128. PEKAH (759-739)

[2 KINGS XV. 27-31.]

Pekah made an alliance with Rezin, king of Syria, and both invaded together the empire of Judah, over which Ahaz was then reigning. At that time Isaiah had already commenced his grand prophetic career, and played an important part in all public matters. He mentions the war and its issue in the following words: 'And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim; and his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. Then said the Lord to Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field, and say to him, Take heed and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted on account of the two tails of these smoking firebrands, the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal. Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be no more a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.' And as the prophet had described and

foretold, so it happened. Ahaz called in the aid of the Assyrians and their valiant king Tiglath-Pileser, who eagerly seized this opportunity for obtaining a footing in Palestine. They descended upon the east-Jordanic provinces and upon the northern districts of the kingdom of Israel, invading Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, carrying the people away as captives into the heart of Assyria, and transplanting Assyrians into those newly-acquired territories. Thus Israel was materially weakened, and was ripe to fall a prey to any foreign conqueror. Hoshea, the son of Elah, headed a conspiracy against Pekah, slew him, and then seized the crown. He was the last king of Israel.

129. HOSHEA (739–722).

[2 KINGS XVII.]

Ushered in by revolt and violence, this reign was one of disgrace and misfortune-a fearful termination of centuries of wickedness, bloodshed, and idolatry. Shalmaneser had followed Tiglath-Pileser as king of Assyria, and had inherited his love of conquest and daring ambition. He subdued a part of Phoenicia, and made the king of Israel tributary to Assur. Hoshea tried to shake off the burdensome yoke; to effect this, he secretly sought the powerful help of So or Sevechus, king of Egypt, and then he refused to transmit to Assyria the imposed tax. By these steps he speedily brought final ruin upon his country. Shalmaneser, with his immense host, poured in upon the weak and exhausted kingdom of Israel; he seized and imprisoned Hoshea, and besieged the last stronghold and the pride of the land, the beautiful city of Samaria. After three years of horrible suffering on the part of the besieged, Samaria fell into the hand of the enemy. The Israelites were carried away into the remote provinces of Mesopotamia and Media, while Assyrians were sent to colonise the fair kingdom of

the north. With an instinctive fear of the great God of the Hebrews, these Assyrian settlers tried to add His worship to their own religious practices, so that the land soon became the scene of the strangest idolatry.

Thus the kingdom of the ten tribes was for ever overthrown. And this happened,' says the Bible, ‘because the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel; and on account of the kings of Israel they had chosen. And the children of Israel did secretly those things which were not right against the Lord their God, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city. And they set up images and groves in every high hill and under every garden tree; and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and they wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. . . . Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn you from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the laws which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets. Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. . . . And they made for themselves molten images, two calves, and made Ashtartes, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divinations and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.'

...

The Israelites were almost without exception ruled by weak or sinful kings; the gloom of their history is rarely relieved by a ray of prosperity or hope; yet their ultimate fate, that of being entirely merged in the race of their hated conquerors, is full of a melancholy and touching interest. For the ten tribes of Israel were not even permitted, like the sister kingdom of Judah, to bequeath to later ages and western nations the memory of rich and varied destinies. They were irretrievably lost, and a deep and impenetrable silence clings round their dispersion. The thick folds of the veil have never been lifted; the words of the prophet are verified:

'The virgin of Israel is fallen, she shall no more rise; she is forsaken upon her land, there is none to raise her up.'

THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH.

(975-958.)

130. REHOBOAM (975-958).

[1 KINGS XIV. 21-31; 2 CHRON. X.-XII.]

It is necessary now to retrace our steps to the time of the disruption of the Hebrew monarchy, when Rehoboam, the son of king Solomon, after vainly trying to defeat Jeroboam, and to win back the rebellious tribes, retired to his own capital Jerusalem. He felt that he must content himself with the rule of the two faithful provinces of Judah and Benjamin, which were gradually amalgamated under the name of the kingdom of Judah.

In extent, fertility, and variety of resources, the northern kingdom far outshone its southern rival: whilst the latter, as above pointed out, possessed the famed city of Jerusalem, and the sacred Temple hallowed by the Ark and the tablets of the Law. There could be no second Jerusalem, as there could be no second Temple. The chivalry and valour of David, the unsurpassed wisdom of Solomon, and the power and splendour of both, seemed inseparably associated with the holy city. Cherished memories of early days clung fresh and unfading round the bleak and barren hill country of Judah, dear to all its inhabitants as the cradle of their glorious heroes. The little kingdom was hemmed in between the Mediterranean and the desert. Ephraim and Dan were its northern