Some of the material to be published has not been published since it appeared in the Mercersberg Review in the 19th century, but the first volume in the series is a fresh edition of Nevin’s classic The Mystical Presence: And the Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper (Mercersburg Theology Study),  with thorough newly written introductions, explanatory notes, translations, etc. Get it, study it, and look for the future volumes in the series over the next few years.

He sees it going the other direction too:

“The same is true of a certain Protestant who became Catholic in order to find the liturgical and authoritarian support of which he felt the need, but in whom I see the same type of inner disturbance.  The stamp of condemnatory criticisms of Catholicism received in childhood has made it impossible for him to be wholeheartedly absorbed therein, despite his religious zeal in the attempt.”

In the modern world many “never succeed in becoming rooted, who float, so to speak, between two churches or between atheism and faith, or who go successively from one group to another, always with zeal but never able to commit themselves for good”  (Zygmunt Bauman avant la lettre!)  He believes that it is “for the most part” a matter of “noble souls sincerely desiring to obey God and loyally seeking through these detours the deep spiritual experience for which they long.”  In general, he says, “their spiritual life bears little fruit, always stumbling against certain realities which they cannot sincerely accept in any church.  Their very spirituality ends up in isolating them rather than in bringing them together with others.  There are certain blessings found only in fellowship and in total surrender to one’s church.”

He observes that pastors discuss theology, church affairs, and even pastoral care, but “they practice no mutual pastoral care.  They struggle alone with their inextricable family problems, with their temptations, with the guilt of their secret faults, never daring to unburden themselves to their colleagues or to their parishioners because they are afraid of being condemned or of causing a scandal.  I have known one pastor who used to confess to a priest in order to find inner peace.”

I wonder if this is a constant of church life, or if there’s something peculiar to modern Christianity, or Protestantism in particular, that creates the sad situation Tournier describes.

If a thing is in its self-presentation, as Heidegger says, if the truth of a thing is its unveiling, then being and being-known are pretty much two ways to describe the same thing.  This isn’t exactly epistemology anymore, because it doesn’t assume a subject-object dualism; it’s not exactly ontology anymore either, for the same reason.  From Heidegger’s perspective, epistemology was parasitic on ontology scoured of epistemology, and vice versa.

Two theological observations: First, the notion that things are self-presentation seems to be one way to formulate the biblical notion that creation is God’s speech.  Things communicate themselves because they are the language of God’s communication to us.  Second, the notion that a thing is its self-presentation sure sounds a lot like the Father’s being in His self-presenting Word.

One of the interesting effects of this internal reading is how little information we have about Hezekiah.  So far as the reader of Isaiah knows, when Hezekiah appears at the beginning of chapter 36, he is an identical twin of his vacillating, compromised father Ahaz.  When the Rabshakeh takes his position in the same place as Isaiah did in Isaiah 7, it seems we are set up for a repeat of Ahaz’s faithlessness.

Much of what we know of Hezekiah’s reign as king comes from the Rabshakeh rather than from Isaiah himself.

We know from 2 Kings, for instance, that Hezekiah was a faithfu king who embarked on a program of liturgical reform that pleased yahweh.  The only reference to that reform in Isaiah is in 36:7: “Is it not Yahweh whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar.’”  Because we have read Kings, we know that the Rabshakeh is spinning the reform to undermine Hezekiah.  But we can’t know that from Isaiah itself.  Is Hezekiah on Yahweh’s side or not?  What is “this altar”?  Jeroboam also set up an altar and demanded that the Northern kingdom worship there (1 Kings 12:25-33).  Is Hezekiah perhaps another Jeroboam?  We can’t tell from the opening paragraphs of the story of Isaiah 36, which puts us in the same position of uncertainty and bewilderment as the men on the wall of Jerusalem who overhear the exchange between the Rabshakeh and Hezekiah’s delegation.

We know further from 2 Kings 18 that Hezekiah had once been a vassal of Assyria, then rebelled, but again the only oblique reference to this in Isaiah comes from the Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36:5).  Can we trust the Rabshakeh?  Is he giving us the straight story?  His evaluation of Egypt (Isaiah 36:6) is similar to Isaiah’s own; like Isaiah too, he claims that Yahweh has sent Assyria into Judah (v. 10).  He sounds a lot like Isaiah.  Perhaps his evaluation of Hezekiah’s reforms and rebellion is also Isaiah’s own.  Perhaps Isaiah too would denounce Hezekiah’s reform as an attack on Yahweh; perhaps he would discourage rebellion (as Jeremiah does later).  Again, if we stick strictly with what Isaiah records about Hezekiah, we are as uncertain about the truth of the Rabshakeh’s claims as the men who listen to him.

As a literary device, deleting references to Yahweh’s approval of Hezekiah’s reforms has the effect of putting us into the middle of the confusions of the events alongside the participants.  Within the narrator’s point of view – a narrator who provides Yahweh’s own evaluations – we are left uncertain.

Even when his delegation rends clothes and returns to the king in mourning, it’s not clear that Hezekiah is any better than Ahaz.  We’re not told why they rend their clothes.  They might, after all, be mourning the future devastation of the city.  Only at the beginning of chapter 37 do things become clear: Hezekiah rends his clothes too, but then immediately makes his way to the house of God.  Then he sends for Isaiah – a very un-Ahaz thing to do.  Then he refers to the “reproach” against Yahweh that has come from the Rabshakeh.  As chapter 37 continues, Hezekiah’s faithfulness shines even more clearly, as he offers a model prayer in the house of prayer (vv. 14-20).  The uncertainties of chapter 36 give way to the clarify of chapter 37.

When the Assyrians first threatened Hezekiah, he went to the temple to get tribute to pay the Assyrian king (2 Kings 18:13-16).  When Sennacherib invades, Hezekiah again goes to the temple, this time to pray (Isaiah 37:1, 14-20).  He is the only king in Judah’s history to use the temple properly – as a house of prayer for all nations.

THE TEXT

“And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz. . . .” (Isaiah 37:1-38).

BLASPHEMY

The Rabshakeh’s speech from the conduit of the upper gate ends with blasphemy against Yahweh (Isaiah 36:18-20), and when Sennacherib withdraws to fight at Libnah the Rabshakeh sends the blasphemy to Hezekiah in a letter (Isaiah 37:8-14).  The blasphemy raises the stakes on the siege of Jerusalem.  Sennacherib throws down the gauntlet and turns it into a contest of gods.  Yahweh overhears, and is determined to respond (Isaiah 36:5-7).  Hezekiah and his court rend their clothes and mourn over the blasphemy that is spoken at Jerusalem.  Yahweh sees their mourning and acts.

PRAYER

The temple is a place of sacrifice and festivity, but at the dedication Solomon describes it as a place of prayer (1 Kings 8:29-30, 33, 35, 37, 42, 44).  Yahweh responds to Solomon’s prayer with the promise that his “eyes” and “heart” will be directed toward the temple (1 Kings 9:3).  Hezekiah’s prayer in the temple builds on this promise (Isaiah 37:17).   He treats prayer as a legal petition, and brings the blasphemous letter Yahweh as evidence (v. 14). Hezekiah also appeals to Yahweh’s reputation: Assyria has burned all the false gods in fire (vv. 18-19), and the only way for Yahweh to prove Himself God is to deliver Jerusalem from Sennacherib’s hand (v. 20).

PROPHECY

Hezekiah is one of the few kings who voluntary asks a prophet for help (Isaiah 37:2; cf. Isaiah 7; 1 Kings 17).  Isaiah’s prophecy assures the king that Yahweh has heard.  He mockingly rebukes Sennacherib for claiming to have Yahweh-like power (Isaiah 37:22-25), and reminds Sennacherib that Yahweh plans his conquests (v. 26).  Because of Assyria’s pride, their growth and glory will be as brief as grass on the housetop (v. 27).  Sennacherib might seem a terrifying beast, but Yahweh is the beast-tamer (v. 29).  Isaiah gives Hezekiah a sign: Judah is not withering grass but a fruitful harvest, roots going deep and fruit abundant (vv. 30-31).  The sequence of years in verse 30 reminds us of the Sabbatical promises of Torah (Leviticus 25:18-22).  Yahweh will give the land rest from Assyrian devastation, and the people of Jerusalem will go out from the city as Israel was delivered from Egypt.

