Lachish - Rebellious city
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Harness the horses to the chariot, you
residents of Lachish. This was the beginning of sin for Daughter Zion, because
Israel's acts of rebellion can be traced to you”.
Micah
1:13
Azuri - Hezekiah’s
Reform
During the Reign of King Ahaz
Regarding Azuri,
I wrote as follows in my university thesis (Chapter
One, p. 160):
A Revised History
of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
Azuri was
king Ahaz’s apparently accommodating high-priest [Uriah] who, when ordered by
his pro-Assyrian king, built an altar (based on either a Syrian or Assyrian
model) in Jerusalem (2 Kings 16:10-11). [This was at the very time when kings
Rezin of Aram (Syria) and Pekah of Israel had combined to mount a war against
Jerusalem, with the intention, according to Isaiah (7:6), of placing “the son
of Tabeel” … upon the throne of Jerusalem. So Ahaz had called upon
Tiglath-pileser III for assistance]. Perhaps Azuri
was rewarded for this act of ‘loyalty’ by
Tiglath-pileser III with the prestigious governorship of Lachish.
However, I had
failed then to propose a possible connection of this priest, Uriah (Azuri), with a high priest and official of
the early reign of Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, during the latter’s great work of
reform. I can try to rectify that in the next section.
During the Reign of King Hezekiah
We are very early in the almost three-decade
long reign of King Hezekiah of Judah.
From the description given in 2 Chronicles 29,
it is apparent that the young king did not waste any time (“first month … first
year”) in undertaking his great reform (vv. 1-5):
Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he
reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah daughter
of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done.
In the first
month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the
priests and the Levites, assembled them in the square on the east side and said: “Listen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves now and
consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of
your ancestors. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary.
What we notice from reading about this reform
is that the eager Levites were highly regarded, apparently more so than the
priests. V. 34 actually spells this out: “The priests,
however, were too few to skin all the burnt offerings; so their relatives the
Levites helped them until the task was finished and until other priests had
been consecrated, for the Levites had been more conscientious in consecrating
themselves than the priests had been”.
One of these priests, in fact the high priest
at the time, was Azariah.
Now, I cannot help thinking that this Azariah
may have been the same person as the Uriah (Azuri)
at the time of Ahaz, who had built an Assyrian-model altar for the pro-Assyrian
Ahaz. In 31:19 we are briefly introduced to him: “… Azariah
the chief priest, from the family of Zadok”. Did the high-priest Azariah’s mind flash back to those apostatising activities
of his in the service of King Ahaz when now the priests and Levites were reporting
to King Hezekiah that the Temple and its altar had been fully purified? (29:18-19):
Then they went
in to King Hezekiah and reported: ‘We have purified the entire temple of the Lord, the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the table
for setting out the consecrated bread, with all its articles. We have prepared and consecrated all the articles that King Ahaz
removed in his unfaithfulness while he was king. They are now in front of the Lord’s altar’.
Akhi-miti’s short
tenure
“Azuri king of
Ashdod, not to bring tribute his heart was set, and to the kings in his
neighbourhood proposals of rebellion against Assyria he sent. Because of the
evil he did, over the men of his land I changed his lordship. Akhimiti his own
brother, to sovereignty over them I appointed”.
Introduction
In the course of this series I shall be
presuming that Sargon II was the same Assyrian ruler as Sennacherib:
Assyrian King Sargon II, Otherwise Known As Sennacherib
A failure to recognise this fact will lead to
what I described in my university thesis:
A Revised History
of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background
as “Worrying
Duplications and Anomalies”. These affect not only Sargon II/Sennacherib
himself, but, naturally, his contemporaries, such as our proposed high-priests,
Azuri and Akhi-miti (var. Mitinti). As I pointed out on pp. 142, 144:
- Worrying Duplications and Anomalies.
1. The ubiquitous king of Babylon, Merodach-baladan II, was:
- already a political factor in the
days of Tiglath-pileser III (c. 744-727 BC).
