Well, Week 2 and I already failed to post. This is a recap of last week’s class…
We spent most of the time surveying several generations of 8th century (BCE) Judahite kings and their dealings with the Assyrians. Our sources were 2 Kings 15-20; Isaiah 1:1; 7-8; and 36-37. Broadly speaking, Isaiah 1-39 constitutes the first major section of the book and deals primarily with Judah/Jerusalem in a world dominated by the ruthless Assyrian Empire. Isaiah ben Amoz (the Isaiah of the first verse) lived during this time, and most of the folks who write the books about Isaiah insist that he only wrote chapters 1-39; the rest was written by a disciple (or disciples) of the First Isaiah. (For the curious: I agree with the folks who write the books).
Two events in Isa 1-37 are worth noting: First, Yahweh delivers King Ahaz of Judah from a conspiracy to replace him as king. The kings of Israel (Northern Kingdom) and Aram (Syria) wanted Ahaz to join their anti-Assyrian coalition. When he refused, they threatened war, and Ahaz appealed to the king of Assyria. Assyria answered, crushed Israel and Aram, and then began collecting tribute from Jerusalem as payment for their salvific intervention. See Isaiah 7-8.
Second, 20-30 years after Ahaz, Hezekiah took the throne of Jerusalem. He refused to pay the tribute demanded by Assyria, so King Sennacherib of Assyria marched through Judah killing and burning everything in his path. He made his way all the way to the gates of Jerusalem and surrounded the city to besiege it. Hezekiah appealed to Isaiah and to Yahweh, and God intervened in a miraculous way to preserve Jerusalem. See Isaiah 36-37.
These two events serve as the major external crises that motivated much of Isaiah’s prophetic work. His sermons exhort the people of God in Jerusalem towards a particular foreign policy that reflects their allegiance to Yahweh alone — not to military power, diplomatic strategy (like paying tribute), or most emphatically not to the Assyrian king or deity. This conflict between Yahweh and Empire comes to a head in the speech of the Rab-Shakeh to the now-surrounded inhabitants of the Holy City: “Is it without Yahweh that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Yahweh said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it” (Isaiah 36:10). Speaking on behalf of King Sennacherib himself, this Assyrian ambassador (in Judah’s own language, no less) declares that Yahweh has ordered Assyria to march on Jerusalem. The question for Jerusalem and Hezekiah is not merely “In whom shall I trust?” but more confusingly “Whose God is this? And how do we know?” Hezekiah’s subsequent appeal and Yahweh’s remarkable response are answer enough.
The subject of Yahweh’s squaring off against the Empire is a major part of the book of Isaiah, and I believe teaches us a great deal about the relationship between the people of God and the dominant power of any historical era. And the questions are magnified for those of us today who find ourselves claiming citizenship of both the Kingdom of God and our era’s dominant historical power. Is it possible to sing “In Christ alone my hope is found” on Sunday morning and later recite “I pledge allegiance to the flag”? These questions — and Isaiah’s answers — will be the subject of the next couple weeks. This week we’ll read Isaiah 10:5-15 and discuss the folly of imperial propaganda.
Stay tuned. I hope to post a preview tomorrow.
