God’s ways are full of instruction for His own, whether we consider God’s dealings with individuals, with nations, with His people Israel or with the professing church. The Assyrians had an important place in the ways of God, and especially in regard to His earthly people Israel, not because they were among the greatest of the nations, for they did not exert universal sway over the nations as did the Babylonians, nor did they have the great power and dominion of such empires as the Medo-Persian, the Greek or the Roman. Nevertheless, although not among the great world empires, they held a very important place among the nations before the four world empires named came into prominence.
Early Mentions of Assyria
The early mention of Assyria in Genesis 2:14 indicates its importance in the ways of God, as does also what is said in Genesis 10:11, which might read, “he (Nimrod) went to Assyria, and built Nineveh.” There was also a son of Shem called Asshur (Gen. 10:22), but the building of Nineveh by Nimrod, a grandson of Ham would seek to indicate that Assyria belonged to the sons of Ham, not the son of Shem. Assyria is also mentioned in Genesis 25:18 to show where the sons of Ishmael dwelt, “from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria.”
Balaam’s last parable is full of prophecy in which he speaks of Messiah as “a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre…out of Israel” (Num. 24:17). Different nations come into the prophecy, Moab, Edom, Amalek, the Kenites, Asshur, Chittim, Eber and Israel are all mentioned, Asshur as a captivating nation (verse 22), and as also coming under God’s government in being afflicted (verses 24). Evidently Asshur, or Assyria, is brought in because of the relations all the nations named have with God’s people Israel. Whatever sorrows awaited Israel because of the nation’s unfaithfulness to God, their end was assured blessing from God, and “Israel shall do valiantly” (verse 18).
Jonah and Nineveh
Although mentioned so early in the Scriptures, there was a gap of about seven hundred years between the utterance of Balaam’s prophecy and the appearance in Israel of the Assyrian armies under Pul, but even before the Assyrian set foot in the land of Israel God had sent His servant Jonah to pronounce His judgment on Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, for the message of Jonah was, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). In wondrous grace, God delayed His judgment because of the repentance of the king and people of Nineveh.
Kings of Assyria and Israel
Menahem reigned over the ten tribes when the Assyrians under king Pul first invaded the land of Israel, “and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand” (2 Kings 15:19). This showed how far Israel had departed from the living God, when their king gave money to a foreign king so that he might retain his kingdom. Pekahiah, the son of Menahem, after reigning two years was slain by one of his generals, Pekah, who reigned in his stead.
It was in the days of Pekah, who, like the kings before him, wrought evil in the sight of Jehovah, that Tilgath-pileser “took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Galilee and Gilead, and all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria” (2 Kings 15:29). The cities of the north, and some of those on the other side of Jordan, are the first to be led captive by the king of Assyria.
The captivity of the ten tribes was completed in the days of Hoshea king of Israel who, following his predecessors, did evil in the sight of the Lord. When Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came against Hoshea, he “became his servant, and gave him presents,” but the king of Assyria “found conspiracy in Hoshea…therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison” (2 Kings 17:2–4). Samaria was then besieged for three years, and “in the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes” (verses 5, 6). Israel’s sins against the Lord was the cause of their captivity, as is shown in verses 7–23, and in chapter 18:11-12.
Kings of Assyria and Judah
Judah, in the goodness of God, was spared the attentions of Pul, Tilgath-pileser and Shalmaneser, kings of Assyria, when they were used as God’s instruments to punish the ten tribes and their kings. Even when Sargon, the successor of Shalmaneser, took Ashdod, and Isaiah prophesied the captivity of Egyptians and Ethiopians by the king of Assyria, Judah was left unscathed. It is evident that God ordered all this that Judah might be warned, and that they might forsake the idolatry into which they had been seduced by Ahaz their king.
Uzziah was king of Judah when Tilgath-pileser carried captive the first of Israel’s cities, and it was to this same king of Assyria that Ahaz, the grandson of Uzziah, sent messengers to Tilgath-pileser, “saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 16:7-8). What a solemn departure from the Lord, and from dependence on Him, for a son of king David.