- He then, supposedly two reigns later,
becomes a complete thorn in Sargon II’s side for the latter’s first,
approximately, 12 years of reign (c. 721-710).
- He then resurfaces at the time of
Sennacherib, who defeats him in his first
campaign and then, finally, in his
fourth campaign (c. 704-700).
Kings
can reign over long periods of time, but this Merodach-baladan seems perhaps to
have overstayed his welcome.
Mitinti of
‘Ashdod’ ranges through the same approximate, long neo-Assyrian period.
….
3.
Sennacherib is thought, already by 713 BC, to have been the recipient, as crown
prince, of the heavy tribute from Azuri
of ‘Ashdod’, who was in fact Sargon’s foe.336
In the course of this series I shall also be
presuming that “Ashdod” as referred to by Sargon II, and by Isaiah (20:1), was the
great Judaean city of Lachish:
Sargon II’s “Ashdod” - the Strong Fort of Lachish
Continuing on with my thesis, I also wrote
about the problematical Ashdod:
4.
Disturbing, too, is the following unprecedented situation at ‘Ashdod’ as viewed
by
Tadmor
from the conventional angle:337
Ashdod
was then organized [by Sargon] as an Assyrian province. Sennacherib
however
restored it to its former state as a tributary kingdom. .... Mitinti, the king
of
Ashdod, is mentioned in the Annals of Sennacherib .... There is no doubt, therefore,
that at the time of the campaign of Judah (701) Ashdod had an autonomous king
and not an Assyrian governor. The reorganization of Ashdod - from a province
back to a vassaldom - has no precedent. .... in the time of Esarhaddon Ashdod
was again turned into a province.
All
this topsy turvy supposedly in the space of a few decades!
Akhi-miti
Historians, such as D. Redford, have chosen
to date Akhi-miti’s appointment to the
fort of Ashdod by the Assyrians to 713 BC. Thus I wrote on p. 27:
Redford
has actually called this campaign, that he dates to 712 BC, “an anchor date”.
Here
is his account (my dating of these events will be slightly different from his):83
Thanks
to a variety of studies over the last 25 years, the year 712 B.C. has emerged
as an anchor date in the history of the Late Period in Egypt. The general course
of events leading up to and culminating in the Assyrian campaign against Ashdod
in that year is now fairly sure, and may be sketched as follows. Sometime early
in 713 B.C. the Assyrians deposed Aziri [Azuri], king of Ashdod on suspicion of
lese-majeste, and
appointed one Ahimetti [Akhi-miti] to replace him.
Then I proceeded
to enlarge on all of this, and on Ashdod, on pp. 154-158:
‘Ashdod’
Now,
when Sargon refers to ‘Ashdod, we need to be clear as to which exact location
he had in mind, for he also refers in the same account to an
‘Ashdod-by-the-Sea’. Thus we read: “Ashdod, Gimtu [Gath?], Ashdudimmu
[Ashdod-by-the-Sea], I besieged and captured”. It is the maritime Ashdod357 that I am going to propose - contrary
to the usual view - is the well known Ashdod of the Philistine plain; whilst
the ‘Ashdod’ mentioned first here by Sargon I shall identify as the mighty
inland stronghold of Lachish (approx. 50 km south west of Jerusalem), the most
important Judaean fort after Jerusalem itself. These three cities of Lachish,
Gath and Ashdod, taken together, formed something of a line of formidable forts
in Judaea358.
Assyria had to take them as they were a dangerous base for hostile Egypt.
That
Sargon would have had to confront Lachish would seem to be inevitable,
militarily, due to the fact that he did indeed capture its neighbouring fort of
Azekah.359 (For
more on this, see pp. 158-159 below). Did not Sargon II boast anyway of his
having been the “subduer of the land of Iaudu (Judah), which lies far away …”?360
Now,
the fortress of Lachish was the high point of Sennacherib’s western campaign.
