is always felt at first as a shadow, but very soon as a powerful hand, laid not only upon Israel and Judah, but upon all the little kingdoms of the west, the Syrians (or Aramæans), the Phoenicians, the Philistines, and others. Most of the prophecies of Isaiah have Assyria in view, and are fully intelligible only as the influence of that power upon the fortunes and policy of Judah is understood.

In 745 B.C., five years before Isaiah's call, Tiglath Pileser ascended the throne of Assyria, and soon thereafter his heavy hand began to be felt in the west. Some Syrian towns were taken. In 738 B.C. Assyria came into direct contact with Israel. For half a century Israel under Jeroboam II and Judah under Uzziah had been relatively free from war, and were enjoying great prosperity. But during this period were developed also those evils which too frequently accompany prosperity, and towards the end of it political and social life in Israel was in a state of dissolution, bordering on anarchy. All this is vividly reflected in the sorrowful pages of Hosea. Significantly enough we are told that Menahem, now king of Israel (738 B.C.), "gave Pul (i.e. Tiglath Pileser) a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand" (2 Kings 15: 19). In other words, Israel is now definitely a vassal of Assyria.

In all this Judah was not involved. For over two hundred years she and Israel had gone their separate ways, sometimes even being involved in open hostility, so that Israel's submission to Assyria was quite consistent with the independence of Judah. This independence, however, was not to last long. The western kingdoms, always restive under the yoke of Assyria, were ready to throw it off at the first opportunity. We hear in 735 of an assault upon Judah by the combined forces of Israel and Syria or Aram (Isa. 7:1; 2 Kings 16:5). In the Old Testament no motive is assigned for this, but it has been very plausibly assumed that the object of the attacking powers was to coerce Judah into a coalition of western states against

Assyria. Individually, they were helpless against the mighty power which dealt with weaker peoples like a boy harrying a bird's nest (Isa. 10: 14); their only hope lay in combination: and the defection of so important a state as Judah, situated midway between Syria and Israel on the north and Philistia on the south, would have been fatal. Thrown into consternation by the invasion, Ahaz, contrary to the advice of Isaiah (7:4), took the fatal step of appealing for help to Assyria (2 Kings 16:7). This gave Tiglath Pileser just the opportunity he wanted. He came west, ravaged the districts of northern Israel (734 B.C., 2 Kings 15:29), and took Damascus, the capital of Aram, in 732 B.C. Judah for the moment was delivered from her distress, but the price she paid was a heavy one: she too became henceforth a tributary and vassal of Assyria. This is the period which forms the background of Chaps. 7 and 8.

The death of the Assyrian monarch was always the signal for a revolt in the west; and on the death of Tiglath Pileser in 727, Hosea, king of Israel and vassal of Assyria, trusting to Egypt - that other great power, which vividly impressed the imagination and raised the hopes of the Hebrews of those days-threw off the yoke of Assyria. In 724 Shalmaneser IV, the new monarch, appeared in the west, and began the siege of Israel's capital, Samaria, which, however, was only taken after three years by Shalmaneser's general and successor, Sargon, in 721 B.C. Over 27,000 of her people were carried into captivity, and, politically, Israel was extinguished. Isaiah's prophetic words were justified. He had anticipated the fall of Samaria (28: 1–4) as of Damascus (17: 1 ff., cf. 7:16; 8:4).

The next incident of importance that meets us on the pages of Isaiah is the siege and capture of Ashdod by the Assyrians in 711 B.C. (Chap. 20). Philistia (to which Ashdod belonged), and other western states, taking advantage of difficulties in which Sargon was at this time being involved in the far east, revolted. Judah is men

tioned as among the rebels, but probably she ultimately withdrew from the confederacy. At any rate and this was no doubt due to the influence of Isaiah's earnest warnings- Judah for thirty years (from 735 B.C.) kept from an open rupture with Assyria, though there must always have been a would-be patriotic party in favor of such a policy.. The death of Sargon in 705, however, like the death of his predecessors, was the signal for a general revolt throughout the west, and this time Judah was tempted to join. Negotiations were set on foot with Egypt, the country of large promise and slender performance (30:5, 7; 31: I ff.), and the hopes of the west were high. But they had reckoned without their host. The terrible Sargon was succeeded by the more terrible Sennacherib (? 14:29), who, after extinguishing the flame of insurrection in the east, turned his steps towards the rebellious states in the west in 701. Most of Phoenicia in the north was swiftly reduced; thence Sennacherib passed to Philistia in the south, defeated at Eltekeh near Ekron a force of Egyptians and Arabs, and besieged and took Ekron, one of the Philistine cities. He was now free to begin his assault upon Judah.

