ISAIAH

Our second biblical example is Isaiah 36-37 (= 2 Kings 18:13-19:37). Although treated as a historical appendix by redactors, this is, as we shall see, actually a prophecy or rather two interwoven prophecies.

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).

It has been argued by R. E. Clements (1984: 58-61, 91) that this passage is a Josianic ad­dition to Isaiah 37 and a reflection of Zion Theology, by which is meant the idea that Jerusalem was impregnable.¹⁸ Another set of lines, Isaiah 37:30-32 (= 2 Kings 19:29-31), speaks of survivors of the house of Judah and a remnant from Jerusalem and must be a post-Josianic addition to the text,^{19 *} since, by the time these verses will have been added, the city was no longer impregnable, but had instead fallen to some foreign conqueror.

Even with these lines removed, however, there remain difficulties. As presented in 2 Kings 18:13-19:37, Sennacherib’s behavior is little short of bizarre. Sennacherib invades Judah, sets up camp at Lachish, and negotiates a monetary settlement with Hezekiah (18:13-15). Afterwards(!), he sends envoys to Jerusalem, demanding surrender. Hezekiah is upset, but not a word is said about any tribute payment having been made and then ignored by evil Assyrians. Isaiah (18:16-19:9) reassures him that Sennacherib will hear a report and return home and Sennacherib does indeed hear a report. He does not, however, return home, but instead sends a letter thundering dire threats.

JOANN SCURLOCK

It has long been argued (by Stade, Levy, and others) that 2 Kings 18:14-16 (the tribute payment) is part of an excerpt from the royal annals of Judah dealing with Sennacherib’s campaign (Text A), which is generally supposed to have been rather clumsily worked into the rest of the narrative.²¹ Indeed, the tribute payment is clearly out of order and belongs among the reasons that Sennacherib in fact went home.²² Even so, there are enough discrepancies to suggest either two separate sieges of Jerusalem by Sennacherib or two different accounts of the same siege of Jerusalem (Texts B₁ and B2). So what are we to make of this?

Text Correspondences:

• Text A = 2 Kings 18:14-16 = 2 Kings A

• Text Bj = IsaiahA = 2 Kings 18:17-19:9a, 36-37 = 2 Kings Bj

• Text B₂ = IsaiahB = 2 Kings 19:9b-28, 32-34 = 2 Kings B₂

Let us examine the Isaiah version of these events. Taken by itself, Isaiah 36-37 readily divides into two separate accounts. The first of these, which we shall term IsaiahA, more or less corresponds to 2 Kings B₁. Taken as a whole, this gives a seamless account of Sennacherib’s 701 B.C. siege of Jerusalem and its aftermath. In other words, Isaiah 36:1-37:9a (= 2 Kings 18:17-19:9a) tells a complete story that follows directly and without apparent disjunction into Isaiah 37:37-38 (= 2 Kings 19:36-37) as follows:

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went on an expedition against all the fortified cities of Jerusalem and captured them....

Interposed in the middle, is a section (Isaiah 37:9b-29, 33-35 = 2 Kings 19:9b-28, 32-34) that seems to start all over again from the beginning with no better attempt to fit it into the rest of the story than the somewhat awkward transition: Again, he sent envoys to Hezekiah with this message (Isaiah 37:9b = 2 Kings 19:9b). We shall designate this intrusive text, which more or less corresponds to 2 Kings B₂, by the term IsaiahB.

There are two ways of understanding this intrusion. Either there were two sieges of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, one in 701 B.C. and another later in his reign,²³ or IsaiahB (= 2 Kings B2) is a later addition. We may safely ignore Becking’s introduction of a mythical

campaign of Sargon II of Assyria against Judah in 715 B.C.²⁴ Since IsaiahB speaks of God as lord of all kingdoms and creator of heaven and earth (Isaiah 37:16)²⁵ and includes a polemic against gods other than Yahweh as the work of human hands, wood and stone (Isaiah 37:19 = 2 Kings 19:17),²⁶ many commentators have been inclined to see IsaiahB (= 2 Kings B₂) as a later addition to a completed text. How late is a matter of dispute, with Cogan and Tadmor opting for two or three generations after the prophet Isaiah,²⁷ Clements and Machinist for the reign of Josiah,²⁸ Wildberger suggesting Jehoiakim or Zedekiah,²⁹ and Na’aman arguing for the seventh century (late Neo-Babylonian) or sixth century (early Persian) B.C.³⁰ Of course, it could always be a Hellenistic embellishment, assuming, of course, that the text was not finalized until so late a date.

What is not a matter of dispute, among those who accept the multiple accounts theory and even for some who do not, is that IsaiahB (= 2 Kings B₂) is referring, however inaccurately, to Sennacherib’s 701 B.C. campaign against Jerusalem. And inaccurate it certainly would be;³¹ Wildberger is little short of calling IsaiahB a brazen lie, that is, “not interested in historical reality” and constructed “as a testimony to belief.”³² Na’aman is more charitable, arguing for a receding of memory: “Reading Account B₁, it is clear that the story was written when the memory of Assyria... was still very much alive. In Account B₂, on the other hand, Assyria appears as an abstract power, representing more the concept of a strong military power than a concrete historical entity. The story remains the same if we replace the name Assyria with the name of another power (e.g., Babylonia, Persia).”³³ Inaccurate, that is, if we must believe that the reference is actually to Sennacherib’s 701 B.C. campaign against Jerusalem.

Of course IsaiahB specifically mentions Sennacherib and kings of Assyria and cannot, there­fore, by conventional wisdom, be referring to later events as, for example, Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem. Indeed, negative references to Babylon are generally suspected of being updatings of original polemics against Assyria.^{34 *} This would mean that even if the text actu­ally said “Nebuchadnezzar” and “Babylon,” as indeed some allegedly updated passages do, it could still be taken as a reference to Sargon II or Sennacherib and Assyria.