To no Judaean city apart from Jerusalem itself would the description ‘Ashdod’ …
that is, ‘a very strong place’, apply more aptly than to Lachish. The name ‘Ashdod’,
from the root shádad …, ‘to be strong’, signifies ‘a stronghold’. “What a surprise, then”,
writes Russell,361 regarding
the surrender of Lachish, “to turn to the annalistic account of that same
campaign - inscribed on the bulls at the throne-room entrance - and discover
that Lachish is not mentioned at all”.
Was it
that Sargon II - hence, that Sennacherib - had instead referred to Lachish by the
descriptive title of ‘Ashdod’, whose capture Sargon covers in detail?
Let us
now follow [Charles] Boutflower in his reconstruction of this somewhat complex
campaign, referring to the fragment Sm. 2022 of Sargon’s Annals, which he calls
“one particularly precious morsel”:362
The
longer face [of this fragment] ... has a dividing line drawn across it near the
bottom. Immediately below this line, and somewhat to the left, there can be
seen with the help of a magnifying-glass a group of nine cuneiform indentations
arranged
in three parallel horizontal rows. Even the uninitiated will easily understand
that we have here a representation of the number “9”. It is this figure, then,
which gives to the fragment its special interest, for it tells us, as I am
about to show, “the year that the Tartan came unto Ashdod”.
Boutflower
now moves on to the focal point of Assyria’s concerns: mighty ‘Ashdod’:363
The
second difficulty in Sm. 2022 is connected with the mention of Ashdod in the part
below the dividing line. According to the reckoning of time adopted on this fragment
something must have happened at Ashdod at the beginning of Sargon’s ninth year,
i.e. at the beginning of the tenth year, the year 712 BC, according to the better-known
reckoning of the Annals. Now, when we turn to the Annals and examine the record
of this tenth year, we find no mention whatever of Ashdod. Not till we come to
the second and closing portion of the record for the eleventh year do we meet
with the account of the famous campaign against that city.
What,
then, is the solution to this second difficulty Boutflower asks? And he answers
this as follows:364
Simply
this: that the mention of Ashdod on the fragment Sm. 2022 does not refer to the
siege of that town, which, as just stated, forms the second and closing event in
the record of the following year, but in all probability does refer to the
first of those political events which led up to the siege, viz. the coming of
the Tartan to Ashdod. To make this plain, I will now give the different
accounts of the Ashdod imbroglio found in the inscriptions of Sargon, beginning
with the one in the Annals (lines 215-228) already referred to, which runs
thus:
“Azuri
king of Ashdod, not to bring tribute his heart was set, and to the kings in his
neighbourhood proposals of rebellion against Assyria he sent. Because of the
evil he did, over the men of his land I changed his lordship. Akhimiti his own
brother, to sovereignty over them I appointed. The Khatte [Hittites], plotting
rebellion, hated his lordship; and Yatna, who had no title to the throne, who,
like themselves, the reverence due to my lordship did not acknowledge, they set
up over them. In the wrath of my heart, riding in my war-chariot, with my
cavalry, who do not retreat from the place whither I turn my hands, to Ashdod,
his royal city, I marched in haste. Ashdod, Gimtu [Gath?], Ashdudimmu … I
besieged and captured. …”.
Typical
Assyrian war records! Boutflower shows how they connect right through to
Sargon’s
Year 11, which both he and Tadmor365 date to 711 BC:366
The
above extract forms ... the second and closing portion of the record given in the
Annals under Sargon’s 11th year, 711 BC., the earlier portion of the record for
that year being occupied with the account of the expedition against Mutallu of Gurgum.
In the Grand Inscription of Khorsabad we meet with a very similar account,
containing a few fresh particulars. The usurper Yatna, i.e. “the Cypriot”, is
there styled Yamani, “the Ionian”, thus showing that he was a Greek. We are also
told that he fled away to Melukhkha on the border of Egypt, but was thrown into
chains by the Ethiopian king and despatched to Assyria.
....
