Page:The Books of Chronicles (1916).djvu/384

320 with him,) unto Hezekiah king of Judah, and unto all Judah that were at Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith Sennacherib king of Assyria, Whereon do ye trust, that ye abide the siege in Jerusalem? Doth not Hezekiah persuade you, to give you over to die by famine and by thirst, saying, The our God shall deliver us out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Hath not the same Hezekiah taken away his high places and his altars, and commanded Judah and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall worship before one altar, and upon it shall ye burn incense? Know ye not what I and my fathers have done unto all the peoples of the lands? Were the gods of the nations of the lands any ways able to deliver their land out of mine hand? Who was there among all the gods of those nations which my fathers

and its spoliation are shown on an Assyrian relief now in the British Museum. The king himself besieged Lachish because it was of more importance for the main object of the campaign than Jerusalem. Sennacherib's objective was Egypt (Herod. 141), and Lachish (Tell el-Ḥesi, Bädeker, Pal.$5$, p. 118) lay directly in his path (cp. Handcock, Latest Light on Bible Lands, p. 151).

10. in Jerusalem] Isaiah promised deliverance in Jerusalem; e.g. in Is. xxix. 8, xxx. 19.

11. persuade] Or "entice"; cp. 1 Chr. xxi. 1 ("provoked" for the same Heb. word).

12. Hath not the same Hezekiah taken away] Besides this appeal to the religious prejudices of the people, Sennacherib's servants employed two other arguments, according to 2 Kin.—(1) the paucity of Hezekiah's soldiers (2 Kin. xviii. 23) and (2) possible reliance on Egyptian help (2 Kin. xviii. 21, 25). These two arguments are passed over by the Chronicler doubtless because they seemed inconsistent both with the power and the character of a king so God-fearing as Hezekiah.

his high places] Cp. 2 Kin. xviii. 4. The "high places" (bāmōth) were properly sanctuaries of Jehovah, and not necessarily idolatrous in themselves. But since originally all, or almost all, of these bāmōth had been sacred places of the Canaanite gods, old idolatrous symbols (e.g. the ashērah) and old idolatrous ideas and rites persisted in the worship there offered. When finally the Jews restricted sacrificial worship to Jerusalem, the odium attaching to these "high places" became greater than ever, and hostility towards them came to be regarded as the mark of any pious monarch. Hezekiah removed the bāmōth throughout the country.

13. the peoples of the lands] In 2 Kin. xviii. 34 the lands are specified and include Samaria.