This argument has never made any sense. Sennacherib was not very cuddly, but he failed to take the city of Jerusalem, whereas Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city and burned the temple after hacking to bits and removing everything of value in it. Are we really to believe that Jews were so outraged by not having Jerusalem harmed by Sennacherib that its depopula­tion and destruction by Nebuchadnezzar was a preferable alternative?

In any case, people do not update their hatreds in this way.

Yes, the more recent parts of the dialectic are packed with examples of diatribes that seem inappropriate for, and in some cases cannot possibly refer to, the ostensible victim of abuse. But many, if not all, of these are sub-rosa critiques, often by way of organizing rebellion, against thin-skinned conquerors who may be safely vilified under the cover of a backdating of hatreds to political entities no longer in any position to object. So, for example, the Whore of Babylon in Revelations is a Babylon of seven hills, obviously not the real Babylon at all (what hills?!), but either Rome or Constantinople.

All strongly negative references, particularly ones that appear to be out of consonance with historical reality and/or later additions to the text, need to be examined to make sure that they are not actually sub-rosa references to a later enemy cleverly camouflaged as an earlier one. “Babylon” may be a Deckname for Persians, Seleucids, or Romans; “Assyria” or “Edom” may be a Deckname for Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids, or Romans, and so forth.

In the more recent parts of the dialectic, references of this kind are the rule, but I would argue that sub-rosa vilification begins with the Babylonians at the latest. For example, Isaiah 33:1 is often taken as referring to Assyria, but Assyria can never be the destroyer never de­stroyed, despite the fact that Assyria is the only enemy which has been recently mentioned (31:8). Assyria may have been a destroyer, but they were certainly, and quite spectacularly, destroyed. The referent must be Babylon, which was indeed never destroyed^[148] or perhaps, if

the text is late enough, Rome.^[149] Careful reading confirms that this impassioned and defiant cri du coeur is addressed to a destroyer who has destroyed the city of Jerusalem (32:9-15), again not the Assyrians but Babylon or Rome.

So if IsaiahB (= 2 Kings B₂) is not a fabrication, it needs to be considered whether it is a sub-rosa reference to some post-Sennacherib enemy disguised as an attack on the by then de­funct Assyrians. Taking the second alternative, how long defunct will the Assyrians have been at the time of composition? Are the new enemy Romans? Greeks? Persians? Babylonians? And why bring up the real Sennacherib at all?

To find out, we must examine IsaiahB, the alleged second account of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib (Isaiah 37:9b-29, 33-36), to see whether we can find an actual post-Sennach­erib enemy whose behavior matches that described. IsaiahB begins with a message from the Mesopotamian king.

Again, he sent envoys to Hezekiah with this message... 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, or Ivvah? (Isaiah 37:9b-13)

Despite specific mention of the king of Assyria, this passage cannot possibly (as argued already by Holloway and Na’aman) be the voice of Sennacherib referring to the campaigns of his real ancestors. In Sennacherib’s time, Guzana, Harran, Rasapa, and Bit-Adini were not still smoking ruins but thriving metropolises of the Assyrian empire. Harran was a second capital and major cult center. Sennacherib would have as likely boasted of the alleged com­plete and permanent destruction of these places as Queen Victoria would of leveling Cardiff and Edinburgh and sacking Canterbury.^[150]

In any case, comparing the fate of Jerusalem to that of these other cities would not be much of a threat. They might have been quite wrecked at the time of Assyrian conquest cen­turies earlier, but, by the time Sennacherib was speaking, these cities were thriving, as the Judeans would have known very well. So what fate was Sennacherib supposed to be threaten­ing them with — do what I want or I will make you third capital of the Assyrian empire and better off than you are now?!

conclusions on 2 Kings 19:12 are incautious.... The ninth century BC is too obscure for us to know ex­actly what happened to Harran at that time. It may have been omitted from Shamshi-Adad V’s list of rebellious cities due to some political expediency.” The reference in 2 Kings 19:11-13 is to total and permanent destruction, which cannot have occurred in the reign of Shamshi-Adad V or of any other As­syrian monarch. In any case, insisting that the lack of evidence for your position must be due to some un­known cause may be described in a number of ways, but “cautious” is not among them.

In sum, Harran was never slated for permanent destruction by Assyrians; it was, however, by Nebuchadnezzar, who specifically targeted the sanctuary, and the city was not rebuilt until the time of Nabonidus. Guzana, Rasapa and Bit-Adini will also have been conquered in the course of Nabopolassar’s conquest of Upper Mesopotamia in 612-610 B.C.; Hamath was added after Nebuchadnezzar defeated Egyptian troops in the Battle of Carchemish in 605.³⁹ All of this would seem to point to the Babylonians as the new enemy being targeted for sub-rosa vilification, and this impression is reinforced by the continuation:

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 lands along with their (own) land,⁴⁰ 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).

Despite the specific references to Sennacherib and kings of Assyria, the religious policy expressed again marks the actual referent clearly as Nebuchadnezzar.^{41 *} His argument: “My god is going to kill your god and there is nothing you can do about it.” The case of Sin of Harran is the best-known example of this policy, but we know, from a variety of sources including the inscriptions of Nabonidus and compositions used as part of the scribal curriculum,⁴² that the Neo-Babylonian conquest specifically targeted cult centers in areas which resisted Babylonian rule, including Akkad (Babylonia) which was, as Isaiah 37:18 (= 2 Kings 19:17) notes, “their (own) land.”