In order to effect the deposition of the rebellious Azuri, and set his brother Akhimiti
on the throne, Sargon sent forth an armed force to Ashdod. It is in all probablity
the despatch of such a force, and the successful achievement of the end in
view, which were recorded in the fragment Sm. 2022 below the dividing line. As
Isa xx.1 informs us - and the statement, as we shall presently see, can be verified
from contemporary sources - this first expedition was led by the Tartan. Possibly
this may be the reason why it was not thought worthy to be recorded in the
Annals under Sargon’s tenth year, 712 BC. But when we come to the eleventh year,
711 BC, and the annalist very properly and suitably records the whole series of
events leading up to the siege, two things at once strike us: first, that all
these events could not possibly have happened in the single year 711 BC; and
secondly, as stated above, that a force must have previously been despatched at
the beginning of the troubles to accomplish the deposition of Azuri and the
placing of Akhimiti on the throne. On the retirement of this force sedition
must again have broken out in Ashdod, for it appears that the anti-Assyrian
party were able, after a longer or shorter interval, once more to get the upper
hand, to expel Akhimiti, and to set up in his stead a Greek adventurer,
Yatna-Yamani. The town was then strongly fortified, and surrounded by a moat.
We have by no means seen the end of the important Akhi-miti, or Mitinti, who will re-emerge again shortly, during King
Sennacherib’s major campaign to Judah, as King Hezekiah’s chief official,
Eliakim son of Hilkiah (Isaiah 36:3).
And then he will further emerge as the high priest,
Joakim (Joiakim) of the Book of Judith, during Sennacherib’s ill-fated campaign
occurring about a decade later.
Yatna – Ashdod
revolts
“Yatna-Yamani,
given his newly found prestige, began
to lord it over the kingdom of Judah as Sobna
(var. Shebna), the
apparent imposter, or usurper, of whom the Lord would complain to Isaiah
(22:15-16): ‘Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is master of the
household, and say to him: ‘What right do you have here? Who are your relatives
here, that you have cut out a tomb here for yourself, cutting a tomb on the
height, and carving a habitation for yourself in the rock?’.’”
Introduction
Continuing on with quotations from my
university thesis, I had picked up some interesting observations from Tadmor,
Bright, and Russell relevant to my proposed fusion of Sargon II with
Sennacherib (thesis, pp. 140-142):
Tadmor324 highlights a case in which he
determines, on the basis of deity references, that a certain document must have
belonged to Sargon II rather than to Sennacherib, despite the fact that the
Assyrian king in question was undertaking an incursion into Judaean territory
as far as Azekah, “not far from Lachish”;325 Lachish being of course famous for Sennacherib’s siege and conquest of
it in 701 BC (conventional dating). Here is how Tadmor has introduced this
interesting document (that I shall be re-visiting again soon when discussing
Sargon II’s campaigns), dating it to Sargon’s 712 BC campaign to Philistian
Ashdod, as he thinks; but I am later going to identify this ‘Ashdod’ with Judaean
Lachish:326
In
connection with Sargon’s campaign to Philistia, a small fragment 81-3-23, 131 in
the British Museum, published only in transcription by Winckler some fifty years
ago … and not utilized since in any historical presentation, must now be considered.
Leaving
aside for the moment Tadmor’s description of the geography of this document, which
I shall be discussing further on, I move on to Tadmor’s consideration of its
tone and genre, relevant – as he thinks – to differentiation between Sargon II
and Sennacherib. Note firstly that Tadmor seeks to distinguish Sargon from
Sennacherib based on the style of this document which he himself concedes at
the start to be a fairly unique style of document - and probably not therefore
typical even of Sargon:327
The
inscription is written in a poetic style, different from the style of the
Annals and of the Display Inscriptions, with some expressions that do not have
any parallels elsewhere ….
A
similar form of narration is attested in the report to the god Aššur of
Sargon’s
eighth
campaign … and in the report of Esarhaddon’s campaign in Shupria ….-
the
best examples of this style. Thus, our fragment may well belong to the type of “Letters
to Gods.”
