“So the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before Judah; and the Ethiopians fled.”
We then read a condensed account of the pursuit that Asa and his people indulged in, chasing the horde of Egyptians all the way across their own border. They were in such confusion that they could not recover and make a stand, so that not even a rear-guard action was fought. The children of Israel recaptured all of the cities that Rehoboam had lost, and with a typical Hebraism the account concludes with the statement that “they carried away exceeding much spoil.” Although they never recovered the golden shields, it is to be hoped they got their equivalent in the value of this recounted spoil.
It was the universal custom of conquerors to record their victories and say nothing of their defeats. Therefore, it is a bit startling to find this record of II Chronicles borne out by the account the Egyptian monarch has left of his own campaigns. This simple paragraph is illuminating:
“Seventeen campaigns I waged. In sixteen of them I was victorious. In the seventeenth campaign I was defeated. Not by man, Heaven fought against me.”
So even in the record of a defeat this man can brag that his strength and greatness were so phenomenal that only the Lord could overthrow him. Once again, a dead man tells a tale. He also, in the illuminating account that he has left, rises from the dead to write “o. k.” across the pages of Holy Writ, attesting its historical fidelity and the accuracy of its records.
CHAPTER X
Mingled Voices
The next definite contact between Israel and Egypt is found in the graphic and terse statement of II Kings 17:4,
“And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.”
From this point on, the records of Egypt and Palestine are so enmeshed and tangled with the records of Babylon and Assyria that we cannot separate them in their presentation. This king So is identified as the Egyptian monarch Shabaka, who is also known by the names Sebichos, Sabakon, Sabacoa, and Seve. He seems to have been a man of implacable cruelty, if we may judge from the Greek record of his manner of succession. He was preceded on the throne by Bakenrenef, who was one of the wise and kindly lawgivers of Egypt. This noble ruler was one of the first of all the Egyptian kings to come in direct contact with the classical Greeks. The Dorian invasion had now come to an end and the Greeks were free to trade and colonize in the Mediterranean, and in the vigour of their advance they had pressed on to the mouth of the Nile. They had established a close connection with Sais, and by 700 B. C. had entrenched themselves strongly in the culture of that section of Egypt.
The Pharaoh of our present interest, So, invaded that section of Egypt and captured Bakenrenef in a swift and short campaign. The Greek records relate that after treating his defeated enemy with brutality, So then burned him alive. He then established himself as king and ruled not only all of Egypt but Ethiopia as well. He was thus a contemporary of Shalmaneser, Sargon, and Sennacherib, all of whom have a direct bearing upon the records of the Old Testament. One of the interesting discoveries made at the royal library at Nineveh was a seal bearing the name of Shabaka, or So. The visitor to the British Museum, upon entering the Assyrian Room, may pause before Table Case “E” and see this fascinating exhibit of the actualities of these events.