In the words of Nabonidus, describing the fall of Assyria at the hands of the Babylonians and their Medean allies:

(Marduk) provided him (Nabopolassar) with helpers... (And) he (the king of the Umman-manda) swept on like a flood storm... avenging Babylon in retaliation. The king of the Umman-manda... demolished the sanctuaries of all the gods of Subartu (Assyria). He also demolished the towns within the territory of Akkad (Babylonia) which were hostile to the king of Akkad and had not come to his assistance (in fight­ing Assyria). None of their cult centers did he omit, laying waste their towns worse than a flood storm.”⁴³

So much was destroying cult centers part of the “mystique” of Neo-Babylonian kings that, before he was allowed to resume his throne in the annual Babylonian New Year’s Festival, he was made to swear not to destroy Babylon, command its overthrow, wreck the Esagila Temple, or smash Babylon’s walls.⁴⁴

God’s answer, allegedly delivered by Isaiah, to Nebuchadnezzar’s imagined threats begins as follows:

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel... 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. I reached the remotest heights, its forest park. I dug wells and drank water in foreign lands; I dried up with the soles of my feet all the rivers of Egypt.”... Long ago I prepared it, from days of old I planned it, now I have brought it to pass; that you should reduce fortified cities into heaps of ruins, etc. (Isaiah 37:21-27)

“Long ago I prepared it, from days of old I planned it, now I have brought it to pass” is a pretty clear reference to some terrible and complete disaster which has taken place in histori­cal time. Elsewhere, the Hebrew Bible uses the allegory of the devastation of the forests of Lebanon⁴⁵ and of the drying up of the rivers of Egypt^{46 *} to refer to the fall of Assyria and the terrible defeats inflicted on its ally Egypt by the Neo-Babylonian army. This sounds like wild exaggeration. However, the prosaic Babylonian Chronicle boasts of the Battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. that “not a single man returned home,” and more heavy losses followed during Nebuchadnezzar’s abortive invasion of Egypt in 601 B.C.⁴⁷

More poetically, Ezekiel 30:10-31:12:

Thus says the Lord God: I will put an end to the throngs of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He, and his people with him, the most ruthless of nations shall be brought in to devastate the land. They shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. I will turn the Niles into dry land... Behold, Assyria was a cypress in Lebanon... the envy of all Eden’s trees in the garden of God. Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Because it became lofty in stature... and because it became proud of heart... I have handed it over... Foreigners, the most ruthless of nations, cut it down and left it on the mountains.

This poetic imagery reflects the fact that Nabopolassar engaged in a campaign of death and literally apocalyptic destruction against Assyria and its allies,^[151] which was continued by

JOANN SCURLOCK

his son Nebuchadnezzar. Commentators, historians, and archaeologists assume, pro forma, that it was Assyrian policy to leave a smoking ruin behind them wherever they went. On the contrary, whatever their proud boasts, Assyrian kings did as little damage as possible to areas they were planning to hold, since everything that got knocked down was going to have to be rebuilt, and at Assyrian taxpayers’ expense.

Scorched earth was Neo-Babylonian policy, not because they were evil monsters, but to en­sure that Assyria would never rise again. The campaigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar were a lethal mix of vengeance, fear, and realpolitik (cheating the Medes out of their share of the booty and the wealth and power which extensive and prosperous lands would have given them). Even so, Nebuchadnezzar was amazingly patient with Jerusalem, only burning the temple and the city after both Jehoiakim and Zedediah had revolted against him (2 Kings 24-25).

The Babylonian Chronicles describe these campaigns as “marching around victorious­ly.” This harmless-sounding phrase refers, as we know from Assurbanipal’s description of his Elamite campaign, to the depopulation of foreign regions, the destruction of their infra­structure, and the targeting of local cult centers. An even more terrifying phrase appears in the inscriptions of Nabopolassar, who says that the god Marduk unleashed Nergal on the Assyrians. The reference is to the Erra Epic and opening of the Gates of the Netherworld to allow a Great Flood of nomads to slaughter good and bad alike, again with cult centers as the prime targets.^[152]

As imagined, this Euphrates flood is about to wash against the walls of Jerusalem and is stopped by a prophecy, allegedly from the mouth of Isaiah, which continues:

I am aware whether you stand or sit; I know whether you come and go... Because of your rage against me... I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and make you return the way you came.... Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: 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. (Isaiah 37:28-29, 33-35)

IsaiahB is, then, readily recognizable as a description of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns against Assyria and allies and of the religious policy that was used to justify them. In other words, IsaiahB originally looked forward to the eventual politi­cal and theological confrontation between Nebuchadnezzar and Jerusalem with the expecta­tion that Jerusalem would emerge unscathed, classic Zion Theology. The phrasing of Isaiah 37:33-35 is eerily echoed in Lamentations 4:12: The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or adversary could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

This prophecy was never delivered by the historical Isaiah,^[153] nor indeed does it belong among the prophecies of Isaianic prophets, but instead among those whom Jeremiah refers

commentators concur with Clements that part or all of Isaiah 22 is pertinent to this issue (Clements 1984: 33-34; Wildberger 1997: 357-77). Clements’ instinct is that Isaiah, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, did not favor revolts against imperial powers. I would concur and add that none of these prophets had any kind words for those calling themselves prophets who encouraged such revolts (see below). Gallagher (1999: 218-20,

to as “peace prophets” and who prophesied relentlessly in favor of revolt against Babylon.^[154] All this would seem to strongly support Wildberger’s suggested date of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns for the composition of 2 Kings B2 (= IsaiahB). Zedekiah, king of Judah, installed by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 36:10), will very likely have had a Babylonian minder resident in the capital. If revolt were to be argued for in this context, a Deckname will have been in order. And who better than Babylon’s archenemy Sennacherib to allow for plotting under the Babylonians’ very noses?

But what about 2 Kings B₁ and its Isaianic equivalent, IsaiahA? Is this also Nebuchadnezzar, as Hardmeier has argued?^[155] It cannot, obviously, be any earlier than the death of Sennachrib in 681 B.C., to which it refers. This is not, however, long enough after the events of 701 B.C. for memory significantly to have faded.^[156] But is it an accurate representation of that campaign? With IsaiahB = 2 Kings B2 (the Nebuchadnezzar section) removed, the Assyrian campaign against Judah as described in IsaiahA (Isaiah 36:1—37:9a, 37-38) is remarkably non-violent — the cities are captured and plundered, but not destroyed, knocked to pieces, and burnt (as the stock phase in Assyrian annals would have it).

