United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
God takes us often into very ungenial climates, and the vindication of it is that we may be set to active service. That was the first good thing that Sennacherib's coming did. The next was that his invasion increased dependence upon God.
'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him'; but that is not a reason for silence, but for supplication. Hezekiah rightly regarded Sennacherib's words as meant to reproach the living God, for the point of the letter was to dissuade from trust in Him, as no more powerful than the petty deities of already conquered cities.
We lose at this point the invaluable aid of Ptolemy's Canon, which contains no notice of any event recorded in Sennacherib's inscriptions of later date than the appointment of Assaranadius. It is probable in that in the year B.C. 699 Sennacherib conducted his second expedition into Palestine.
When Assyrian sculptors carved in fresh white alabaster the flowing curls of Sennacherib's hair, just like a modern coachman's wig, this work of primæval art was already hoary with the rime of ages.
He rests this conclusion on two grounds first, on a belief that "upper chambers" are mentioned in the Inscriptions, and, secondly, on the discovery by himself, in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik, of what seemed to be an inclined way, by which he supposes that the ascent was made to an upper story. The former of these two arguments must be set aside as wholly uncertain.
And again, all the vassal troops in Sennacherib's army, set free by Hezekiah, accepted the Jewish faith, and on their way home they proclaimed the kingdom of God in Egypt and in many other lands. By failing in gratitude Hezekiah lost a great opportunity. The Divine plan had been to make Hezekiah the Messiah, and Sennacherib was to be God and Magog.
The most important of all the expeditions contained in Sennacherib's records is that of his fourth year, B.C. 701, in which he attacked Luliya king of Sidon, and made his first expedition against Hezekiah king of Judah. Invading Syria with a great host, he made Phoenicia the first object of his attack.
His army was saved from overthrow by the disaster which happened to Sennacherib's host in the neighboring camp on the eve of battle. Twenty years later, he was vanquished by an invading army under the son and successor of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon. The rule of the Ethiopian dynasty was subverted. The Assyrians intrusted the government to twenty governors, of whom the most were natives.
Thus Moses was given as a sign of his mission the worshipping in Mount Sinai, which was to take place only after the Exodus. So with Isaiah's sign here. When the harvest of the third year was gathered in, then Israel would know that the prophet had spoken from God when he had sung Sennacherib's defeat.
It was a night which led the traveller's thoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in history and legend the last plague of Egypt, the destruction of Sennacherib's host, the agony in Gethsemane. Eustacia at length reached Rainbarrow, and stood still there to think.
Word Of The Day