RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Isaiah
Canon or that he is called "son of Baladan" in Isa. xxxix. The former is accounted1 for by his capital being at Bit Yakin or Dur Yakin, evidentlytaken as named for an eponymous ancestor, and the latter may have arisen from a like connection with a supposed ancestor mentioned in the second element of his own name. Thus the Assyrian data harmonize with the foregoing calculations. According to contract tablets adduced by G. Smith (Assyrian Eponym Canon, London, 1875, pp. 86-87), Sargon's fourteenth year fell in the eponymate of Samashupahir, and his fifteenth year as king of Assyria is stated to have been his third as king of Babylon; his thirteenth year over Assyria was therefore his first over Babylon, i.e., 709 B.C., "and his reign over Assyria began 722-721 B.C.; Sargon's seventeenth and last regnal year was 705 b.c, and the first of his successor, Sennacherib, was 704 b.c. The Eponym Canon and the Ptolemaic Canon give assistance from this point on. From Assyrian records it is clear that the regnal year of Sargon began in the middle of an eponymate. The discrepancy between the Biblical date of 720 b.c. and the apparent Assyrian of 722 b.c. is explained partly by confusion between the beginning of the eponymous year and the regnal year of the king, and partly by a transposition occurring in the Canon lists. Concerning the relation of Shalmaneser to his predecessor, Tiglath-Pileser, nothing can be said, as the Canons fail here. But if the first regnal year of Sennacherib fell in the last part of the eponymate of Nabudinipus and the first part of the latter's successor's, Sennacherib can not have made an expedition to the West in Hezekiah's fourteenth year (Isa. xxxvi. 1), which expedition he states that he made in his own third year, when he shut Hezekiah up " like a bird in a cage " (Schrader, KAT, p. 293). If it be assumed that Sennacherib's full regnal year is meant, it might fall in 702-701 b.c, and with this would agree the supposition that the surely erroneous dating in Hezekiah's fourteenth year of Isa. xxxvi. 1 is due to a previous mention of his twenty-fourth year. So that in 702 b.c, according to the Assyrian basis, began the Assyrian subjection of Judah and Hezekiah.
Then Isaiah's activity as a prophet would fall
between 758 and 690 b.c1. at the latest, a period of
singular moment. The Assyrians, in
3. Exter- tnejr conqUest of Syria and Palestine, Events ^id a basis f°r further conquests in the northwest and southwest, hindered, however, by the danger from the Medes and other peoples in their rear. By the movements which went on about them, the Jews were brought into contact with world politics, and in the Book of Isaiah the fortunes of distant and neighboring peoples receive larger notice than had been customary. The northern kingdom fell from the high estate it achieved under Jeroboam II. after a career in which the most contradictory state policies had been pursued. It had become identified with an attempt to unite Syria, Israel, and Judah against Assyria, in which the refusal of Judah had led to an attempt to set aside the Davidic dynasty in Judah. Uzziah had thought to strengthen his own kingdom by securing his boundaries with fortresses and by heap-
ing up the means and materials of war to furnish
material guaranties for the faith of the Jews in the
security of the city of Yahweh and of the dynasty.
Ahaz preferred to depend upon the clemency of
the Assyrian king. Hezekiah rejected this means
of quiet, and put his trust in Yahweh without using
human means.
The lessons of the period for the pious of Israel
and of all times are that Yahweh reaches the ends
corresponding to his being through 4. Relation the history of his peopie and of the
Event world. It does not follow that he to Faith, repudiates his people or his promises to their fathers, nor yet that he makes the foundation of his kingdom dependent upon the hegemony of any earthly state where his worship should be conducted. While he permitted the Davidic kingdom to fall apart and Jerusalem to become the capital of the smaller division, allowed Israel's land to receive a new population, and the Davidic king to become a vassal of Assyria, while he brought to nought Sennacherib's plans against Jerusalem, the purpose seemed to be to purify the faith of the people that his might and will should ordain healing or destruction. The Israelites had supposed God's interests bound up with those of his people in his land and its institutions. But they had to learn through discipline that the people to whom his promises came and to whom they applied was a people which corresponded in its essence to his own sanctity and were not dependent upon mere fleshly hopes. It contravened past experience that he who had promised to be the savior of his people should permit them to be beaten and subdued, while to tyrants whose purpose he hated he had given the victory. The kingdom of Jeroboam, founded on cunning and force, was no better than other kingdoms; nor was the kingdom of Judah, with its externals of sacrifice, that to which he had made his promises. Of course, the conquerors, who thanked themselves and their gods for the victory, were even less fitted to be his servants. The destruction of the foe at the pinnacle of his greatness and the restoration of his people were to reveal the fulfilment of his promises, no more to be endangered by the rule of sin.
Yet Yahweh had not given over his land, destroyed his people, laid in ruins the house of David and Jerusalem, burned up the world and destroyed mankind in order to create a new earth. Rather the idea was Prophecies. tnat symbolized by the plant world, where the dying vegetation promises new life by its seeds and its shoots. So in the dying Israel there was an imperishable remainder, which was to survive destruction and to live again in unassailable dominion, to be menaced neither by sin nor the anger of God. The people which had been destroyed was to be awakened to new life, and the house of David was to rise to renewed kingly power in the son of a young woman. But this was to take form neither in nation, state, nor race. The germ can be considered only as an invisible church known only to Yahweh. And since in Israel the prophet of Yahweh is he who learns the will of Yahweh in the conditions of things and
5. Ideals Underlying
Isaiah