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 (Isaiah 36:1).

This cannot possibly refer, as we have seen, to Nebuchadnezzar’s “marching around victoriously.” It might not, at first blush, seem to fit Sennacherib either. This Assyrian king was not exactly famous for the gentleness of his treatment of adversaries, and his annals are not shy about claiming to have destroyed, knocked down, and burnt just about every city in the way of the Assyrian army. Nonetheless, we know from Sennacherib’s annals and from the relief sculptures of his palace that, although he set up camp and sent out flying columns of cavalry into the Judean countryside, Judean cities were taken and plundered, but not burned, knocked down or destroyed apart from whatever damage was necessarily inflicted in the pro­cess of taking them.^[157] By “plundering” was meant not disorganized looting but the acquisition of human resources. So, the citizens of Lachish, who surrendered, were not slaughtered, but a selection^[158] of the population was collected together, along with their animals and moveable possessions, and carried off to Assyria.

Lachish reliefs show the city being taken and plun­dered. Assyrian representation of a city being burned, knocked down, and destroyed is quite distinctive and readily recognizable. The city is shown emptied of inhabitants with flames shooting up in all directions with or without Assyrian soldiers armed with pick­axes demolishing the walls. No such representation occurs in the reliefs depicting the Judean campaign. Archaeological evidence from Lachish often adduced to prove the total destruction of Judean cities by Sen­nacherib is by no means ironclad. There is no reason, apart from ideology and imagination, to assume that Level III was destroyed by Sennacherib rather than Nebuchadnezzar.

⁵⁵ Sennacherib is quite clear that he executed only upper-class types and did not carry everybody off (Mayer 2003: 187 iii 8-14).

Comparing this pacific passage with the rest of Sennacherib’s annals, and indeed with Assyrian royal annals in general, it would be hard to argue that the reference was to anything but Sennacherib’s 701 campaign against Judah.⁵⁶ In short, biblical archeologists to the contrary notwithstanding,^{57 *} both biblical and Assyrian sources agree that Sennacherib’s campaign was carried out with unusual restraint,⁵⁸ resulting in minimal damage to Judah’s infrastructure. Nor is this all in IsaiahA that sounds very much like an actual Assyrian campaign.

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 (Isaiah 36:2-6).

The veracity of this passage has been challenged, but that the Assyrian commander made some sort of speech before the walls of Jerusalem is very probable. Parleys of the sort were standard practice in Assyria — they saved both time and money and brought territory in relatively undamaged and ready to yield profits in the form of taxes. Terms agreed to were always scrupulously honored, making parleys a very effective tool in the Assyrian arsenal of conquest.⁵⁹ Moreover, as Cohen has pointed out, the alleged Assyrian speech is, in fact, packed with Assyrianisms.⁶⁰

Then the commander stepped forward and cried out in a loud voice in Judean... Thus says the king... Make peace with me and surrender! Then each of you will eat of his own vine and of his own fig tree, and drink the water of his own cistern, until I come to take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, of bread and vineyards (Isaiah 36:13-17).

There is nothing implausible in this passage. What the Assyrians are essentially saying is: “We plan to deport you.” It is incredible,⁶¹ but true, that this was an argument for surrender so powerful that the Judean authorities begged the rab saqe to deliver his speech in Aramaic so that the “men sitting on the wall” would not understand him (Isaiah 36:11-12). Why? Because, conquered peoples carried off by Assyrians were settled in unwalled villages and turned into productive taxpayers and citizen-soldiers.⁶² The Assyrian government also built aqueducts and dug wells to bring water to parched fields. What the riff-raff of Jerusalem was hearing was: “Green card and citizenship in five years.” And, of course, the alternative was terrible death and destruction.

The contrast between IsaiahA’s description of the concluding paragraphs of Sennacherib’s speech (Isaiah 36:18-20 = 2 Kings 18:32-35) and IsaiahB’s description of what is allegedly the same speech (Isaiah 37:9-13 = 2 Kings 19:10-13) and Hezekiah’s summary of it (Isaiah 37:18-19 = 2 Kings 19:17-19), could not be more striking.⁶³

Isaiah

A

Do not let Hezekiah seduce you by saying: “The Lord will save us.” Has any of the gods of the nations ever rescued his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Where are the gods of Samaria? Have they saved Samaria from my hand? Which of all the gods of these lands ever rescued his land from my hand? Will the Lord then save Jerusalem from my hand?

Isaiah

B

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? Guzana, Harran, Rasapa, and Adini in Telassar?... Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, and cast their gods into the fire.

Samaria, which the Assyrians indeed take, is foregrounded in Sennacherib’s speech in IsaiahA, whereas what is actually Nebuchadnezzar’s imagined speech in IsaiahB makes a simi­lar fuss about Harran. The Nebuchadnezzar speech in IsaiahB has nothing to say about taking people away to “lands of grain and wine” but on the contrary talks about “dooming” people. The reference is to the custom of herem, in which cities dedicated to God were completely and permanently destroyed, and all those doomed within them, whether men, women, and children or animals, were slaughtered.⁶⁴

The religious policy of the Assyrians in Sennacherib’s speech in IsaiahA is also strikingly different from the alleged Assyrians (actually Babylonians) of the Nebuchadnezzar speech in IsaiahB,⁶⁵ and in consonance with the real Sennacherib’s theology. From Assyria’s point of view, the gods were organized into a divine assembly which reflected the collective will. Foreign gods were potentially members and assumed to side with Assyria;⁶⁶ after a visit to Assyria proper, they returned home,^{67 68} but continued to receive offerings in Assyria as part of the takultu.⁶ No member of the divine assembly in good standing would dream of opposing the collective will represented by Assur and would not have been able to do so successfully if he/she had tried.

