THE CAPTIVITY OF JUDAH. There was a moment when the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah were in a condition of great prosperity together. The reign of Jeroboam II. was the most prosperous period of the kingdom of Israel. When it was half over, the youthful Uzziah came to the throne of Judah, which he was destined to fill for half a century. He was one of the ablest of the kings of Judah, victorious over Edomites and Philistines, fortifying the capital and the country round it, and promoting agriculture. It was at this time, towards the close of the reign of Jeroboam II., that Hosea began to prophesy, and he looked with longing eyes toward J uclah, and dared to hope that even yet the children of Judah and the children of Israel might be gathered together under one head (eh. i. 7, 11\ Uzziah had the happiness of being succeeded by a son equal to himself as a ruler, whereas Jeroboam's success ended with himself. But under J otham the general prosperity produced a love of luxury and wantonness of life against which Isaiah pronounced strong denunciations. Hence when the weak and wicked Ahaz succeeded the virtuous Jotham, he found a people only too ready to be pleased with him. The idolatrous party in the state now came to the top, and even heathen rulers were invited from abroad to take office. The grandest utterances of the grandest of the prophets seem to have had no lasting effect, and he continued his wicked course to the end. The group of righteous men that had gathered round Isaiah were cheered in spirit by a change of ruler. Wicked kings were still the exception rather than the rule in Judah, whereas Israel, now ju.at at the close of its career, had never known a good king. JOSHUA TO NEHEMIAH. xlix
At the time when Israel was swept into o~ptivity, Hezekiah was reigning in Jeruso,lem, the noblest prince that ever sat on the throne of David. Not only we.a it said of him, tho.t he "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, acoording to all that Dauid hia father did," praise that hn.d not been given for nearly two centuries, but " he trusted in Jehovah, God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him." Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, J oash, o,nd Amaziah had fallen away in their latter days; Uzziah had been guilty of gross profanity; but Hezekiah" clave to Jehovah," and as a, consequence of this "Jehovah was with him'' (2 Kings xviii. 1-7). This had been said of no king since David (2 Sam. v. 10). His fidelity was not untried. Assyria, having punished Samaria for its alliance with Egypt, prepared for taking vengeance on Egypt also. In such a struggle the little kingdom of Judah might be crushed as a pebble between two millstones. Repulsed from Egypt, Senna- cherib fell back on Jerusalem. A victory there would cover his failure. It seemed an hour of the utmost danger for Jerusalem, and Hezekiah tried to buy the :invader off. Sennacherib took the treasure, but still continued to march on Jerusalem ; for the treasure increased his desire to capture the city. Thus was Hezekiah punished for trusting even for a moment in bribes rather than in Jehovah. Isaiah, in a strain of magnificent defianoe (2 Kings xix. 21-34), brought the king and the people round again to the attitude of supreme confidence in the Lord of Hosts ; and just at the moment when the king of Assyria appeared about to swallow up the city, two irresistible disasters annihilated his huge army-panic and plague. In a single night thousands clied by the visitation of God. The rest returned with their crest-fallen king to Nineveh. No deliverance like it had been known since the death of the first-born in Egypt. The strain and excitement of the _crisis brought Hezekiah to death's door; but at his passionate entreaty fifteen years were added to his life. The psalm of tha.nks- giving which he composed on his recovery shows that he too, like the king whom he resembles, was a true poet and a pious one; but it also shows the dreary, hope- less horror which crushed out every other thought in the mind of even a saintly man in the expectation of death. In the case of the sweet Psalmist of Israel we have noticed how the want of the spirit of forgiveness makes the Psalms so different from the Gospel. In the case of his great successor we notice another point of inferiority-the attitude of mind in the contemplation of death. Hezekiah was the last king of Judah who did not outli'l'e his felicity: he was prosperous to the lttst. His enemy, Sennacherib, died about the so.me time as Hezekiah, and along with them the man who had exercised such an influence over the lives of both, the prophet Isaiah. When Isaiah's voice was silenced by deo.th, and the godly Hezekiah wns succeeded by the impious l\fanasseh (Co=oclus suc- ceeding Marcus Aurelius), it might well seem as if the star of Judah had set, and as if the fate that had just overtaken So.maria must soon overwhe~ J enisalem. The prophets uttered the severest warnings, and l\Iano,sseh, unable to intimidate them, silenced them by deo.th ; among them, o,ccording to tradition, the aged Iso.iah. This was the crowning act of iniquity which sealed the doom of the king- dom of Judo,h. "He filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon " (2 Kings xxiv. 4). The crisis to some extent resembles that of the stniggle between Ahab and the prophets. There, however, the prophets in the person of Elijo,h were victorious ; but a decline in the spirit of prophecy in the northern kingdom may perhaps be tro.c~d from that victory. In this later struggle JOBUUA,, cZ INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL BOOKS: