Rabshekah makes an excellent tool illustrating the governmental game of “man dominating man to his harm.” He is the consummate politician, here blustering, there promising wonderful things, then threatening, saying whatever he must to get his way, unworried that he contradicts himself. (“The Rabshekah,” some translations say, for it is a title, not a name.) Menacing Jerusalem outside the city walls, he blusters that he has full authority from God:
“Now is it without authorization from Jehovah that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Jehovah himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” (36:10)
But then, apparently indicating that he doesn’t, he boasts that Jehovah can’t stop him anyway: “Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?” (36:20)
A few grandiose promises follow: “Make peace with me and surrender, and each of you will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree and will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. (36:16-17) What a liar! Everyone knew how Assyria treated those they overran.
Then there is some trash-talking of Hezekiah the king, challenging him directly: “What is the basis for your confidence? You are saying, ‘I have a strategy and the power to wage war,’ but these are empty words.” (36:4-5)
—then seeking to undermine him: “This is what the king says, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he is not able to rescue you. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying: “Jehovah will surely rescue us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” (36:14-15)
Not to be too crude here, but he literally tells them to eat sh*t—or, close enough: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12)
He gets the politics wrong: “Look! You trust in the support of this crushed reed, Egypt, which if a man should lean on it would enter into his palm and pierce it.” (36:6) Did he? When push came to shove, he appealed to Jehovah through Isaiah; he didn’t whistle to Egypt at all. It may be his papa Ahaz that Rabshekah is thinking of, who disdained Jehovah and couldn’t kiss up to the neighboring king (in this case, Assyria itself) fast enough.
Nonetheless, the higher critics assume he did appeal to Egypt. There’s no real evidence that he did; it probably just reflects the critics’ own view that life revolves around politics and a nation’s survival of the fittest instincts to dominate other nations, in which everyone must pick a side—how can one pick God as a side? “Yeah, well, he never denied it, did he?” they might mutter. He didn’t confirm or deny anything, but told all the people to zip it:
“But they kept silent and did not say a word to him in reply, for the order of the king was, “You must not answer him.” (36:21) Often, that’s the best way to deal with a blowhard. “Don’t feed the troll,” is how it might be put in modern times.
Then those critics will point to Isaiah’ chapters 30 and 31, where he says turning to Egypt would a bad idea, ignoring any possibility that Hezekiah might have taken such warnings to heart. Maybe some of his court pushed that way; it’s possible. But chapter 37 shows where Hezekiah looks for salvation. It is to Jehovah, not to Egypt.
He is practical, though. Don’t think he was not. Early on, he tried to buy his way out:
“I am at fault,” he said. “Withdraw from against me, and I will give whatever you may impose on me.” The king of Assyria imposed on King Hezekiah of Judah a fine of 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents.” (2 Kings 18:14) Not that it did him any good. The Assyrian king gobbled up all that gold and then still pressed for conquest. It’s another reason that one might not trust Rabshekah’s promises.
Sennacherib’s own recorded annals reverses the order. “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke. . . . I made [him] a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver.” (British Museum Prism)
Oh, sure! He conquers city after city, but Hezekiah he lets off with just a heavy fine? Not likely! This inverted order of events “looks like a screen to cover up something which he does not wish to mention,” states Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary of 1936. (p 829) I wonder what that could be.
Save us from grandstanding politicians with their air of entitlement, the ultimate “King of the Mountain” players, the choice enablers of man dominating man to his harm. They finally hanged that politician that everyone thought should be hanged. “Any last words?” they asked him on the scaffold. “This is unacceptable!” he declared, as the trap door dropped open and the rope snapped taut. It’s probably what Sennacherib and Rabshekah said as the rope snapped taut on them and all their chums.
****** The bookstore
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