The Assyrian Invasion

Darkness at Noonday

The end is come upon my people of Israel.--Amos 8:2

David Rice

Before the rise of Babylon under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar, the scourge of the ancient near east was the kingdom of Assyria. It was this kingdom that brought low the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria. Its last king Hoshea was taken in a three-year siege, ending both his nine-year reign and his kingdom.

The episode is recorded in 2 Kings 17:3-6. “Against [Hoshea] came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria . . . the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. 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.” The brief records of this Assyrian king stipulate that in his five-year reign he “ravaged Samaria,” and the eponym records suggest years 2, 3, and 4 were the three years of the Hebrew account.

The date of Hoshea’s fall was 723 B.C., and just 40 years earlier, in 763 B.C., a well known solar eclipse darkened the sky of the Bible lands. Evidently this was the warning sign Hoshea predicted in Amos 8:9, “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.” This 40-year notice reminds us of a similar period, seven centuries later, between our Lord’s death in 33 A.D. when the sky again turned dark at noon, and the end of the wars against Judea in 73 A.D. when Masada fell to the Romans and Israel’s national polity was dissipated. Evidently Amos’ prophecy, which applied to the fall of Samaria, had a deeper meaning for Israel following the advent of Messiah.

The Samaritans

The deportation of Israelites after the Assyrian conquest apparently was a safeguard against future uprisings. To fill the void, various foreigners were imported into the land. These did not respect Jehovah, and as a consequence God sent lions among them. The Assyrian king sent a captive priest back to the area to teach the new settlers about Jehovah, and he “taught them how they should fear the LORD” (2 Kings 17:28).

This was the beginning of those the New Testament refers to as “Samaritans.” They were not Israelites by birth, but they adopted the faith of Israel. They accepted the five books of Moses though they did not equally respect the later writings of the Old Testament. For these reasons there was a distinction between these Samaritans and Jews which is referred to by Jesus in John 4:22, “Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.”

The deficiencies in their faith notwithstanding, our Lord recognized the fruitage of their faith as ready for harvest at his first advent (John 4:35), and after his resurrection he instructed his disciples, after witnessing first in Jerusalem and Judea, to next serve the Samaritans with the gospel (Acts 1:8). This work was initiated shortly after the stoning of Stephen when the brethren of Judea were dispersed “throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). The deacon Phillip evidently began the work among the Samaritans, later supplemented by Peter and John (Acts 8:5-14).

Thus through the Assyrian conquest of Israel 700 years before our master’s time, God overruled to sow seeds of faith among Gentiles which bloomed wonderfully after the advent of Christ. It is noteworthy that Jesus used a Samaritan to represent the virtues of compassion and brotherly kindness in the famous parable of the “Good Samaritan.”

Assyrian Kings

The Scriptures mention six consecutive kings of Assyria by name: Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, whose reign ended 18 years before the Assyrians fade from the pages of history in 609 B.C., only three years after the capture of their capital Nineveh (2 Kings 15:29; 18:9; Isaiah 20:1; 2 Chronicles 32:22; Ezra 4:2,10). Together these kings reigned a hundred years, and evidently the importation of Gentiles continued sporadically during these years as indicated in Ezra 4:2,10.

Before Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser had already intruded his authority into the kingdom of Israel by taking captive many Israelites from the northern and eastern tribes (2 Kings 15:29). This precipitated a revolt against the king of Israel, Pekah, and he was replaced by Hoshea in a government coup, nine years before Hoshea’s own demise, in 732 B.C.

It is worthy of note that this revolt in 732 B.C. is 2520 years before the date of the French Revolution (1789), and the deposing of Hoshea in 723 B.C. is 2520 years before 1798 when Pope Pius VI was deposed from Rome. If the deportation of Israelites occurred the following year, that would be 2520 years from 1799. Thus seven prophetic “times” from the close of the ten-tribe kingdom bring us to the same point as the end of the 1260 years of Daniel and Revelation when Papacy ruled the Christian world.

Sargon and Sennacherib

Sargon, who followed Shalmaneser, is mentioned in Isaiah 20:1 as king of Assyria at the time his military officer fought against Ashdod of the Philistines and took it. For many years this text was challenged by critics who disputed whether a king named Sargon ruled Assyria at this time. Now, since the mid-1800s, when the ancient records of the Assyrian Empire were unearthed and translated, there is no further dispute on the subject, as his existence and his 17-year reign are amply testified to in the hundred-plus pages of his inscriptions. Among these is Sargon’s specific claim: “Ashdod . . . I besieged, I captured” (<I>Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia<I*>, Luckenbill, 1926, vol. 2, p. 32), which vindicates the testimony of Isaiah 20:1.

Sennacherib succeeded Sargon and carried the Assyrian conquest south to Judea. Some of the kings of Judah had made an alliance with Assyria previously which blunted any aggressive moves southward to Jerusalem (2 Kings 16:7). But at the very time of this alliance, Isaiah the prophet predicted that Assyria would subsequently “overflow” into Judah as well. “He shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings [armies] shall fill the breadth of thy land” (Isaiah 8:8). This occurred 22 years after the fall of Samaria when Sennacherib, who succeeded Sargon, invaded Judah, taking one after another fortified city; at last besieging Jerusalem itself, the head of the kingdom, the Assyrian flood having reached “even to the neck.”

The account of the siege is recorded both by Sennacherib and Isaiah. Both agree that Jerusalem was not taken, but the devastating depletion of Sennacherib’s army is explicit only in the Scriptural account. “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass [twenty-one years later, at the end of his 24-year reign], as he was worshipping in the house of Nishroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead” (2 Kings 19:35-37).

This deliverance occurred during the service of Isaiah the prophet and is recorded also in the book of Isaiah. The prophecies of part one of Isaiah take us up through the famous chapter 35, the kingdom chapter. Before the next prophetic part of Isaiah beginning with chapter 40 onward, we have a four-chapter historical interlude in chapters 36, 37, 38, 39, which records the Assyrian invasion of Judea and its aftermath.

Here we read of Sennacherib’s false boast that “Jehovah said unto me, Go up against this land [Judea], and destroy it” (Isaiah 36:10). Clearly God had not commissioned him, for God intervened and destroyed Sennacherib’s forces. (We should as well be cautious about crediting Pharaoh Necho’s claim in 2 Chronicles 35:21,22; he also failed in his campaign to assist then faltering Assyria against the Babylonians.)

The prophet Micah was contemporary with Isaiah, and the invasion by Sennacherib was the background for his prophecy in Micah 5:5 which brethren frequently apply to the invasion of Israel by Gog from the north, impending in our day. We believe this application is correct. “This shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight princes [margin] of men.” Shepherds is an idiom for kings and refers prophetically to the Church class who with Christ will intervene for Israel at a critical moment. The eight “princes” represent the ancient worthies who will be raised at this time to point Israel to the source of their deliverance. “Seven” reminds us of the seven stages of the Church followed by period “eight,” the kingdom, during which the ancient worthies will lead Israel and the world.

This deliverance will be at the very height of Israel’s debacle and will introduce the kingdom of Christ among men. This deliverance will come “early in the morning” of that new day as stipulated in 2 Kings 19:35. This picture introducing the kingdom occurred in the 14th year of Hezekiah, which reminds us of the 14 days of feasting when the Temple of Solomon was dedicated (1 Kings 8:65,66; notice the blessing on the “eighth day,” the kingdom).

Isaiah’s Account

Isaiah records the episode in chapters 36 and 37 of his book. Chapter 38 tells us of another crisis Hezekiah faced at the same time. Hezekiah was sick with a boil on his back and the infection evidently threatened his life. When he prayed to God, rehearsing his efforts to walk “before thee in truth and with a perfect heart,” Jehovah heard him and said, “I will add unto thy days fifteen years.” We know that this promise was given at the same time Sennacherib’s army was besieging Jerusalem for Isaiah 38:6 adds to this promise, “And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city.”

Thus Israel faces two devastating threats--the invasion from the north, and the systemic infection of sin from within. Only relief from both burdens will save them. We have seen already how God will relieve them from their attackers by the intervention of the saints and the ancient worthies. But how was the infectious boil healed? “Isaiah . . . said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaster upon the boil, and he shall recover” (Isaiah 38:21). Figs represent Israelites, and in this case the figs probably represent the leaders of Israel, the Ancient Worthies. Through their teachings and instruction Israel will learn to apply to Christ their Messiah for healing from sin and its influences, and thus recover.

Hezekiah received an extension of life of 15 years. Of course it would have made a nice picture to have given him everlasting life, but this was impossible for he was still under the Adamic condemnation of death. So the number of years by which his life was extended was chosen to symbolically represent the great deliverance. Micah represented the church by the number seven, and the ancient worthies by eight. The total of these, 15, is the number of years applied to Hezekiah’s recovery.

The Shadow of Ten Degrees

A sign was given Hezekiah of his impending deliverance: “This shall be a sign . . . I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down” (Isaiah 38:7,8). This was not a conventional sundial as we know it, but likely a shadow on a stairway, temporarily but remarkably turned back by a perihelion, or unusual configuration of clouds, or both.

Symbolically, the shadow represents the darkness of God's judgments against Israel during the Gospel age. They continued under the bondage of the "ten toes of the image" (Daniel 2), namely the kingdoms of Christendom. But that judgment began to roll away in 1914 when World War I broke apart those “gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder” (Psalms 107:16, cf. Daniel 4:15, Isaiah 45:2). Now Israel is an independent nation again. This fact is a sign to us and to Israel that Jehovah, through Christ, will effect the remainder of their deliverance. He will rescue them from the invasion of Gog from the north, and will heal their sin sickness.

The troubles brought upon Israel will be the instruments of turning them back to Jehovah, causing them to recognize Messiah (Zechariah 12:10). Then no further purpose will be served by the oppressors and they will be stopped. “Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks” (Isaiah 10:12)