The inhabitants of Ekron, dissatisfied with Padî, the chief whom the Assyrians had set over them, seized his person and sent him in chains to Hezekiah.*
* The name of the city, written Amgarruna, is really
Akkaron-Ekron.
To accept the present was equivalent to open rebellion, and a declaration of war against the power of the suzerain. Isaiah, as usual, wished Judah to rely on Jahveh alone, and preached against alliance with the Babylonians, for he foresaw that success would merely result in substituting the Kaldâ for the Ninevite monarch, and in aggravating the condition of Judah. “All that is in thine house,” he said to Hezekiah, “and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon.” Hezekiah did not pay much heed to the prediction, for, he reflected, “peace and truth shall be in my days,” and the future troubled him little.* When the overthrow of Merodach-baladan had taken place, the prophet still more earnestly urged the people not to incur the vengeance of Assyria without other help than that of Tyre or Ethiopia, and Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, spoke in the same strain; but Shebna, the prefect of the palace, declaimed against this advice, and the latter’s counsel prevailed with his master.**
* 2 Kings xx. 16-19.
** This follows from the terms in which the prophet compares
the two men (Isa. xxii. 15-25).
Hezekiah agreed to accept the sovereignty over Ekron which its inhabitants offered to him, but a remnant of prudence kept him from putting Padî to death, and he contented himself with casting him into prison. Isaiah, though temporarily out of favour with the king, ceased not to proclaim aloud in all quarters the will of the Almighty. “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of Me; and that cover with a covering (form alliances), but not of My spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at My mouth, to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. When your princes shall be at Tanis, and your messengers shall come to Heracleopolis,* [Heb. Hanes.—Tr.] you shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit you.... For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth still.” * He returned, unwearied and with varying imagery, to his theme, contrasting the uncertainty and frailty of the expedients of worldly wisdom urged by the military party, with the steadfast will of Jahveh and the irresistible authority with which He invests His faithful servants. “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit; and when the Lord shall stretch out His hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they shall all fail together. For thus saith the Lord unto me, Like as when the lion growleth, and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight upon Mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem: He will protect and deliver it. Turn ye unto Him from whom ye have deeply revolted, O children of Israel.” **
* Isa. xxx. 1-5, 7. In verses 4, 5, the original text
employs the third person; I have restored the second person,
to avoid confusion.
** Isa. xxxi. 3-6.
No one, however, gave heed to his warnings, either king or people; but the example of Phoenicia soon proved that he was right. When Sennacherib bestirred himself, in the spring of 702 B.C., either the Ethiopians were not ready, or they dared not advance to encounter him in Coele-Syria, and they left Elulai to get out of his difficulties as best he might. He had no army to risk in a pitched battle; but fondly imagined that his cities, long since fortified, and protected on the east by the range of Lebanon, would offer a resistance sufficiently stubborn to wear out the patience of his assailant. The Assyrians, however, disconcerted his plans. Instead of advancing against him by the pass of Nahr-el-Kebir, according to their usual custom, they attacked him in flank, descending into the very midst of his positions by the col of Legnia or one of the neighbouring passes.* They captured in succession the two Sidons, Bît-zîti, Sarepta, Mahalliba, Ushu, Akzîb, and Acco: Elulai, reduced to the possession of the island of Tyre alone, retreated to one of his colonies in Cyprus, where he died some years later, without having set foot again on the continent. All his former possessions on the mainland were given to a certain Eth-baal, who chose Sidon for his seat of government, and Tyre lost by this one skirmish the rank of metropolis which she had enjoyed for centuries.** This summary punishment decided all the Syrian princes who were not compromised beyond hope of pardon to humble themselves before the suzerain. Menahem of Samsi-muruna,***
* This follows from the very order in which the cities were
taken in the course of this campaign.
** The Assyrian text gives for the name of the King of Sidon
a shortened form Tu-baal instead of Eth-baal, paralleled by
Lulia for Elulai.
*** Several of the early Assyriologists read Usi-muruna, and
identified the city bearing this name with Samaria. The
discovery of the reading Samsi-muruna on a fragment of the
time of Assur-bani-pal no longer permits of this
identification, and obliges us to look for the city in
Phoenicia.
Abdiliti of Arvad, Uru-malîk of Byblos, Puduîlu of Amnion, Chemosh-nadab of Moab, Malîk-rammu of Edom, Mitinti of Ashdod, all brought their tribute in person to the Assyrian camp before Ushu: Zedekiah of Ashkelon and Hezekiah of Judah alone persisted in their hostility. Egypt had at length been moved by the misfortunes of her allies, and the Ethiopian troops had advanced to the seat of war, but they did not arrive in time to save Zedekiah: Sennacherib razed to the ground all his strongholds one after another, Beth-dagon, Joppa, Bene-berak, and Hazor,* took him prisoner at Ascalon, and sent him with his family to Assyria, setting up Sharludarî, son of Bukibti, in his stead. Sennacherib then turned against Ekron, and was about to begin the siege of the city, when the long-expected Egyptians at length made their appearance. Shabîtoku did not command them in person, but he had sent his best troops—the contingents furnished by the petty kings of the Delta, and the sheikhs of the Sinaitic peninsula, who were vassals of Egypt. The encounter took place near Altaku,** and on this occasion again, as at Raphia, the scientific tactics of the Assyrians prevailed over the stereotyped organisation of Pharaoh’s army: the Ethiopian generals left some of their chariots in the hands of the conqueror, and retreated with the remnants of their force beyond the Isthmus.
* These are the cities attributed to the tribes of Dan and
Judah in Josh. xv. 25, 41; xix. 45. Beth-dagon is now Bêt-
Dejân; Azuru is Yazûr, to the south-east of Joppa; Beni-
barak is Ibn-Abrak, to the north-east of the same town.
** Altaku is certainly Eltekeh of Dan (Josh. xix. 44), as
was seen from the outset; the site, however, of Eltekeh
cannot be fixed with any certainty. It has been located at
Bêt-Lukkieh, in the mountainous country north-west of
Jerusalem, but this position in no way corresponds to the
requirements of the Assyrian text, according to which the
battle took place on a plain large enough for the evolutions
of the Egyptian chariots, and situated between the group of
towns formed by Beth-dagon, Joppa, Beni-barak, and Hazor,
which Sennacherib had just captured, and the cities of
Ekrbn, Timnath, and Eltekeh, which he took directly after
his victory: a suitable locality must be looked for in the
vicinity of Ramleh or Zernuka.