another line descending from King David, either thinking that now he could make some claim to the throne or simply jealous because what appears to have been a priestly family had superseded the kingly line. Yet he ruined what could have been an orderly arrangement, and there remains a fast in his honor to this day.
26. Then all the people, from the small to the great, along with the commanders of the armies, got up and entered Egypt, because they were afraid due to the presence of the Khasdim.
Even the vintners and farmers (v. 12)—the “meek who inherited the Land” for a time—had to go too, for one of the main purposes of the exile was so that the Land could have its Sabbaths. They may have gone to inhabit a Jewish colony on the island of Elephantine, which had originally been a military installation of those sent by King M’nasheh to help Pharaoh Psammatichus in his campaign against Nubia, for Elephantine was just before the last cataract on the Nile near the border of Egypt and Nubia. Some even claim the Ark of the Covenant was taken there for safe-keeping. But Israel’s kings had been warned over and over to never take the people back to Egypt, and this would-be king did just that. In Bavel the captives were out from under the kings who had led them astray, and there was complete religious freedom most of the time—much more than anywhere else in the world. While captives in Egypt, we were enslaved; in Bavel the Jews were respected public servants, even if not free to leave. When the permission to depart would come, it was for the purpose of rebuilding the Temple and Yerushalayim; we are in a similar exile today, many of us in the very nation that now politically holds Bavel’s seat, and when we are allowed to depart it is likely to be for the same reason. The sobering truth is that only a few thousand returned when all of the exiles were free to come back, because life was so comfortable in Bavel by that time. So many scholars remained that the Babylonian version of the Talmud is much larger and is still considered more authoritative. (During the Second Temple era, Bavel was under Parthia, which kept the Roman Empire at bay most of the time, so there was more freedom to be objective there than even in the re-established Judea.) Only recently has it been announced that for the first time since the Babylonian captivity are there more Jews in Israel than in the rest of the world. May the other tribes of Israel do better when we are given our opening to return.
[c. year 3438 from Creation; 562 B.C.E.]
27. And what took place in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Y’hoyakhin, king of Yehudah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh of the month, was that the king of Bavel, Ewil-m’rodakh, lifted up the head of Y’hoyakhin the king of Yehudah from the house of confinement, in the year that he became king,
Based on Yirmeyahu 52:31, it appears that this took place only two days after he ascended the throne. It was high on his priority list! The “cloud” moved, YHWH loosened something in the heavenlies, and the House of David began to actively seek YHWH again. Just before the darkness completely overwhelms the light—when the contrast is darkest, a glimmer of hope appears which would not have been noticed had the light been brighter. YHWH makes the darkness His sukkah (Psalm 18:11); such times are necessary to put us back on track so we will appreciate the light when it becomes full again, and be ready to use it for the right purposes. This far into the exile, Y’hoyakhin is the one still called the king, though there had been another king and twenty-six years with no one on the throne in the interim! And he is treated accordingly. He is the one whose line continued down through Zerubbavel to Y’shua, so it may be that YHWH counted him the least evil of the wicked kings who followed Y’oshiyahu. (Tzidqiyahu was undoubtedly long dead by this time.) It appears that the prison was truly a penitentiary for him—a place where suffering and reflection brought about repentance as it was meant to. It may also be due to the influence of Dani’el and his three companions that the son of Nevukhadne’tzar came to respect the Hebrews so highly that he thought it unjust to leave the one who had been their king in such a lowly state. Whether or not he himself was worthy, the figurehead of a nation that had produced such noble leaders deserved recognition.
28. and spoke kindly with him, and set his seat above the seat of the [other] kings who were with him in Bavel,
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Ewil-M’rodakh was the third ruler of the New Babylonian empire, who reigned from only two years, though there may have been a 16-year co-regency with Nevukhadne’tzar prior to the latter’s death. His name in Babylonian is "Amil-Marduk" or "Avel-Marduk", which means "man" or "servant of Marduk." Babylonian records make the date of his reign very firm, though no personal or historical inscriptions of his reign have been discovered, and the only other source of information about him is Berosus, who, in a different vein, says Evil-merodach ruled "unjustly and lewdly." Winckler, in History of the Babylonians and Assyrians, surmises that he may have had some personal bitterness toward the king, possibly like those in the Medo-Persian Empire to follow who resented Dani’el for his “undue” prominence. Tiele, Cheyne, and Hommel speculate that Neriglissar, Evil-merodach's brother-in-law, who is praised for his benevolence, was instrumental in the freeing of the Judean king. Neriglassar later ordered his assassination, possibly because he was unsuccessful in stemming the immigration of the Medes, and succeeded him as king. He may have been set in place for this short time only for the purpose of restoring the king of Yehudah.
29. and he changed his prison garments, and he ate bread daily in his presence all the days of his life,
The line of David and Shlomoh that continued was through Y’hoyakhin.
30. and as for his diet, a regular allotment was given to him from [that which was] with the king, a day’s ration on its day, all the days of his life.
So this book full of judgments has a positive ending after all. The king went from being treated as a criminal to being treated as a guest—the opposite of the king in Egypt who did not recognize Yoseyf. A day’s ration: or what was appropriate for one day; literally, “a word a day”—the same phrase used to describe how the manna was to be gathered (Ex. 16:4), symbolic of learning a little more of YHWH’s word each day. For Y’hoyakhin, to paraphrase Y’shua, tongue in cheek, “Sufficient unto the day was the Ewil thereof!” We need to recognize that we, too, have a King who operates in the same way so that, as Y’shua said, we can be carefree, addressing each day’s problems as they come, not borrowing from tomorrow’s concerns. (Mat. 6:34) Who needs more than the allotment for one day at a time, anyway? May we who remain in exile learn well to keep this perspective so that when we can return home, we can succeed where our ancestors failed.
INTRODUCTION:
This book begins in the mid-9th century B.C.E. at the end of the northern King Akhazyah's life, where the first book of Kings left off, and continues all the way until the southern kingdom of Yehudah was carried away into captivity in Babylon in 586 B.C.E.
THE SECOND BOOK
OF THE
Kings
An Edomite shrine at Tamar (Ovoth) destroyed by Hizqiyahu
23:1-9, 21-25 is a special reading for Passover