PASSOVER

At night, Yahweh sends His angel of death to destroys 185,000 in the Assyrian camp, driving Sennacherib home to a ignominious end.  The Passover that destroys Assyria is new life for Judah, and the “third year” promise of deliverance points to the “third day” resurrection of Jesus.  The tree was threatened with destruction, but survived.  Jerusalem was dead; but behold, she lives.

A. Hear! Thus says the great king Sennacherib, vv 13-14a

B. Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you, v 14b

C. Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust Yahweh, v 15-16a

D. Thus says the king of Assyria: A promised land, vv 16b-17

C’. Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you into trusting Yahweh, vv 18-20

B’. Silence, mourning, prayer from delegation and Hezekiah, 36:21-37:4

A’. Thus says Yahweh, who hears, 37:5-7

The issue gets raised initially by the delegation from Hezekiah that meets with the Rabshakeh at the conduit of the upper pool.  When the Rabshakeh speaks to them in street Hebrew, they ask him to speak instead to speak in the lingua franca of the day, Aramean (Isaiah 36:11).  The literate officials can “hear” Aramean, but the mean on the wall cannot.  They want to be able to spin the message from Sennacherib, not let it get unedited to the people, who might be unsettled by it.

The Rabshakeh refuses to comply, and instead continues to speak in “Judaean.”  His first word to the men on the wall is the plural of shema: “Hear (O Israel), the words of the great king” (v. 13).  He warns them not to “hear” Hezekiah (v. 16).  The Judean delegation says nothing, but they report back so that King Hezekiah “hears” (37:1).  He tears his clothes, and enters the temple, but he goes in the hope that Yahweh has “heard” the words of the Rabshakeh (37:4).  Isaiah assures Hezekiah that Yahweh has heard (37:22-23).

Yahweh’s response is to put something in the ear of Sennacherib: He will “hear” a rumor that will make him scramble back to his own land (37:7).  Yahweh is an eavesdropper on the original diplomatic gathering.  He hears, marks, and acts.  The God who calls Israel to hear Himself hears, and saves.

The same two names appear in Isaiah 36:3: The very same Eliakim ben Hilkiah is sent out as part of a delegation to the Rabshakeh of Assyria, and along with him is one “Shebna the scribe.”  This might be the same Shebna, demoted from house steward to scribe; or it might be another.  Regardless, the presence of the same two names in the two passages hints at a connection between them.

The first passage, Isaiah 22, describes a demotion and promotion, and ends with the promise that the one with the key of David will open and shut at will (v. 22).  Eliakim’s reappearance in chapter 36 is promising: He opens so that no one can shut, and he shuts a no one can open – a good skill set to have when the Assyrians are banging at the gates of your city.  Eliakim’s presence suggests that, no matter how powerful Sennacherib’s army may be, he will not be able to get through a gate that Eliakim has locked.  As the steward of the royal house, further, Eliakim is a peg in a firm place, a peg on which the Lord will hang the glory of David’s house (vv. 23-24).  Again, his presence in the delegation is a reassurance: So long as Eliakim is the house steward, the glory of David’s house will be intact, since Eliakim will be “a throne of glory in his father’s house” (v. 23).  Someday, the peg will give way (v. 25) but not yet.

What is the import of this parallel?  Mainly, it sorts out the characters.  Isaiah and the Rabshakeh stand in the same place, and the Rabshakeh actually says much the same thing that Isaiah has been saying about Assyria and the folly of relying on Egypt.  At the same time, the parallel scenes highlight parallels between Ahaz, whom Isaiah confronts at the conduit of the upper pool, and Hezekiah, who sends a delegation to meet with the Rabshakeh in the same location.