This patterning of contrasts between Assyria and Babylon is consistent in the book of Isaiah in particular, and indeed in the prophets in general. If some foreign power is being criticized for greedy plundering or boasting followed by wimpish failure, it is the historical Assyrians who are being referred to and, if it says Sargon or Sennacherib (as Isaiah 36:1; 37:37), it means Sargon or Sennacherib. Horrific and unmeasured violence or its poetic al­legorical equivalents — cutting down the trees of Lebanon or drying up the rivers of Egypt — mark the referent of the passage as Babylon at the earliest, whether it actually says “Babylon” (as Isaiah 14:1-23) or explicitly says “Assyria” (as Isaiah 37:21).

According to IsaiahA, Hezekiah was perturbed by the rab saqe’s speech (Isaiah 36:22­37:4), but Isaiah (37:5-6) prophesied that Sennacherib would return home in the face of Ethiopian intervention and die there by violence.

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 37:6-9, 37-38).

Again according to Sennacherib, the Ethiopians intervened; Sennacherib went home and Hezekiah kept his kingdom which, if we may trust the rab saqe’s speech, was not Sennacherib’s original intention.^[159] We also know that Sennacherib was murdered and by the sons enumerated.^[160] The only unverifiable detail is the location of the murder, which looks suspiciously like a prophetic addition. The shrine of the weapon of his god is usually rendered the temple of his god Nisroch, allegedly a Mesopotamian divinity. There is, however, no such god. The most probable suggestion is that this mysterious “Nisroch” is a deliberate defor­mation of Assyrian masruhu “(god’s) weapon” using two other Hebrew roots which evoke concepts of hubris and nemesis.^[161]

The assassination of Sennacherib is not just tacked onto IsaiahA as an afterthought. On the contrary, the patricide is directly prophesied by Isaiah (37:7), and the focus of the narra­tive is as much on this as on the deliverance of Jerusalem. Indeed, Jerusalem’s salvation is an almost incidental by-product of the report which comes to send Sennacherib home where he can be murdered. Not only that, but in the biblical account the specific mention of Taharqa, who was not on the throne in 701 B.C. but would have been by 681 B.C.,^[162] points to a date for the composition of IsaiahA shortly after the death of Sennacherib,^[163] and not shortly after

92; and Na’aman 2003: 213-17. Compare Goncalves 1986: 441-42. Cogan and Tadmor (1988: 244) treat the notice of Sennacherib’s assassination as a Neo­Babylonian addition to the text drawing on the Baby­lonian Chronicles. I suspect, however, that the annals of the kings of Judah kept very good records of mat­ters of such immediate interest, and informants (Is­raelites in exile in Assyria who came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover) would have been ready at hand.

his third campaign as might be expected if the deliverance of Jerusalem had been the original focus of the narrative.

We notice also a curious omission from IsaiahA. IsaiahB lays out its prophecy against Nebuchadnezzar in two phases: Isaiah 37:22b-29, a poetic cri du coeur which represents the actual prophecy (the word of God via the mouth of the prophet) and Isaiah 37:33-36 which represents a sort of translation and directly predicts what is going to happen.⁷⁴ In IsaiahA, the translation is present (Isaiah 37:6b-7) but the actual prophecy is missing. A search through the rest of the book of Isaiah readily allows the restoration of this missing passage in the form of what is now Isaiah 10:5-15 as follows:⁷⁵

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.”... Will the axe boast against him who hews with it? Will the saw exalt itself above him who wields it? As if a rod could sway him who lifts it, or a staff him who is not wood! (Isaiah 10:5-15)

This passage would appear^{76 *} to be of a piece with Isaiah 36-37.⁷⁷ That it belongs spe­cifically to IsaiahA and not IsaiahB should by now also be quite clear. Note that a great deal of fuss is made about conquest and plundering, but not a word about destruction, let alone dooming people and throwing gods into the fire. It also speaks prominently of Samaria, with nary a word about Harran, Guzana, etc. Most significantly, it takes as its motif the weapon before which Sennacherib was killed. These verses should, in my opinion, be reinserted (see Appendix) between Hezekiah’s plea to Isaiah to pray for the community (Isaiah 37:1-4) and Isaiah’s direct prediction of the future (Isaiah 37:6b-7).

So what was the point of IsaiahA (= 2 Kings B₁ + Isaiah 10:5-15) and why was it not composed until 681 B.C. rather than immediately after Sennacherib’s failed siege of 701

B.C.? Theologically speaking, Isaiah 10:1-15 accepts Sennacherib’s claim to be acting for God (Isaiah 36:10) but makes the rather subtle argument that Sennacherib does not know the God whose instrument he is if he thinks that the God of Jerusalem is on a par with the gods of Samaria. In other words, the question for IsaiahA is whether the divinity of Jerusalem, at whose altar Hezekiah is insisting that Judah offer exclusive worship, (Isaiah 36:7) is, in fact, Yahweh or just some local god, like the gods of Samaria or Damascus or Hamath or any other city in the area. Since Jerusalem was a Jebusite city when David made it his capital, this is an absolutely devastating argument.^[164] Hezekiah is himself, as pointed out by Machinist (2000: 158), not altogether certain on this point, sending a delegation which includes the elders of the priests to beg Isaiah to pray for Hezekiah and his people to “your God” (Isaiah 37:1-4).^[165] In sharp contrast when, in IsaiahB, the issue is whether Marduk was going to kill Yahweh or the other way round, “Hezekiah” prays directly to “our God” (Isaiah 37:14-20).

Arguments of this power and cogency cannot be taken down by logic; they may be an­swered only by a sign from God. IsaiahA is, therefore, essentially a solicited omen in which a particular sign is designated as the answer to a question posed to God. This was not an uncommon practice in Israel as is attested to by Deuteronomy 13:2-4 in which it is argued that certain matters theological may not be settled in this way. Similarly, the story of Rabbi Eliezer^[166] quoted by Winitzer in this volume.

