CONCLUSION AND REFLECTIONS

In conclusion, the Uruk Prophecy and the Dynastic Prophecy qualify as prophetic texts in the biblical sense. However, it must be noted that there remains a significant difference — quite apart from a breathtaking beauty of language completely absent from either the Uruk or the Dynastic Prophecy, the biblical examples have a universal quality, whereas the Mesopotamian ones are typically zoned in on a particular little city-state of southern Mesopotamia (Uruk or Babylon) and involve matters which will not have resonated, or at least not positively resonated, outside of that zone.

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APPENDIX

stage 1: composition of Isaiaha using material drawn from an annalistic source and a prophetic source

Approximate Date: Shortly after the assassination of Sennacherib

Motive: To settle theological issues raised by Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah

Text:

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went on an expedition against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. From Lachish, the king of Assyria sent his commander with a great army to King Hezekiah in Jerusa­lem.... The commander said to them... Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you base this confidence of yours? Do you think mere words substitute for strategy and might in war? On whom, then, do you rely, that you rebel against me? This Egypt, the staff on which you rely, is in fact a broken reed which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it....

The story continues with the mission to Hezekiah who sends a message to Isaiah (Isaiah 36:21-37:4)

When the servants of King Hezekiah had come to Isaiah, he said to them: “Tell this to your master.” Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: In answer to your prayer for help against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, this is the word the Lord has spoken con­cerning him. (Isaiah 37:5-6, 21-22)

Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger, my staff in wrath. Against an impious nation I send him, and against a people under my wrath I order him to seize plunder, carry off loot, and tread them down like the mud of the streets. But this is not what he intends... “Are not my commanders all kings?” he says, “Is not Calno like Carchemish, or Hamath like Arpad, or Samaria like Damascus? Just as my hand reached out to idola­trous kingdoms that had more images than Jerusalem and Samaria, just as I treated Samaria and her idols, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her graven images?... By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd. I have moved the boundaries of peoples, their treasures I have pillaged, and, like a giant, I have pulled down the enthroned. My hand has seized as in a nest the riches of nations; as one takes eggs left alone, so I took in all the earth.”...

Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: Do not be frightened by the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. I am about to put in him such a spirit that, when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own land, and there I will cause him to fall by the sword.... The king of Assyria heard a report that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to fight against him.... So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp and went back home to Nineveh. When he was worshiping in the shrine of the weapon of his god, his sons Adram-melech and Sharezer slew him with the sword, and fled into the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon reigned in his stead. (Isaiah 37:33, 6-9, 37-38)

STAGE 2: INCORPORATION OF ISAIAHA INTO AN EARLY VERSION OF 2 KINGS WITH ADDITIONS

Approximate Date: Before the death of Josiah at Megiddo

Motive: To underwrite Josiah’s mission

Text:

The angel of the Lord went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thou­sand in the Assyrian camp. Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpses of the dead. (Isaiah 37:36 = 2 Kings 19:35)

Hezekiah, king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. Leave me, and I will pay whatever tribute you impose on me.” The king of Assyria exacted three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold from Heze­kiah, king of Judah. Hezekiah paid him all the funds there were in the temple of the Lord and in the palace treasuries. He broke up the door panels and the uprights of the temple of the Lord which he himself had ordered to be overlaid with gold, and gave the gold to the king of Assyria. (2 Kings 18:14-15)

The effect of 2 Kings 19:35 was to make IsaiahA (and the assassination of Sennacherib) predict the fall of Assyria.

STAGE 3: COMPOSITION OF ISAIAHB AND INTEGRATION INTO A MODIFIED ISAIAHA Approximate Date: Preparatory to Zedekiah’s revolt against Nebuchadnezzar Motive: To inspire the faithful for that revolt

Text:

Thus shall you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: “Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of As­syria. You yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the coun­tries: They doomed them! Will you, then, be saved? Did the gods of the nations whom my fathers destroyed save them? Gozen, Haran, Rezeph, and Edenites in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, or a king of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena orIvvah?” (Isaiah 37:9b-13)

Hezekiah took the letter... he went up to the temple of the Lord, and spreading it out before him, he prayed: O Lord of hosts, God of Israel... You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. Incline your ear, O Lord and listen!... Hear all the words of the letter that Sennacherib sent to taunt the living God. Truly O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, and cast their gods into the fire; they destroyed them because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone. Therefore, O Lord, our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, alone are God. (Isaiah 37:14-20)

She despises you, laughs you to scorn, the virgin daughter Zion; Behind you she wags her head, daughter Jerusalem.... You said: “With my many chariots I climbed the mountain heights, the recesses of Lebanon; I cut down its lofty cedars, its choice cypresses.

