INVASION OF SENNACHERIB
From Sennacherib himself we have particulars respecting his operations in Judah. He asserts that he took 46 towns and carried off 200,150 persons; that he shut up Hezekiah like a cage-bird in Jerusalem, made him deliver up a captive Ekronite king, imposed a heavy fine upon him and curtailed his territory. We can easily believe that Judah was not in a position to resist a second invasion, even though the first was not quite so calamitous as it might have been. It is also plausible to suppose that the misfortune arising from Sennacherib’s invasion may have led Hezekiah to put himself under the tuition of the priests of Jerusalem, and begin a movement for the centralisation of the cultus. If so, his son and successor Manasseh revised his policy, and initiated a reaction in the direction of North Arabian heathenism. Worshippers of the true Yahveh found in the king’s subsequent career a divine judgment upon such wickedness. The generals of the king of the North Arabian Asshur (such is the most tenable explanation of 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 11) brought him as captive to the capital of that country, but he was afterwards restored. It must be confessed, however, that we do not know to what North Arabian people the Hebrew compiler applies the old name of Asshur; the kingdom of Melukhkha appears not to have recovered from the blow dealt to it by the Arabian invasion of Esarhaddon. One thing is certain from the Assyrian inscriptions—that Manasseh gave no cause of complaint to the northern Asshur. Among the vassals who paid them homage, both Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal mention Manasseh king of Judah.
JOSIAH; HIS RELATIONS TO NORTH ARABIA
Manasseh’s son Amon continued to promote the religious reaction. After two years he was murdered, but the “people of the land,” who appear to have sympathised with Amon’s views, punished the murderers. This was about 636 B.C., noteworthy as the date of the accession of the young Josiah. Assyria was still powerful, and few could have foreseen its impending decline and fall. But it was not Assyria to which the prophet Jeremiah pointed as the executor of Yahveh’s judgment, nor yet (as many have supposed) the hordes of Scythian nomads, but a people or peoples of northern Arabia. Josiah, however, did not lose his composure. He had thrown himself into the arms of the priests, and the priests and prophets (not Jeremiah) combined to produce a law-book (our Deuteronomy has grown out of it), obedience to which might be expected to insure prosperity.
The reform of the cultus, and the prohibition of more than the one sanctuary, were far-reaching measures which affected the daily life of every Israelite. We are even told (2 Kings xxiii. 15-20) that the reformation extended to Beth-el and the cities of Shimron, i.e., to the Negeb. This view of the narrator’s meaning is a solid result of criticism, and certainly the detail has no slight verisimilitude. The realm of Judah needed expansion, and what region could Josiah more reasonably covet than the Negeb, so dear to Israelite tradition? Events proved, however, that a greater potentate also had designs upon it, viz., the king of Mizrim. We do not know what race predominated at this time in the ancient Muzri, but we can hardly doubt the fact that the king of a territory adjoining the Negeb, who was at any rate more powerful than Josiah, went upon an expedition against Kidsham (i.e., Kadesh), or perhaps Cusham (i.e., Cusham-jerahmeel), and found his passage barred by Josiah. A battle took place in Maacath-migdol (if we rightly read the name), and the king of Judah was mortally wounded. All Judah mourned. The people had lost a king, and were in danger of losing a faith. For the religious law book promising prosperity to the obedient, which they had accepted in deference to the king and the priests, seemed to have been proved a delusion and a snare.
JOSIAH’S SUCCESSORS AND THE KING OF MIZRAIM
Thus the power most dreaded by Judah is once more the North Arabian Mizrim, though the race which now predominated in Mizrim had, perhaps, only lately arrived there. The late editor of Kings, however, confounded Mizrim with Mizraim (Egypt), and represented the king whom Josiah encountered as Neku of Egypt; he also confounded the place-name Migdol with Megiddo. It is not impossible that the enterprising Neku of Egypt really did interfere with the affairs of Syria, but, if so, it was hardly Josiah whom he had to deal with. It appears to be clear from the Hebrew narratives, critically interpreted, that it was first the Mizrites and then the Babelites or Jerahmeelites (i.e., the peoples to which the Hebrew writers, archaising, apply these names) who interfered with southern Palestine. The Mizrite king is said to have deposed Josiah’s successor, Jehoahaz, after a reign of three months, and nominated a brother of Jehoahaz named Eliakim or Jehoiakim, as king (608 or 607 B.C.?). It was a short-lived suzerainty; another king, miscalled by the later editor the king of Babel (the name should be “Jerahmeel”), appeared, and asserted his claim to the Negeb. Jehoiakim became his vassal, but after three years rebelled, preferring the old vassalage to the new. Apparently he died before a fresh invasion took place; it was his son Jehoiachin who, yielding to necessity, surrendered to the Jerahmeelite army, and together with the principal citizens of Jerusalem, including the prophet Ezekiel, was deported. A third son of Josiah, named Mattaniah or Zedekiah, was appointed king by the conqueror. The early part of his reign was quiet, but the unenlightened war party, which trusted in the oracles of its own prophets and in the promises of the king of Mizrim, forced the king to revolt, thus involving his people in the fate long foreseen by the prophet Jeremiah. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and a second captivity, followed. The sons of Zedekiah were slain; he himself was blinded.
OPERATIONS OF NEBUCHADREZZAR
It is true, the possibility must be allowed for, that the Arabians were but the helpers of the (true) Babylonians in their destructive operations, and that captives were carried away, partly to Babylon, partly into northern Arabia. It is at any rate difficult to believe that no captives of Judah at all went to Babylon. It is stated by the late Babylonian historian Berosus (if we may trust Josephus) that Nebuchadrezzar, who succeeded his father Nabopolassar after the destruction of Nineveh, conquered Egypt, Syria, Phœnicia and Arabia, from which countries he carried away captives. Egypt, however, Nebuchadrezzar cannot, apparently, be shown to have conquered, and the statement made by Berosus in another quotation of Josephus relative to the destruction of Jerusalem may not contain the whole truth. Inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar are urgently wanted. At any rate, so far as we can learn from the evidence producible by criticism from the Hebrew writings, the bulk of the captives went into northern Arabia, and the oppression of the Jews in Judah, wherever this is referred to, appears to have proceeded from Arabians.