In this case, the desired sign was not fire from heaven (Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al in 1 Kings 18), the premature death of a false prophet (Jeremiah and Hananiah in Jeremiah 28), a river flowing backwards, or a buckling wall (Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua), but a historical event, namely (Isaiah 37:6b-7) that Sennacherib would hear a report, go home, and there be killed by his own sons. This is, of course, what happened (Isaiah 37:37-38), but with the added detail that Sennacherib was worshiping the weapon of Assur when he died. Since, according to Isaiah 10:15, Sennacherib was himself the weapon of God, his death in that loca­tion was a sign from God that the god of whom Sennacherib was the weapon was the God of Jerusalem and of Mt. Zion and not even in the same league with the gods of Samaria.

Were the theological arguments about the identity of Yahweh and the legitimacy of the high places which Hezekiah removed (Isaiah 36:7) actually raised by Sennacherib or indeed by the historical Isaiah as opposed to his followers? Perhaps not,^[167] but the point was that Sennacherib might conceivably have made such arguments,^[168] and that Sennacherib’s failure and death were a sign from God resolving these issues.

I say conceivably because it was possible for a few fortunate foreign gods to be accepted as syncretic equivalents to Assur himself. Two of these syncretic equivalents, Sin of Harran and Anu (= El) were also, separately, potential syncretic equivalents of Yahweh, which made

source. Machinist (2000: 163-64) and Wildberger (2002: 379, 393) also place it in the context of an inter-Judean debate. Less plausibly, Ben Zvi (1990) argues that the entire speech of the rab saqè was the invention of the Deuteronomist historian. Gallagher (1999: 193-200, 204-09) argues for the authenticity of these elements as Assyrian propaganda.

⁸² On the importance of the plausibility of historical narratives, see Ben Zvi 2003: 96-103.

it at least plausible that Sennacherib would have seen Yahweh and Assur as the same god. Since Assur had only a single sanctuary but could be worshipped in any place that his weapon had been erected, it was also not implausible that Sennacherib would be a defender of Yahwist high places. What would have beggared belief, and indeed the contrary position is claimed for Sennacherib, is that the national god of Assyria was actually the numen loci of Jerusalem.

With IsaiahB removed, what is left in IsaiahA is a careful description of Sennacherib’s campaign into Judah and its aftermath which was to lead to God’s judgment on Sennacherib in the form of a failed campaign⁸³ and assassination, all of which actually happened in histori­cal time.⁸⁴ Again, as with Babylonian religious policy in IsaiahB, Assyrian religious policy is accurately described in IsaiahA. In other words, IsaiahA was intended a prophecy against Sennacherib’s alleged denial of the equation of Yahweh and the god of Jerusalem, with the annalistic account of Sennacherib’s campaign and particularly its aftermath (Isaiah 36:1-3, 37:37-38) constituting the fulfillment of that prophecy. The accuracy of historical reporting in IsaiahA should come as no surprise to students of divination, since the impartiality of the diviner is an essential feature of the credibility of solicited omens. If the events described never happened or were not credibly described, manipulation of the oracle would be glaringly obvious.

With Clements,⁸⁵ the following passage will have been added to IsaiahA subsequently, when it was incorporated^{86 *} into 2 Kings:

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).

The effect will have been to refocus Isaiah on the salvation of Jerusalem and to have

A

made the prophet Isaiah “predict” the fall of Assyria by a sword not wielded by man (Isaiah 31:8; cf. Hos. 1:7).⁸⁷ This will have been for the benefit of Josiah, who was counting on the

impregnability of Jerusalem when he sided with Babylon against Assyria and Egypt.^{88 *} This, of course, presupposes that this passage belongs to a late version of IsaiahA and not to IsaiahB, as is usually assumed. For what it is worth, Ben Sirah 48:18-21 quotes this line as part of what was apparently a separately circulating (or reconstructed) version of IsaiahA:

During his (Hezekiah’s) reign Sennacherib led an invasion, and sent his adjutant (in IsaiahB, the message is in the form of a letter)... The people’s hearts melted within them, and they were in anguish like that of childbirth. (= Isaiah 37:3)... God struck the camp of the Assyrians and routed them with a plague (= Isaiah 37:36).

Subsequently, apparently in the reign of Zedekiah (see above), further changes were made.⁸⁹ Into the very midst of what was, with the possible exception of the more complex theo­logical arguments and the Angel of the Lord addition, an accurate account of Sennacherib’s failed attempt on Jerusalem and its aftermath (IsaiahA), was inserted a second time and later, but again reasonably accurate, if somewhat poetic, account of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns against Assyria and Egypt (IsaiahB; see Appendix).

The purpose of the juxtaposition would appear to be to predict that Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign against Jerusalem would end in the same way as Sennacherib’s or, to put it another way, that Isaiah’s prophecy against Sennacherib applied also to Nebuchadnezzar. Of course, any historian of the time could have reached the same conclusion by simple logical syllogism. Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalem but destroyed Babylon and “put his hooks in the nose” (Isaiah 37:29) of several of its kings. It hardly seemed conceivable that Nebuchadnezzar, who was not even properly Babylonian, but a Chaldean (2 Kings 25:10, 13), was going to be able to succeed where Sennacherib had failed.

But the kings of Judah were not in the habit of consulting historians. The imprimatur of prophecy ensured proper divination of the will of God. And Zedekiah, who had been made to swear by God (2 Kings 36:13; cf. Ezekiel 17:11-21) that he would remain loyal to Nebuchadnezzar, would not have dreamed of attempting revolt against the Babylonian juggernaut without one. His position was made particularly difficult by the fact the city had already fallen once to Nebuchadnezzar, who not only carried off Jehoiakim but “all Jerusalem” including “all seven thousand men of the army” so that: None were left among the people of the land except the poor. Not only that, but all the treasures of the temple of the Lord were plundered, including Solomon’s gold utensils (2 Kings 24:10-17).

The peace prophets (Jeremiah 23:16-17) vilified by Jeremiah⁹⁰ insisted that these vessels would be recovered (Jeremiah 27:16-22, 28:3, 6) and that the revolt would be successful even

to the point of return of the exiles (Jeremiah 28:1-4, 10-11). This prediction was breathtaking- ly counterintuitive and once again required a sign,^[169] correspondingly provided as follows:^[170]

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).