Tadmor
next proceeds to discuss Sargon’s use of the deity name:
The
rendering of Aššur’s name by An-šár helps to determine the authorship of the inscription.
This way of writing the name Aššur started with Sargon …. and was extensively
used in the historical inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. Apparently
the Babylonian or the pro-Babylonian scribes in the court of Sargon … intended
to transform Aššur into a neutral cosmic deity, Anšar (known from the divine
genealogy of Enûma Eliš). Sennacherib, being the most nationalistic of the Assyrian kings, in
principle accepted this device, but in fact supplanted Marduk by Anšar.
The
best example of this substitution is the complete replacement of Marduk by Anšar
in the Assyrian recension of Enûma
Eliš which was edited during the reign of
Sennacherib. In the historical inscriptions of this king from Nineveh only the traditional spelling of
Aššur was used; Anšar was restricted to the building
inscriptions
from Assur and to the literary genre.
This
substitution is again reflected in K 1356, the descriptions of a door relief
cast by Sennacherib, …. in which Anšar - and neither Marduk nor Aššur - leads
the gods to the battle against Tiamat. In this document as well as in other
building inscriptions of Sennacherib from Assur composed after the destruction
of Babylon (689) and relating to the building of bît-akîtu in
Assur (replacing the Babylonian original), … Sennacherib is referred to as êpiš salam Anšar = “the
maker of the statue of Anšar.”
Thus
Tadmor concludes, on rather flimsy grounds as I see it - or have I missed the
point? - that the fragment could not pertain to the reign of Sennacherib:
In
view of this exceptional usage we eliminate the possibility that our fragment refers
to the campaign of Sennacherib against Judah in 710. This conclusion can also
be supported by the fact that not one of the standard accounts of Sennacherib’s
campaign against Hezekiah nor any other of his inscriptions ever uses this
epical style.
Nor
Tadmor thinks, for the following reasons, can this document belong to either Esarhaddon
or Ashurbanipal:328
The
alternative that this fragment night be attributed to Esarhaddon or to Assurbanipal
is ruled out on the grounds that in their time no real military activities were
undertaken in Philistia and that the term Amurru
as a collective
was no
longer applied to the Syrian and Palestinian kingdoms. Therefore we must attribute
this inscription to Sargon.
Later,
Tadmor will distinguish between two contemporary styles of writing in Assyria:
the
“Assur School” and the “Kalah School”.329 This may have significance with regard to scribal variations in tone and
style.
Other
factors seemingly in favour of the standard view that Sargon II and Sennacherib
were two distinct kings may be, I suggest, put down to being ‘two sides of the
same coin’. For example, one might ask the question, in regard to Russell’s
statement: “... Nineveh, where there is little evidence of Sargon’s
activities”:
- Why would so proud and mighty a king as Sargon II
virtually neglect one of Assyria’s most pre-eminent cities, Nineveh?
- Conversely, why did Sennacherib seemingly avoid
Sargon’s brand new city of Dur-Sharrukin?
- Again, why did Sennacherib record only campaigns,
and not his regnal years?
Bright
muses without much confidence upon a possible later discovery “of Sennacherib’s
official annals for approximately the last decade of his reign (if such ever
existed)”.330 ….
Further,
as regards this ‘economy’ factor in inscriptions, we shall see in Section Two
that, wherever Sargon II goes into detail about a particular campaign,
Sennacherib tends to be brief; and vice versa.
One
perhaps cannot say whether there was any marked personality difference
‘between’ Sargon II and Sennacherib (by way of trying to find any distinctions
between the ‘two’), because, as Russell has concluded, after an exhaustive
study of Sennacherib, “we actually know little about the man”.331
On pp. 158-159 I had then, in a section
entitled “The Storming
of Azekah, Lachish and Other Judaean Forts”, written still relevant to this:
Upon
deeper probing, following Tadmor, we find that Sargon actually took the Judaean
fort of Azekah (Azaqâ) as well.
