still in Jerusalem, and he would not abandon his 'chosen people'. But he was also concerned about the neighbouring kingdom of Israel. These people were the descendants of the ten tribes who had split off from Judah and Jerusalem three centuries before, and made Samaria their capital city. They were God's chosen people too.
God even loved the fierce Assyrians, and their seemingly impregnable capital of Nineveh was not outside the scope of his concern. In fact, in their recent past God had sent a prophet (Jonah) to the city with a warning that if they did not change their ways, the city would be destroyed. Incredibly, the people of the time had heeded. But obviously the mood had worn off, and their great-grand children were once again on the war path.
So, though Isaiah was based in Jerusalem, his call to repentance and hope was intended to remind all who would hear that God ruled in the affairs of all men. No one and no place were outside of his concern. And even though, humanly speaking, things were looking grim for the little nations, God would surely intervene for them if they would turn to him in repentance and faith. But would they? The 'chosen people' had drifted far from God.
Isaiah's name meant, 'Yahweh is salvation', and he is best known for his many prophecies of a messiah who leads his people to an everlasting salvation. But Isaiah was not a vague mystic, with his head in the clouds, offering spiritual platitudes as the world fell apart around him. The chosen people had immediate problems, and they needed God's help right then. The Assyrians were coming.
The alarm congealed the hearts of people in the ancient Near East. Nations trembled at rumours that Assyria's invincible army was on the prowl. Nineveh's warlords employed calculated terror! One Assyrian leader boasted: "I stormed the mountain peaks and took them.... The heads of their warriors I cut off, and I formed them into a pillar over against their city...I flayed all the chief men who had revolted" (Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past, pp. 202-3).
These were the forces that threatened Samaria and Jerusalem. But Isaiah the Prophet was as relentless as the armies of Nineveh. He knew that cruel Assyria while the empire was at the peak of its power: "When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, 'I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look of his eyes' " (Isaiah 10:12).
The spreading shadow
But before the humbling of Nineveh, Isaiah's God had a bone to pick with the complacent, idolatrous Israelites and the citizens of Samaria. God had chosen these people to be an example to the world. He had given them his law, and had promised to bless them and protect them as they showed the world another way of life. Instead, the Israelites had joined in the slippery game of power politics and greedy commercialism like all the other nations.
Isaiah sang an inspired 'protest song' against his countrymen's moral and spiritual degeneration, likening them to a vineyard that was no longer fruitful: "When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness but heard cries of distress" (Isaiah 5:7).
The doom of Samaria
"Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard, " the song continued. "I will take away its hedge, and will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled" (Isaiah 5:5). And that is precisely what happened. Samaria refused to heed the warning message, and soon felt the consequences. The forces of the Emperor Shalmaneser V (727-722BC) and then Sargon II (722-705BC) swept into Israel on their way to trounce the Egyptians. Samaria was destroyed and leveled, her people uprooted.
One city down; two to go.
Nineveh's turn
Nineveh had become the undisputed power center of that ancient world. As capital of a warrior state, it was built on the loot of nations it had conquered. Nineveh's rulers boasted of its power and prosperity. But through his spokesman, Isaiah, God decreed doom for Assyria and its capital, Nineveh: "Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!... The Lord Almighty, will send wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame" (Isaiah 10:5, 16).
That happened. The Assyrians had refused to learn the lesson that instruments of judgement will themselves be judged. About ninety years after the Assyrians had destroyed Samaria, avenging armies from Babylon and Media finally closed the ring around proud Nineveh. In 612 BC the city was taken and destroyed.
Two cities down. One to go? Not necessarily.
Isaiah's finest hour
In Isaiah's day, the Assyrians had advanced to The very walls of Jerusalem, but Judah's king, Hezekiah (716-687BC), had learned from the fate of Samaria. He listened to Isaiah, and even as the Assyrians camped at the gates, he prayed a prayer of repentance for himself and his people: "It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands...Now O Lord our God, deliver us from his hands, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord are God" (2 kings 19:17-19).
His courage restored, and inspired by Isaiah's reassurances (Isaiah 37:21-29), Hezekiah refused to be cowed by the taunts of Sennacherib's army.
The results were momentous. Both the biblical history (Isaiah 19:35-36) and secular archaeology tell of a setback during Sennacherib's last campaign. The Taylor Prism in the British Museum records Sennacherib's boast of shutting up Hezekiah in Jerusalem 'like a bird in a cage'. But, it contains no record of the fall of Jerusalem. To many scholars this is evidence that Sennacherib faced and embarrassing setback outside Jerusalem (Finegan, p. 213).
The defeat of the Assyrians after the repentance of king Hezekiah and his people saved the city of Jerusalem. It was a wonderful validation of Isaiah's counsel: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). Jerusalem was spared the fate of Samaria and Nineveh.
All this happened long, long ago, in a world that was very different to our own. But some things have not changed. The nations of the modern world still behave like wild beasts, stalking and preying on each other. There are still superpowers, and little countries try to keep out of their way. And there is still a God in heaven whose power is not diminished, and in whose sight the nations are still just a drop in the bucket.
Isaiah's God has not changed.
Two and a half thousand years after Isaiah prophesied, the world is still a dangerous place. There have been other 'Assyrias', other 'Samarias', and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are once again hoping for peace. But we still don't know how to live in peace. We still need, nationally and individually, to heed Isaiah's call to turn to God for help. It was then, and it still is, then only sure way to peace.
This tale of three cities remains a powerful message for today.
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