The idea that this sign must refer to the Assyrians because they deliberately destroyed the economic base of places they conquered^[171] is nonsense. The proverbially greedy Assyrians were after tax revenue, and it is as possible to tax a deserted waste as to get blood from a turnip. In any case, there is nothing in this verse about anybody targeting anybody’s economic base. The reference is actually metaphorical. Judah and Jerusalem are like a field in which the harvest has been destroyed. Just as when, in such a case, one eats what is left in the first year, and the land lies fallow in the second, but in the third year one plants and enjoys an abundant harvest, so there is a remnant in Judah and survivors in Jerusalem, and the city will remain vacant for a time but then be repopulated and flourish as never before. If Isaiah 37:4b Send up a prayer for the remnant that is here in Hezekiah’s address to Isaiah in account IsaiahA is not simply hyperbole, it could also have been added at this point.^{[172] [173]}

The metaphorical three years have a historical referent, namely Jehoiakim’s three-month reign in Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:8). The implication is, of course, that the punishment for previous sins (2 Kings 24:3-4) is over, and the prophecy will work as planned or, as Nahum says: The enemy shall not rise a second time... For, says the Lord, be they ever so many and vigorous, still they shall be mown down and disappear (Nahum 1:9-12).

The same assertion is made in the account of Hezekiah’s illness (2 Kings 20:1-10) which has:

In three days you shall go up to the Lord’s temple; I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and the city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will be a shield to this city for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David?⁵

In short, once the period of three (years, months, days) representing God’s punishment for your sins is over, you are going to have peace and success. In this case, Jehoiakim has already done the three (months), and so there should, according to this peace prophet, be a green light for revolt.

Hezekiah’s descendants points in the same direction. As of Zedekiah, all that had happened was that the city had been looted, the population deported, and Jehoiakim taken captive (2 Kings 24:12-13,15). It is hard to imagine anyone worrying about such mat­ters after Nebuchadnezzar had killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes and blinded him, torn down the walls of Jerusalem, burned the city and the temple to the ground, broken up the bronze pillars and even the bronze sea, and executed sixty-seven prisoners in cold blood (2 Kings 25:6-21). On this point, see Cle­ments 1984: 63-71, accepted in Cogan and Tadmor 1988: 260-63.

Using Sennacherib and Assyria for Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon in IsaiahB would, in this context, have been far more than a Deckname. Calling Nebuchadnezzar Sennacherib made him Sennacherib and guaranteed that he, too, would fail. It also tempted God (Isaiah 7:10-12; Deuteronomy 6:16), in that the failure of the prophecy against Nebuchadnezzar would com­promise the original sign that Jerusalem was indeed the home of Yahweh.

Far from expressing undying hatred, the continual harping on Assyria still quite apparent in the latest phases of the dialectic takes advantage of their well-known demise to wish, even to cause, the same fate to befall other, even more dangerous, enemies. Indeed, the Targum of the Minor Prophets interprets Nahum 1:8: “But in fierce anger and in great wrath he shall make an end of the nations which rose up and utterly destroyed the Sanctuary and he shall deliver his adversaries to Gehinnam.”^[174] The intent is, of course, not to pretend that Assyria destroyed the sanctuary, but to apply Nahum’s prophecy against Babylon and Rome.

Isaiah 36-37 is, then, a real prophecy (and not just a historical appendix) that uses a past historical event (Sennacherib’s failed siege of Jerusalem and his subsequent assassination) as its basis. As with IsaiahA which treats historical events as signs from God, IsaiahB relies for its credibility on the very historical accuracy which has caused Isaiah 36-37 not to be recognized as a prophecy. To note also is that, as with the Mesopotamian Dynastic Prophecy, predictive power is derived from the partial repetition of a sequence of events. Dynastic Prophecy: east defeated west; east defeated west; Persian king Xerxes was assassinated and the Persians lost out. East has again defeated west twice; Greek king Seleucus was assassinated. Therefore, the Greeks will lose out. Isaiah 36-37: Sennacherib made a campaign against Judah, besieged Jerusalem, and failed; Nebuchadnezzar has made or will make a campaign against Judah and Jerusalem; therefore, he will fail. Also interesting is that the association between an assassinated ruler and the fall of his kingdom is made in both Mesopotamian and biblical prophecies.

As for the use of past historical events as a basis for prophecy, 2 Kings 18:13-19:37 is not a lone example of this phenomenon. It is hard to think that the fuss made about the release of Jehoiakim in 2 Kings 25:27-30 is not a prophecy of the eventual release and restoration of the Israelite community^[175] and, indeed, it is replaced in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 by the decree of Cyrus the Great of Persia. Even closer to Isaiah 36-37 is the curious statement in 2 Chronicles 33:11 that Manasseh was taken in chains by Assurbanipal to Babylon (and not Nineveh). It has been argued⁹⁸ that this passage is a disguised reference to the Babylonian exile. If so, backdating the exile to the period of Manasseh would serve to ensure that, like the original Manasseh, the community would repent and be returned to its kingdom in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, the result of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign was not ignominious defeat and assassination, but the triumph of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar crushed Egypt, Tyre, and the Arabs, burned the temple in Jerusalem, and deported most of the population of Judah to Babylonia. Swelled with booty and captives, Babylon became a megalopolis. In short, by the Deuteronomic test for a false prophet (Deuteronomy 18:21-22), the author of IsaiahB, this, pseudo-Isaianic, prophecy was a false prophet.