The two prophets (Isaiah and the Rabshakeh) are linked; so are the two kings, and their situations, in that both are threatened by Gentile powers. Isaiah promises that the kings who threaten Ahaz will be removed, and offers a sign; Rabshakeh warns that Jerusalem is doomed, but in the following chapter Isaiah reappears and offers a sign (37:30).  The main point regarding the kings is one of contrast: Ahaz refuses the sign and doesn’t trust Yahweh or His prophet.  Hezekiah turns to Yahweh in the midst of the siege and is delivered.

Isaiah 37:37 describes Sennacherib’s departure with four verbs: He departed, went, returned, dwelt.  The fourfold repetition emphasizes the completeness of the departure; the whole land to the four corners weas cleared of Assyrians.

But the sequence also suggests an exodus motif.  ”Departed” translates nasa’, used in the story of Israel’s journey from Egypt (Exodus 12:37; 13:20; 15:22; 16:1).  ”Went” translates the colorless and common verb yalak, “walk,” which also appears in the Exodus story (Exodus 12:28, 31, 32; 13:21; 15:22).  In leaving Egypt, and especially in the second exodus from Babylon, Israel “returns” (shub) to the land of the fathers.  And the whole point of the exodus is to go to the place where Yahweh dwells, to build the house for Yahweh at the foot of Sinai (cf. Exodus 15:17); so too Sennacherib “dwells” at Nineveh long enough to be killed in the “house of Nisroch his god” (Isaiah 37:38).

After the “Passover” at Jerusalem, when the angel of death kills 185,000 Assyrians, Assyria departs, goes, returns, dwells.  It is an inverted exodus, not a march of triumph but a slinking away in defeat.  Judah doesn’t move at all, yet they are the ones that are genuinely delivered, they “depart, go, return, dwell” in safety.

Still, strictly, if God is not part of a genus, nothing in God is an individual in a genus either.  It is not as if there is a general category of “person” into which the Father, Son, and Spirit all fit.  Perhaps failure to recognize the analogical distance in the use of the word “Person” as it relates to each of the three contributed to the unitarian slant of some Western Trinitarian theology.  For if each is “person” in precisely the same way, then there has to be an overarching singular category.

No Kabbalist he.  Yet, he goes on:

“The meaning [of the Tetragrammaton] is this: Iod = ‘origin,’ he = ‘this,’ vaf = ‘and,’ he = ‘this.’  Let these be put together grammatically and in Latin this sentence will result: ‘The origin of this and this.’ And this fits with the name of the holy Trinity in all respects, because the Father in his divinity is the origin of this, that is the Son, and this, that is the Ho y Spirit.  For these pronouns, ‘this and this,’ rather obscurely represent the Son an Holy Spirit, as was suitable to that scripture in which the mystery of the holy trinity was not to be revealed but was only indicated.”

Kendall Soulen (The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Distinguishing the Voices, pp. 90-92) adds this: “Luther notes that some Christians have proposed that the Tetragrammaton foreshadows not only the name of the Trinity . . . but also the name ‘Jesus,’ inasmuch as the latter consists of the Tetragrammaton plus the letter shin.  According to this theory . . . the incarnation of the Word marks the end of the epoch of the ineffable name of four letters, and inaugurates the yet mightier age of the effable Pentagrammaton, ‘Jesus.’  Luther admits that he wishes the theory were true, but in the end he rejects it for etymological reasons.”

In Soulen’s view, Luther’s adherence to a version of Christian Kaballah is reflected in his decision to render the Tetragrammaton as HERR in his translation of the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, since the name is used exclusively of “the real true God.”

But not quite the end, or at least not quite everywhere.  In a 1903 article, Fred Conybeare explored the “survival of animal sacrifices inside the Christian church.”  The Armenian church is a case in point.    When King Irdat was converted by the preaching of Gregory the Illuminator, himself the scion of the “leading pagan priestly family” that had made chief pagan shrine part of the family estate, Gregory gave advice regarding the distribution of sacrificial perquisites to Christian priests: “Your portions of the offerings shall be the hide and right-hand parts of the spine, the limb and fat, and the tail and heart and lobe of lungs, and the tripe with the lard; of the ribs and shank-bones a part, the tongue and the right ear, and the right eye and all the secret parts.”