We have the great good fortune to possess a tolerably detailed account of this campaign both from Hebrew and Assyrian sources. The Hebrew account is contained in Isaiah, Chaps. 36 and 37, which corresponds with slight variations to 2 Kings 18: 13, 17-19: 37, the latter account being preceded by the very valuable fragment 18:14-16. The vivid words of Sennacherib reveal the thoroughness with which the devastating campaign was prosecuted in Judah. "Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, I besieged forty-six of his strong cities, fortresses, and small places in their neighborhood and took them. Two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty men and women, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen and sheep without number, I carried off from them and counted as spoil. ... Himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem

his royal city." But though Judah suffered so terribly and Jerusalem was blockaded so closely that her king could be compared to a bird in a cage, the city itself was not captured. Addicted as the Assyrian monarchs are to boasting, yet Sennacherib does not even claim to have taken the city, and we may be very sure that the city was not taken. Thus by a miraculous Providence Isaiah's great prophecy was vindicated that Jehovah of Hosts would defend the city whose temple was his earthly home.

III. MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF ISAIAH'S TIME

As Isaiah was called to the prophetic office in the year of Uzziah's death (740 B.C., Chap. 6) none of his oracles comes from the period of Uzziah; but something of the splendor of that monarch's long and brilliant reign is reflected from the earlier prophecies of Isaiah. Judah was still strong, well fortified (2:15), and abundantly equipped with the resources of war (27). By the capture of the port of Elath (2 Kings 14:22), Uzziah had carried the trade of Judah to the Red Sea, and, by means of his ships (Isa. 2 16), no doubt far beyond its northern shores. This trade brought silver and gold in abundance to Judah (27); the wealth in turn developed a spirit of pride (2:12 ff.) and materialism, and created in those who possessed it a cruel and unscrupulous temper. The poor were ground to the dust (3: 14 f.); their property was gradually appropriated by the rich, who added field to field and house to house (5:8). Among the upper classes drunkenness and revelry became the order of the day (511 f., 22). They were a jubilant people (5:14) jubilant even in a desperate crisis to the point of an almost blasphemous frivolity (22 : 2, 12 f.). The women had cast off the restraints with which Oriental women were wont to hedge themselves about, and with haughty head and leering eyes and tinkling feet they walked the fashionable streets of Jerusalem (3: 16-4 : 1).

Little wonder that in a society like this moral distinctions had lost their meaning, and the moral order was flouted. Good was evil and evil good (5: 20). The religious leaders, so far from stemming this tide of corruption, were themselves the foremost in depravity. Within the very precincts of the temple, the prophets and priests would become brutally intoxicated, and scenes were enacted indescribably disgusting (28: 7 ff.). These men, who most of all should have lent an intelligent and sympathetic ear to the solemn warnings of Isaiah, derided him and his message in a drunken parody (28:9 f.). With the exception of a few faithful souls like the disciples whom Isaiah gathered about him (8:16), the people and their leader alike had abandoned all faith in the spiritual power that governs the world. Their motto was, "Don't bother us with your holy One of Israel" (30: 11). Avarice and debauchery, scepticism (5:19) and mockery, were the prevalent tempers of the day among those who should have been leaders, but who, as Isaiah says, were really misleaders (312). They were in reality rebels against the God of Israel and his holy law (1:2).

But to us the strange thing is that these were religious men destitute indeed of the elements of morality, yet passionately religious. Unlike the prophet's religion, however, theirs was not only expressed, but exhausted, in ritual. They drew near to God, not with their hearts, but only with their lips (29:13). And yet not with their lips only, but with elaborate and costly ritual service as well. Zealously they thronged his courts at the great festivals, and though their hands were stained with blood (115), they were not empty. Rams, bullocks, lambs, goats all these were offered with enthusiasm and devotion (1:11 ff.), which may have sometimes been born of despair; but the spoil of the poor was in the houses from which they came to the worship of their God (3:14), and their bloody hands, as the prophet reminds them, If Chap. I comes, as the bulk of it may, from Sennacherib's invasion.

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