In what has been said above we do not mean to affirm that the idea of centralizing the cultus, which was first realized in 621 through the law- book of Hilkiah, was wholly remote in the time of
* The Prophets of Israel, Edinburgh, 1882, p. 274 f. :
+ The attempt of W. Erbt (Die Sicherstellung des Monotheismus, Gottingen, 1903), notwithstanding, to trace the concentration of the cultus to Hezekiah must be pronounced a failure.
{ The note on this subject cannot, like the rest of the nar- rative, be the work of the Deuteronomist, but must have been taken from the so-called Great Book of Kings used by him as a source.
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Isaiah, or altogether foreign to that prophet’s own mind. Not that, after the fashion of the ancient national religion, he reposed a carnal confidence in the continuance of the temple, as a place which Jahweh could not under any circumstances give over to the enemies of His people. But the idea that Jahweh, or at least a form of manifestation of Jahweh, dwelt upon Zion, was familiar even to Isaiah. Even he sees in Zion—although in an infinitely deeper, spiritual sense—a bulwark of the theocracy (28°), the dwelling-place and hearth of God (8 29! [if Sx-x in the latter passage= ‘hearth’] 31°). This idea of the ‘house of Jahweh’ was, however, clearly opposed to the partitioning of Jahweh among a number of sanctuaries ; and, if Isaiah himself did not yet press for a concen- tration of the cultus, this may have been simply because he attached no importance at all to the external cultus, especially in the then prevailing forms. On the other hand, they may be right who discover in Isaiah’s band of disciples the forces we have to thank for the first preliminary steps towards the law-book of Deuteronomy.
Meanwhile, however, things had taken quite a different course. After the death of Sargon (705), Hezekiah, manifestly with the strong disapproval of Isaiah, had allowed himself to be drawn into the vortex of the rebellion of Western Asia against Sennacherib. Itis not improbable that the king himself would have preferred to listen to the counsels of the prophet, but that he was not strong enough to withstand the veritably intoxi- cated war-party. Isaiah (cf. especially 301 311") declared with the utmost frankness how the alliance with Egypt against Assyria, which was promoted at first secretly and then openly, was to be judged from Jahweh’s point of view. But when the catastrophe had befallen, when the land was frightfully ravaged by the Assyrians, and (as we now know from the cuneiform inscriptions) over 200,000 of the inhabitants had been carried captive, Isaiah comes forward to announce that Jahweh intends, not the destruction but the deliver- ance of the sorely beset capital. Without doubt, this change of opinion on the part of the prophet was due, above all, to the perfidy with which Sennacherib, in spite of the submission of Hezekiah and the payment of an enormous tribute by Judah (2 K 18+), insisted upon the surrender of the city.
5. The incredible happened. The Assyrians were compelled by pestilence to beat a hasty retreat ; Jerusalem saw itself saved in the course of a night. The prophetical insight of Isaiah had achieved a great triumph. But the practical application of these occurrences, which was made by popular opinion and, if not by Hezekiah him- self, soon afterwards by his son Manasseh, was to the following effect. The deliverance was attri- buted, not to the God of the prophets, with His inexorable demands, but to the ancient national God of the land, Jahweh, who, from regard to His own honour, could never give over city and temple to the heathen, provided only that there was no lack of offerings—in extreme cases, even child- sacrifices—presented to Him. That this fancy as to the certain efficacy of child-sacrifice—a notion which was the offspring of a naturalistic concep- tion of God—had not died out even in Judah, is proved by the unimpeachable note of 2 Ch 28° regarding the offering of his own sons by Ahaz (in all probability in the year 735, during the stress of the Syro-Ephraimitic war). But what happened then as’ an isolated occurrence in the extremity of need, what was a relapse to a stage of religion that had been overcome through the prophets, became to all appearance the rule under Manasseh : | the old naturalism revived, the whole life-work of
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an Isaiah and a Micah seemed to have been in vain. Regarding the varied and gross idolatry of Manasseh, all that we can learn is on the authority of a late addition (2 K 21°) to the older narrative of the Deuteronomic writer. It is quite possible, however, that Manasseh did not shrink from an amalgamation of the cult of Jahweh with that of the host of heaven.* But the child-sacrifice with which he is charged, as well as the magic and sorcery and necromancy, and no less the ’dsherah at which the Deuteronomie compiler takes such umbrage (217), are certainly to be put down to the account, not of a disposition to idolatry but of a radically mistaken view of the kind of worship that was pleasing to God. When, again, the shedding of much innocent blood is attributed (v.!°) to him, this may refer to nothing more than outbreaks of hatred and cruelty in general. But we shall probably not be wrong in thinking, above all, of the blood of martyrs, of prophets, and pro- phets’ disciples, who in holy indignation withstood the abominations that were creeping in, and who paid for their opposition with their life. As is well known, a tradition, which may be more than a pure legend, includes the aged Isaiah among the victims of the senseless fury of the king.