This custom long outlasted the age of Gregory, which was the age of Diocletian.

In the late 12th century, the Armenian Patriarch Nerses Shnorhali defended animal sacrifices against the criticisms of Byzantine theologians.  He cites Gregory as authority:  ”He enjoined the people to substitute for the oblations which they had been wont to offer to filthy idols, oblations of animals sacrificed to the only God; with these oblations was to be mingled salt duly blessed, and such offerings were to be made on the Pascha of the Resurrection, on every Dominical Feast, on the Feasts of illustrious Saints, and lastly, in commemoration of those who have died in Christ, as almsgivings to be eaten in their name by the hungry.”

Unsurprisingly, at the same time Armenian priests continued to form a priestly caste: “the common village priests continued for centuries to be taken from the old priestly families; indeed, it is doubtful whether the idea of a man’s taking holy orders, not because his father had them before him, but because he has a serious call, has even yet established itself in the far East, so firmly engrained in the popular mind is the idea of priestly families.”

In Armenia at least, the process of weaning culture away from “flesh” – animal sacrifices, genealogical qualifications for priests – was centuries-long.

On the plus side (sort of): “Hegel makes the symbol or ‘representation’ (Vorstellung) of the Trinity central once against for Protestant theology by regarding it as nothing less than the symbol of symbols.”  But this plus is soon negated: “Thought rightly, the symbol of the Trinity is not a dogmatic abstraction; rather it is the perfect symbol for a dynamic, self-differentiating divine who necessarily becomes in and through history.”  On the plus side, philosophically “the symbol corrects for various forms of monism”; and theologically “it legitimates Christianity over other religions which are unable to synthesize unity and plurality, stasis and becoming.  More specifically, it validates Christianity over other monotheistic faiths, and in doing do determines them to be unphilosophical, that is, not capable of being assimilated by and justified within a self-authenticating conceptual network.”  Yet, on the negative side, “Hegel makes it plain that he has no time for a tri-personal divine, which he deems to reduce to tritheism.”

Despite his regular insistence that he was a faithful Lutheran, Hegel is in the end a Trinitarian heretic, and O’Regan lists five crucial departures from Lutheran orthodoxy:

1) Hegel insists “that the Trinity is not a mystery.”

2) Though Hegel has a “facsimile” of the immanent Trinity in that he “admits a triadically shaped divine as the non-temporal ground of the economy,” his immanent Trinity is not that of Augustine or Aquinas or Lutheran orthodoxy: He rejects “any tri-personal view of the Trinity” and “the eternally differentiated dynamic divine is considered neither to be self-subsistent nor fully real.”

3) For Hegel, “creation, as the ‘other’ to the divine, is at the same time a divine self-othering.”  As it must be, since he doesn’t really affirm an immanent self-othering in God.  (But then, without an immanent self-othering, how does God self-other himself in creation without alienation from himself?  How can such a God create without creation being the death of God?)

4) Hegel can’t help ending up a Gnostic in the sense that Rowan Williams uses the term (an identity of creation and fall): “The purpose of the self-othering in the world of nature and finite spirit is to supply something like a theodicy in which the ultimate justification of evil and horrendous suffering in the world is that this is the only way – the ‘logical’ way – in which the divine becomes all that it can be.”

5) Rather than grounding economy in ontology, Hegel goes in the opposite direction: “It is the economy – the work of the divine in the world and history – that retrospectively gives authentic reality to the immanent sphere of the divine that it would not otherwise enjoy. The immanent Trinitarian sphere requires the economy in order to be real or actual (wirklich).  As a result, “The relation between the immanent Trinity and the economy is . . . erotic in the strict metaphysical sense of being government by a movement that overcomes lack.”  The immanent Trinity becomes “something like the first moment of a process of divine self-development from the less to the more real.”

Samuel M. Powell writes the chapter on 19th-century Protestant Trinitarian thought, which, contrary to some reports, did actually exist.  His treatment of Schleiermacher helpfully exposes both the strengths and weaknesses of his work (pp. 270-2).

