NL111 Swords into Plowshares

How can we tell coercion from truth?

Commentary on Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; then 2:1-4

Allie Rosner Bass

Isaiah 2 opens with an image of universal worship of YHWH. The God who, up to this point in history, has been known as Israel’s national god is now depicted as a God to whom all nations make pilgrimage. They seek God’s instruction, and they desire to make God’s ways their ways. As all nations recognize the sovereignty of YHWH, the relationships between those nations also change: Those who once were enemies, fighting under the banner of their own national deities, lay down their arms and turn them into tools designed for mutual flourishing.

This prophetic image of a someday-time, echoed in Micah 4, has not yet come to fruition in our day. And it certainly had not in 701 BCE, when a top Assyrian official called the Rabshakeh showed up at the city wall of Jerusalem.

Assyria had already for several decades been the major power player in the region, steadily seeking to extend its power westward from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. The small and vulnerable kingdom of Judah had a complicated relationship with Assyria, alternately paying tribute to their king and ceasing tribute in acts of rebellion when it felt safer. Assyria had reason to be feared: Its army was the biggest and most powerful in the known world, its war practices famously cruel. The other major regional power, Egypt, was preoccupied with its own internal political turmoil at the time and could not be counted on for help—though there was always the temptation to think it could be.

In the waning years of the eighth century BCE, King Hezekiah of Judah decided once again to stop paying tribute to Assyria. The Assyrian army responded like it did best, decimating much of the Judean countryside, including its second-biggest city, Lachish. This is the scene on which the Rabshakeh appears. The Assyrian official stands at the conduit of the upper pool on the road to the Fuller’s Field, just outside the city wall—the same place where the prophet Isaiah had once met Hezekiah’s father, Ahab, urging him to keep the faith in the face of an earlier military threat (Isaiah 7).

With the Assyrian army still engaged at Lachish, the Rabshakeh begins laying the psychological groundwork for Jerusalem’s surrender. He first addresses Hezekiah. Hezekiah’s confidence in his own strength, he says, is unfounded. His army is nonexistent. It is useless to think that Egypt will come to his aid. Then, in an interesting move, the Rabshakeh brings God into the conversation: Hezekiah, he says, has destroyed sites of Yahwistic worship other than the Jerusalem temple. While the Bible’s authors judge this to be a good thing, the Rabshakeh sows seeds of doubt. He takes Hezekiah’s devotion to YHWH and turns it back against him.

Then he makes another surprising turn: “Is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it?” he asks (36:10). “The Lord said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” This Assyrian envoy, who does not worship YHWH, nonetheless claims the authority to speak for YHWH.

The Rabshakeh then addresses the people of Judah as a whole, speaking in their own language. His message mixes divine threat with heavenly promise. He tells them not to listen to Hezekiah and his assurances that YHWH will save them. But if they make peace with him, the Rabshakeh—that is, if they surrender to Assyria—he promises each their own vine and fig tree, an image of flourishing that Micah includes in his own vision of a Jerusalem in which all nations stream to the house of the Lord.

In the Rabshakeh’s mouth the words are not God’s vision of peace and prosperity but a tactic of manipulation. He then turns back to threat: “Who among all the gods of these countries have delivered their countries out of my hand?” (36:20). If their gods didn’t save them, what makes the people of Judah think that YHWH will be any different?

The Rabshakeh does not worship the God of Israel and Judah. Instead, he uses God. He claims God’s authority, sows doubt in God’s ability to protect, twists the visions of God’s own prophets into empty Assyrian promises. He has an advantage: He speaks with the power of an army behind him. There is, of course, no shortage of leaders and powerful people today who speak for God in similar ways, to manipulate and evoke fear.

What do you do when confronted by the promises and threats of a person who claims to speak for the God you thought you knew? How can we tell coercion from truth? Hezekiah knows one way: He calls on someone he trusts to convey God’s word faithfully. The prophet Isaiah has not shied away from hard messages before. But he also has never neglected to remind kings to put their faith in God alone. This is the clear message of the one person who really does speak for God in the story: “Do not be afraid.”

And then, just like that, the threat is over. According to Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19, the angel of the Lord set out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians (37:36). Historians surmise that the Assyrian army was called back to more pressing matters at home. In any case, Jerusalem was spared. The Rabshakeh, who sowed doubt and made promises in God’s name, could not really speak for God.

Of course, Jerusalem wasn’t spared forever. When the Babylonian army destroyed the city in 586 BCE, God’s people would be forced to contend with questions of a God who seemed not to have fought for them as they had hoped and expected. Maybe these are questions we all have to keep contending with: How much security does God really promise us? Who can be trusted to speak for God? Whose side does God fight on? In the midst of them, the message resounds: “Do not be afraid.”

The deliverance of Jerusalem in 701 BCE offers a small hope of victory for Isaiah’s vision: a world in which nations no longer fight about whose side God is on, but instead lay down their instruments of war and trade them for tools of mutual flourishing; a world where people no longer speak falsely for God to threaten and manipulate, but where all people seek God together.

PRAYER OF THE DAY

God of deliverance, you promised prosperity and peace to the exiles of Jerusalem. Grant us to prosper, not for riches, but for faith, so that our lives may be a blessing to all. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.