Of course, the historical Isaiah was also potentially in the position of having originally predicted something (the fall of Jerusalem to Sennacherib) which never, in fact, occurred⁹⁹ raising another issue of interest to students of divination. In a sense, biblical prophecy as practiced by the kings of Israel and Judah was a system of solicited omens. In other words, the king determined a course of action and then consulted the prophets as to whether or not he should pursue it. The prophets then prophesied, giving the king his answer not, except in the method, significantly different from a Mesopotamian king asking his diviner to cut open a sheep. Indeed, the Hittite king Mursili in his Plague Prayers treats divination and prophecy as essentially the same: “Let the matter... be established through divination or let me see it in a dream or let a prophet speak of it.”^[176]

We are, then, entitled to ask of biblical prophecy the same question that we routinely ask of divination. Why did the Israelites and Judeans question the veracity of individual prophets but never the institution of prophecy as such? The simple answer is that the predictions of true prophets came true, and spectacularly so. Another reason is that more reliable forms of divination were banned in Israel. I say more reliable because there was an inherent credibil­ity problem built into the institution of prophecy which may account for its relative rarity in Mesopotamia, where the full range of divinatory practices was allowed.

What distinguishes prophecy from other forms of divination is that it is an art rather than a science. A diviner was an expert, who spent years of careful study before attempting to make any predictions. Like modern physicians who kill patients, an unsuccessful diviner could always fall back on having practiced his profession “by the book.” No such luck for a prophet — even Moses had to go to spectacular lengths to have his claims of talking to God accepted by the Israelites (Exodus 19:9-20:22).

Inevitably, the prophetic credibility problem was unevenly distributed. The predictions of gloom-and-doom prophets all too often came true, since disaster was never far around the corner for a small country like Judah with nasty neighbors. It was thus the “peace” (victory and success) prophets who would have been regularly falsified and their testimony was, in consequence, particularly suspect.

To quote Jeremiah 28:8-9:

From of old, the prophets who were before you and me prophesied war, woe and pestilence against many lands and mighty kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace is recognized as truly sent by the Lord only when his prophetic prediction is fulfilled.

Indeed, spectacular examples of false prophets as, for example, Zekediah son of Chenanah who sent Ahab to his death at Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kings 22:11, 20-28) and Hananiah son of Azzur who persuaded Zedekiah to revolt against Babylon (Jeremiah 28:1-17) are always advocates of “peace” (victory and success).

That Isaiah originally prophesied a fall of Jerusalem to the Assyrians which did not, in fact, occur is, therefore, only problematic to the modern observer. This would not be the first or the last time that God relented and did not send the threatened punishment. As with Mesopotamian unsolicited omens, doom-and-gloom prophecies did not cause the events which they foretold, nor indeed were they certain and irreversible. On the contrary, the point was to warn the community so that prompt action in the form of repentance and a bit of pleading and sackcloth could avert the predicted disaster.

Isaiah’s prophecy against Hezekiah, quoted in Isaiah 39:3-8 (= 2 Kings 20:12-19) was fulfilled, not because Isaiah prophesied it, but because Hezekiah accepted the omen which it represented (Isaiah 39:8 = 2 Kings 20:19). By contrast, as described in Jeremiah 26:18-19, the failure of Jerusalem to fall in the reign of Hezekiah as predicted by Micah of Moreseth was due to Hezekiah’s entreaties which made the Lord repent of the evil with which he had threatened them. Micah is not, for this, being called a false prophet, but on the contrary one who spoke in the name of the Lord, and for the peoples’ benefit.

“Peace” prophets had, then, a truly serious credibility problem even when their predictions were not, as in the case of the likely success of Zedekiah’s revolt, breathtakingly counterintui­tive. This provides yet another motive for the author of IsaiahB to have grafted his prophecy onto an earlier, and fulfilled, prophecy of a known quantity (Isaiah) who was held in high renown and generally recognized as a true prophet.

Nonetheless, IsaiahB remains a prophecy from a “peace” (victory and success) prophet, and it was not fulfilled. Not only that, but the author was a prophet (dare we suggest even Hananiah himself?) who, in advocating Zedekah’s rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, directly contradicted Jeremiah who spoke the word of the Lord (2 Kings 36:12). So why was this bla­tantly false prophecy preserved for us in 2 Kings and why, for that matter, does the Book of Isaiah as we have it include the falsely attributed IsaiahB?

True vs. False Prophecy

The enduring popularity of the prophecies of Nostradamus rests not so much in their vaunted accuracy in predicting past events as in the perception that they are of continu­ing relevance for the future. When a prophecy relating to some specific king’s specific war against a specific enemy was fulfilled in ancient Israel, this was doubtless appreciated, but why, come to think of it, would anyone other than the prophets’ guild wish to keep a copy? In only two cases would there be any reason to retain its memory. One was that the prophecy managed not to come true without being actually falsified (IsaiahB’s prediction of disaster for Nebuchadnezzar). The other was that the prophecy came true but seemed nonetheless not completely to have been fulfilled (Nahum’s prediction of disaster for Jerusalem). It is these, and these alone, that will have survived the centuries.

Thus, as with the Uruk Prophecy, biblical prophecies were not necessarily invalidated by failure to immediately come to fruition. So, for example, the prophet Haggai’s exhortation to rebuild the temple as a recipient of God’s glory was not dampened by disappointment at the results; the true fulfillment was simply deferred to some date in the hopefully near future (Haggai 1:1-2:9).

By the simple expedient of reinterpreting Isaiah 37:30-32 as referring to the fall of Jerusalem, it was possible to reapply what was allegedly Isaiah’s prediction of disaster for Nebuchadnezzar qua Sennacherib, a.k.a. “Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians” to future Babylons such as the Persians, the Seleucids, and ultimately Rome. Prophecies such as Nahum and Isaiah 36-37 thus achieved the sort of status accorded in Mesopotamia to the omens in the diviners’ manual, that is, they were pronouncements potentially valid not just for the situation to which they originally applied but at specific points scattered throughout the past, present, and future. What began as Sennacherib being proven wrong by a sign from God became a generalized omen of Assyria: “If a king attacks Jerusalem, he will fail to take the city and subsequently be assassinated.” To which Josiah, or perhaps Zedekiah, added: “and his kingdom will fall.”