The voluntary action of Ahaz put him and Judah in touch with the king of Assyria, put them under servitude to Assyria, and brought them into idolatry through Ahaz going to meet the king of Assyria at Damascus, and constructing an idolatrous altar on the pattern of the one he saw at Damascus. It was not only a humiliating position for God’s people, it was the introduction into the service of God of what God had expressly forbidden, the expression of self-will, the corruption of divine worship, and the setting aside of the will of the living God. Israel’s God could not be insensible to the departure of His people from fidelity to Him, and to the challenge of idolatry that Ahaz had given.
Such were the conditions of Judah when Hezekiah came to the throne in succession to his father Ahaz, and about six years after he ascended the throne the ten tribes were led captive by Shalmaneser the king of Assyria. Hezekiah began well, for “he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did” (2 Kings 18:3). This was the best defence against the king of Assyria or any other king that might assail him. Having destroyed the idolatry of his father, and trusting “in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him, for he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses” (verses 5-6).
Having thus sought the Lord, it is not surprising that “The Lord was with him; and he prospered whithersoever he went forth” (verse 7), and it was with this background that “he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not.” A king who was confiding in the Lord, and was strengthened in Him, even if he was weak in himself, could readily defy the mighty king of Assyria. Like his father David, he did not rely on his own strength when defying the mighty, he relied on the strength of the Almighty.
In His government, God allowed the king of Assyria to take the fenced cities of Judah (verse 13), and good king Hezekiah, in a moment of weakness, with his eye on the great forces of Sennacherib, like Peter with his eye on the “boisterous wind” (Matt. 14:30), “gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house,” even stripping the doors of the temple to show his subjection to the king of Assyria. It was indeed a moment of weakness, not the normal attitude of this godly man, and it secured nothing for him, for the king of Assyria sent his servants to Jerusalem to revile Hezekiah, and to mock his trust in the Lord (verses 14–18).
All this reviling brought back Hezekiah’s trust in the Lord. He saw that appeasing this world was of no avail, all his trust must be in the Lord his God, as it had been formerly, even if he had been taken off his guard for a moment. This is seen by the rending of his garments, the covering of himself with sackcloth, his going into the house of the Lord, and his sending to Isaiah the prophet with the request “lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left” (19:1–4).
Having reviled the Lord and His servant, Rabshakeh the emissary of the king of Assyria returned to his master, but not before Isaiah had said to the messengers of Hezekiah, “Thus says the Lord, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land” (verses 6-7). Little did the king of Assyria realise what God had prepared for him because of the pride of his heart in daring to revile the Almighty.
Ignorant of what lay before him, but of which the Lord had apprised his servant Hezekiah, the proud king of Assyria sent a letter to Hezekiah in which he very foolishly wrote, “Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria” (verse 10). This was a direct challenge to Israel’s God, and God was not slow to take it up, for God, first of all, in answer to Hezekiah’s prayer, assured His servant of His gracious intervention on his behalf, and spoke of the future blessing of the remnant of His people. As to Jerusalem, the Lord said, “By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, says the Lord, for I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake” (verses 33, 34).
How foolish the great men of this world can be, boasting in their own achievements, and thoughtlessly challenging the Almighty God. God’s judgment is recorded in few words, “It came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, they were all dead corpses” (verse 35). One angel from the Lord sufficed to destroy the flower of Assyria’s army, and to cause Sennacherib to return to his own land to meet the judgment that God had reserved for him according to the words of Isaiah the prophet (verses 7, 36-37).
Manasseh the son of Hezekiah must have heard of how God had dealt with the Assyrians in the days of his father Hezekiah, and of his father’s faithfulness to God, yet he “made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel,” and in spite of the Lord speaking to them, “they would not hearken” (2 Chr. 33:11). Was it any wonder that the Lord “brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon” (verse 11).
From the consideration of the relations of the Assyrian with Israel and Judah, it is easy to understand God’s word through Isaiah, “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation” (Isa. 10:5). This seems to have been the last time the Assyrians entered the land of Israel, but the sad end of the good king Josiah came when the king of Egypt went against the king of Assyria, and Josiah unwisely interfered (2 Kings 23:29).
R. 16.3.70