This shall be a sign for you: this year you shall eat the aftergrowth, next year, what grows of itself; but in the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit! The remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall again strike root below and bear fruit above. For out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and from Mount Zion, survi­vors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. (Isaiah 37:30-32)

He shall not reach this city, nor shoot an arrow at it, nor come before it with a shield, nor cast of siege works against it. He shall return by the same way he came, without entering the city, says the Lord. I will shield and save this city for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David. (The angel of the Lord went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpses of the dead.) (Isaiah 37:33-36)

Method:

1. To Isaiah 37:6, right after Tell this to your master, the insertion of Thus says the Lord allowed current Isaiah 37:6b-9a to follow directly. Current Isaiah 10:5-15 was removed from this passage to make room for a new prophecy allegedly against Sennacherib but actually against Nebuchadnezzar.

2. The addition of Again he sent envoys to Hezekiah with this message: allowed the author to incorporate an account of an imagined confrontation between Nebuchadnezzar and Jerusalem complete with commander’s speech and re­sponding prayer by Hezekiah (Isaiah 37:9b-20).

3. The addition of Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent this message to Hezekiah: al­lowed what was originally the introduction to the poetic prophetic answer of Isaiah to Sennacherib’s boast to take its current position as Isaiah 37:21b-22 and to become the introduction to the poetic prophetic answer of a peace prophet to Nebuchadnezzar (Isaiah 37:22b-29).

4. Isaiah 37:30-32 looks intrusive, and may be (see below), but more probably was part of the original IsaiahB giving a sign confirming the validity of the prophecy. As such, it replaced the sign originally given in IsaiahA (Isaiah 10:5, 15; 37:38).

5. What is now Isaiah 37:33a was originally the introduction to what is now Isaiah 37:6b-7, the prosaic translation of the poetic prophecy of Isaiah against Sen­nacherib. Here, it serves as the introduction to the prosaic translation of the “peace” prophet’s poetic prophecy against Nebuchadnezzar, which follows directly (Isaiah 33b-35).

6. Isaiah 37:36 (the angel of the Lord slaughtering Assyrians) was either retained from the Josianic rewrite or, less probably, added at this point.

7. The rest of IsaiahA, namely the part in which the prophecy was fulfilled by the return home of Sennacherib and his assassination, plus the account of Heze­kiah’s illness and the mission of Merodach-Baladan, rounded out the passage (Isaiah 37:37-38 plus 38:1-39:8).

LESS PROBABLY, STAGE 4: ADDITION OF THE LAST VERSES

Approximate Date: Exilic or postexilic period

Motive: To inspire the faithful for a revolt against a new master

Text:

This shall be a sign for you: this year you shall eat the aftergrowth, next year, what grows of itself; but in the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit! The remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall again strike root below and bear fruit above. For out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and from Mount Zion, survi­vors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. (Isaiah 37:30-32)

Whether or not it was an exilic or postexilic addition, Isaiah 37:30-32 was crucial to the continuing validity of Zion Theology. With its help, impregnability could be redefined to mean that, even after its total destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, the city of Jerusalem would be rebuilt and in good time just as, even when crops fail completely, there is a plentiful harvest again in the third year.

To note is that the dialogue on this subject is taken up at some point by the Book of Jonah which adds that even after three days in the whale (the proverbial three years of punishment of 2 Kings 19:29-31 = Isaiah 37:30-31 which are also Hezekiah’s three days of illness in 2 Kings 20:5-6 = Isaiah 38:4-6), the sinful must change their evil ways in order to avoid further punishment, and that God’s mercy consists not in sparing the rod but in granting an opportunity to repent before it is too late.

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