This, coupled with Sargon II’s reference to himself
as ‘subduer of Judah’, is the very link that was needed to connect Sargon II’s
activities in Philistia with Sennacherib’s in Judah.
Yatna
Cypriot, Greek, Palestinian? What are we to
make of the rebellious Yatna-Yamani?
As I noted on p. 160 of my thesis, Tadmor had
thought that the latter part of the name was Palestinian:
Now if
Sargon’s ‘Ashdod’ really were Lachish as I am proposing here, and his war were therefore
being brought right into king Hezekiah’s Judaean territory, then we might even hold
out some hope of being able to identify, with Hezekian officials, the
succession of rulers of ‘Ashdod’ whom Sargon names. I refer to Azuri, Yatna-Yamani and Akhimiti. The first and the last of these names are Hebrew. The middle ones, Yatna-Yamani, are generally
thought to be Greek-related, as we saw above; but Tadmor supports the view of Winckler
and others that Yamani at least “was of local Palestinian origin”; being likely the equivalent
of either Imnâ or Imna .376
As the biblical Shebna
Continuing on with my thesis, I would now go
on to suggest that this Yatna be connected with Shebna (pp. 160-161):
My
reconstruction of an approximate flow of events regarding this succession of
rulers of Lachish would be as follows:
- Azuri was king Ahaz’s apparently accommodating high-priest who, when ordered by his pro-Assyrian king, built an altar (based on either a Syrian or
Assyrian
model) in Jerusalem (2 Kings 16:10-11). …. Ahaz had called upon Tiglath-pileser
III for assistance]. Perhaps Azuri
was rewarded for this act of ‘loyalty’ by
Tiglath-pileser III with the prestigious governorship of Lachish.
But
during the next reign, that of Hezekiah, Azuri
typically adjusted to fit in with Judah’s now
pro-Egyptian tendencies, and for this he was subsequently deposed by Sargon II
along with other of Hezekiah’s officials. Assyria replaced him with his
brother, Akhi-miti.
- This choice of Akhi-miti as governor, however, did not suit the Syro-Hittites, who were then in league with Egypt against the Assyrians. Hence they elevated to the governorship of Lachish one Yatna-Yamani, who, according to Sargon, “had no title to the throne”. [This I believe to have been a continuation of the wishes and intentions of the organizers of the Syro-Palestinian league against Assyria to place in high positions pro-Egyptian leaders]. Yatna-Yamani, given his newly found prestige, began to lord it over the kingdom of Judah as Sobna (var. Shebna), the apparent imposter, or usurper, of whom the Lord would complain to Isaiah (22:15-16):
‘Come,
go to this steward, to Shebna, who is master of the household, and say to him:
‘What right do you have here? Who are your relatives here, that you have cut
out a tomb here for yourself, cutting a tomb on the height, and carving a
habitation for yourself in the rock?’.’
Sobna
is rightly considered to have been “the leader in this pro-Egyptian movement”,377 hence anti-Assyrian, which fits this
new scenario perfectly. Tadmor, taking the standard view that ‘Ashdod’ was a
Philistine city, suggested here the following pattern of events:378
... we
may tentatively reconstruct the events of 712 in the following sequence:
Yamani
of Ashdod had initiated a new rebellion against Assyria and had made contact
with the rulers of the few still autonomous principalities in Palestine in an
effort to revive the Syria-Palestinian league of 720. He was assisted or backed
by the king of Egypt, called Pir’u here. It is likely that Judah offered more
than tacit assistance. Early in 712 Sargon’s army invaded Philistia, conquering
the northern Gath (Gitajim), Gibeton, and ‘Eqron on his way. We have to assume
that afterwards he assaulted ‘Azeqah and finally conquered it. We may even
assume, though the inscription does not mention it, that Judah averted [sic] by
some means the central Assyrian attack.