Schleiermacher is often accused of consigning the Trinity to an appendix.  Powell disagrees: “Schleiermacher placed the Trinity last in his system, not because it forms an appendix . . . but instead because it forms the keystone . . . of Christian doctrine,” and as such is “important to understanding his system.”  Christian Faith is organized to move from theological abstractions about God toward concrete knowledge of God.  Along the way, “The penultimate concepts for God are wisdom and love, for these attributes are most concretely related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus.”  At the capstone is the Trinity, which “when fully articulated, would express the most concrete knowledge of God. . . . the Trinity has to come last because it depends on the historical appearance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

Ja zu Schleiermacher.

But Nein too.  Though “Schleiermacher did not reject every aspect of the traditional doctrine,” he reformulated the whole in the light of the his conviction that the feeling of absolute dependence was the touchstone of all doctrine.  He thought that the “traditional doctrine said to much,” since “nothing in the actual experience of believers . . . requires belief that God exists as three eternally distinct persons.”  God, he argued, is “a unity without difference.”  The Trinity does indicate a truth: “in the incarnation, the divine being (which, Schleiermacher insisted, should be thought of as an activity) was united with human nature in a person-forming activity.  The result of this activity was Jesus Christ.  Thereafter, the divine being was united with human nature a second time; however, in this case the union was not person-forming but community-forming. The result was the Church and its common spirit, the Holy Spirit.”  These “uniting-activities,” in contrast to the immanent Trinity, “were directed experienced in the Christian life and expressed in the New Testament and creedal affirmations about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

In sum, “For Schleiermacher . . . the doctrine of the Trinity is not about eternal, personal distinctions in God.  It is instead the way in which, in history, the divine being unites with human nature.”  The “distinctive features of Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God” are thus these: “God as a unity without difference, the divine being as pure activity, the process by which God becomes a Trinity by successive unions with human nature.”

To which we again say, Nein.

At the end of his discussion, Tuveson (pp. 134-6) makes a revealing comparison of the American sense of destiny with the Russian legend of the white cowl. According to the legend, Constantine made and gave a white cowl to Pope Sylvester, which was passed on to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054.  When a later Pope demanded the return of the cowl, Pope Sylvester appeared in a dream to the Patriarch and told him to send it to Novgorod, to the land that “will be called Radiant Russia, which, by the Grace of God, will be glorified with blessings” and will eventually “become more honorable than the two Romes which preceded it.”  This legend of a translatio imperii is the “cornerstone of Russian national ideology,” and Tuveson thinks it bears comparison with the notion that America is the purified version of Britain, since Britain, “although the pioneer of the Reformation, . . . failed to fulfill its task.”

Similar as the two ideologies are, they produce very different nationalisms and national missions:

“The role of ‘radiant Russia’ is to preserve the true religion like a treasure, unchanged, and to bring the other nations into the fold of the church in preparation for the sequence of eschatological events, all of which are yet to happen.  It is to be a solider in the cause of Christ, but not, in the sense of the hymn, a ‘Christian soldier.’  The Russian program is static, dedicated to maintaining a faith already completed.”

In American millennialism, by contrast, there is a “dynamic expectation” and an expectation of progress.  Americanist eschatology sees English Protestant empire expanding ever westward until America becomes (in Dwight’s words) the location where “bliss shall spring . . . As, from the tomb, when great Messiah rose, / heaven bloom’d with joy, and Earth forgot her woes.”  Russia was the fifth monarchy already, and just needed to hold on.  America would bring the fifth monarchy: “Here Empire’s last, and brighter throne shall rise; / And Peace and Right, and Freedom, greet the skies” (Dwight again).

We want help making a decision, guidance for marriage and child-rearing, instructions about how to overcome sin.  In response, God gives us a book full of genealogies, architectural blueprints and procedures for offering sacrifice, narratives of ancient history.  The Bible doesn’t merely teach us lessons.  God gave it to forge our memories, open our eyes, and stretch our imaginations.

THE TEXT

“Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.  Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh with a great army. . . .” (Isaiah 36:1-37:7).

