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Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, or at the entrance of the Jewish city of Lachish. I give permission for its slaughter”

Faith in a Brutal World

If you’re reading through the Hebrew Scriptures and you get to the book of Kings you’ll get accustomed to the “good kings” and “bad kings”. The descriptions are stark, black and white, good and evil.

2 Kings 16:1–4 (NET)

¹ In the seventeenth year of the reign of Pekah son of Remaliah, Jotham’s son Ahaz became king over Judah. ² Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what pleased the Lord his God, in contrast to his ancestor David.³ He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites. ⁴ He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

2 Kings 18:1–8 (NET)

¹ In the third year of the reign of Israel’s King Hoshea son of Elah, Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became king over Judah. ² He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. ³ He did what the Lord approved, just as his ancestor David had done.⁴ He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan.⁵ He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; in this regard there was none like him among the kings of Judah either before or after.⁶ He was loyal to the Lord and did not abandon him. He obeyed the commandments which the Lord had given to Moses. ⁷ The Lord was with him; he succeeded in all his endeavors. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and refused to submit to him.⁸ He defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from the watchtower to the city fortress.

If you stop reading here you can preserve the stark relief. The story, however, doesn’t end here. It is the way of the text to offer these flat summaries. Ahaz bad, Hezekiah good. If you keep reading, however, you begin to see how painful “good” was, and how wobbly and flawed the “good” were.

Judging Hezekiah

Hezekiah lead a nationalist, reform movement that sought to clean up a lot of what his father had done. Was he moved to do this because he loved Yhwh more than the gods of Assyria? Did he see in the decisions of his father the path to destruction that northern brother-kingdom Israel had descended? Was his mother a Yhwh-fundamentalist? Was he ambitious, seeing and hoping for an opportunity to be released from the yoke of Assyria? We can’t judge him peering through the thin straw of the texts available to us. Isaiah and the authors of Kings and Chronicles sure seemed to like him and they were clearly highly devoted Yhwhists.

Hezekiah had real decisions to make in his life. Would he join a coalition to rebel against Assyria? Would he look to Egypt for aid which in the eyes of Isaiah was swapping one pagan overlord for another rather than trusting in Yhwh alone as the great King of Israel and Jerusalem?

Realpolitik Continue reading →