Now, proceeding on to p. 162:
- Under mounting pressure from Assyria, Yatna-Yamani abandoned Lachish
- and, according to Sargon, fled to Ethiopia. [See previous comments on the Tang-I Var inscription, in Chapter 1, p. 27 and p. 144 of this chapter; and see also Chapter 12, pp. 373-374, 380, in regard to the impossible chronology of this incident in a conventional context]. But here again the king of Assyria may be telescoping events; for firstly we find Yatna-Yamani, as Shebna, now playing second fiddle (as “the secretary” …) to the reinstated Akhi-miti/Eliakim (e.g. 2 Kings 18:18), as according to Isaiah 22:17-21:
‘The
Lord is about to hurl you [Shebna] away violently, my fellow. He will seize
firm hold on you, whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a
wide land; there you shall die, and there your splendid chariots shall lie, O
you disgrace to your master’s house! I will thrust you from your office, and
you will be pulled down from your post. On that day I will call my servant
Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and will clothe him with your robe and bind your sash
on him. I will commit your authority to his hand, and he shall be a father to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah ...’.
Historians,
not knowing who Shebna really was, tend to doubt that he ever suffered the grim fate of death
in exile that Isaiah had foretold for him. Olmstead, for instance, thinks that:379 “In part, Isaiah’s prediction was
successful, for Shebna, though not entirely removed, was demoted ...”. But,
with Shebna now identified with Sargon’s Yatna-Yamani,
we can tell exactly what did happen to him, and it
is fully in accordance with Isaiah. Sargon tells us that he fled to Ethiopia,
on the border of Egypt, but was thrown into chains by the Ethiopian king and
despatched to Assyria. Thus, “like a ball” … , as Isaiah had said, this
opportunist was tossed from one place to another; and finally to Assyria, never
to be heard of again.
….
Eliakim, on the other hand, would live to
fight other days.
And so we read about him again in Judith 4,
as the high priest, Joakim (who may even have authored the book) vv. 1-8:
The people of Judah heard what Holofernes, the commander of King
Nebuchadnezzar's [read Sennacherib’s] armies, had done to the other nations.
They heard how he had looted and destroyed all their temples, and they were terrified of him and afraid of what he might do to
Jerusalem and to the Temple of the Lord their God. They
had only recently returned home to Judah from [Assyrian] exile and had just
rededicated the Temple and its utensils and its altar after they had been
defiled. So they sent a warning to the whole region of
Samaria and to the towns of Kona, Beth Horon, Belmain, Jericho, Choba, and
Aesora, and to Salem Valley. They immediately occupied
the mountaintops, fortified the villages on the mountains, and stored up food
in preparation for war. It was fortunate that they had recently harvested their
fields.
The High
Priest Joakim, who was in Jerusalem at that time, wrote to the people in the
towns of Bethulia and Betomesthaim, which face Jezreel Valley near Dothan.
He ordered them to occupy the mountain passes which led into
the land of Judah, where it would be easy to withstand an attack, since the
approach was only wide enough for two people at a time to pass. The Israelites carried out the orders given to them by the High
Priest Joakim and the Council which met in Jerusalem.
And in Judith 15:8-13:
The High
Priest Joakim and the Council of Israel came from Jerusalem to see for
themselves what great things the Lord had done for his people and to meet
Judith and congratulate her. When they arrived, they all praised her, ‘You are
Jerusalem's crowning glory, the heroine of Israel, the pride and joy of our
people! You have won this great victory for Israel by yourself. God, the
Almighty, is pleased with what you have done. May he bless you as long as you
live’.
All the
people responded, Amen.
It took the people thirty days
to finish looting the camp of the Assyrians. Judith was given Holofernes' tent,
all his silver, his bowls, his couches, and all his furniture. She took them
and loaded as much as she could on her mule; then she brought her wagons and
loaded them too. All the Israelite women came to see her; they
sang her praises and danced in her honor. On this joyful occasion Judith and
the other women waved ivy-covered branches and wore wreaths of olive leaves on
their heads. Judith took her place at the head of the procession to lead the
women as they danced. All the men of Israel followed, wearing wreaths of
flowers on their heads, carrying their weapons, and singing songs of praise.
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