BIRD IN A CAGE

The Assyrian threat has overshadowed Isaiah’s prophecy from the beginning (cf. 7:10-8:8; 10:1-23). Assyria has already taken Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom (2 Kings 17).  Hezekiah himself is a vassal of Assyria for a time, sending tribute (Isaiah 36:5b; cf. 2 Kings 18:1-16).  According to Assyrian accounts, Sennacherib captures 46 cities in Judah and enslaved over 200,000 people, leaving Hezekiah shut up in the capital city “like a bird in a cage.”  Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty are on the edge of the grave.

ASSYRIAN PROPHET

After taking the coastal city of Lachish, Sennacherib sends his chief cupbearer (the Rabshakeh) to meet a delegation from Judah’s king (Isaiah 36:2).  The Rabshakeh stands at the “conduit of the upper pool” (36:2), exactly the place where Isaiah stood to confront Hezekiah’s father Ahaz (cf. Isaiah 7:3).  The Rabshakeh even sounds like Isaiah.  He repeats Isaiah’s warnings about trusting in Egypt for deliverance from Assyria (36:4-6; cf. 30:1-5; 31:1-9) and like Isaiah he says that Yahweh sent the Assyrians (36:10; cf. 7:17-29; 8:7; 10:5-6).  He says that the king of Assyria will give Judah horses (36:8) and will bring them to a promised land (36:16-17).  Even Yahweh cannot be trusted: According to the Rabshakeh, Hezekiah’s destruction of high places is an attack on Yahweh’s altars (36:7). We shouldn’t underestimate the temptation he presents. Judah had worshiped Yahweh at high places for centuries. For the common soldiers on the walls of Jerusalem, the offer of peace and prosperity is attractive and plausible.

BLASPHEMY

Plausible as they may sound, the Rabshakeh’s words are blasphemous.  Hezekiah’s war on the idols has Yahweh’s approval (2 Kings 18:1-7).  When the Rabshakeh says that Yahweh is just another god like the gods of the nations, he seals Sennacherib’s doom (36:18-20).  Hezekiah’s officials tear their clothes at the blasphemy (36:21-22), as does Hezekiah himself (37:1).  Unlike his father, Hezekiah turns to Yahweh’s prophet, looking for assurance that Yahweh has heard the words of the Rabshakeh and will rebuke him (37:4).  Isaiah’s response is confident: “Do not be afraid. I will make Sennacherib fall by a sword in his own land” (37:6-7). Recapitulating the Passover, Yahweh’s angel destroys 185,000 Assyrians and delivers the city (37:36-38).

CONCLUSION

When sins besiege, when enemies slander and blaspheme, when troubles press in and leave you helpless, you are Hezekiah in his birdcage.  Your life has become a site for Yahweh’s war against the gods.  The Lord sees and hears, and you can be sure the God of Israel will be victorious.

A. Sennacherib’s invasion and the Rabshakeh’s message, 26:1-22

B. Hezekiah goes to temple, Isaiah prophesies, 37:1-7

A’/C. The Rabshakeh’s boast is repeated in a letter, 37:8-13

B’. Hezekiah goes to temple, Isaiah prophesies, 37:14-35

A’. Sennacherib driven from the land, 37:36-38

The structure highlights the fact that the turning point of the story is the Rabshakeh’s decision to record his boast against Yahweh in writing.  Jerusalem’s deliverance depends on Hezekiah’s response to the blasphemy; but Jerusalem’s deliverance depends even more on the blasphemy itself.  As Yahweh says at the climax of Isaiah’s second prophecy, “I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake” (37:35).  As soon as the Rabshakeh puts his boast in written form, the salvation of Jerusalem and the Davidic kingdom is assured.

Chapter 36 itself has a chiastic or alternating structure.

A. Sennacherib invades, and Hezekiah sends Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah as a delegation to the Rabshakeh, 36:1-3

B. The Rabshakeh’s warnings about trusting Egypt and Yahweh, 36:4-10

A’/C. Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah respond, 36:11-12

B’. The Rabshakeh offers a promised land to the men on the wall, 36:13-20

A’. Eliakim, Shebna, and Hilkiah return to the king in mourning, 36:21-22