Isaiah, Micah and Friends
A Readers Digest of 8th Century Prophets and the Assyrian Invasion
In last fortnight’s newsletter, we thought together about the Babylonian Exile and its retelling in the book of Chronicles.
This week, we’re going to look at another significant exile event during which texts such as Micah and Amos were written, and which forms some of the background to our current morning prayer lectionary text: First Isaiah (chapters 1-39).1
The fall of Lachish, King Sennacherib reviews Judaean prisoners (Wikimediacommons)
To start off, we need to take a trip to the middle of the Deuteronomistic history to remind us of how the kingdoms of Israel and Judah came to be divided…
In 1 Kings 12 we read about the beginning of what is called the ‘divided monarchy’ aka the separation between Israel and Judah.
The early kings, Saul, David and Solomon, reigned over the ‘united monarchy’ being the whole territory of the twelve tribes in the promised land. In 1 Kings 12 we read about the way in which Jeroboam ascended to the throne as ruler over ‘all Israel’ being all of the tribes except Judah, over which Rehoboam was king.
At this moment, Israel became divided into the southern kingdom of Judah whose capital was Jerusalem and the Northern kingdom of Israel with Samaria as capital. These were now ruled by rival kings which marked the beginning of a tumultuous period of civil war.
In the background of this emerged political superpower: the Assyrian empire. Before the Babylonians who were responsible for the exile we talked about last time, the Assyrians were center stage. They were a large and powerful empire led by initially by Tilgathpilneser III.
In approximately 740bce the Assyrians began to attack the northern kingdom, capturing and deporting groups of people as they went. This culminated with a three-year attack on Samaria which eventually fell. 2 Kings 17 says:
5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. 6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Shortly after this, the Assyrians tried to take Jerusalem and the southern kingdom too, but without success.
Like the Babylonian exile, this event would have been deeply traumatic for the people and had a significant influence on the texts that emerged in this period.
Recently in morning prayer, we read the book of Micah. This text is generally understood to have emerged during the eighth century in Judah (the south). This means that the prophet would have been aware of the events happening in the North. This is clearest in the parts of the text which refer to the northern kingdom, like 1:6-7 which says:
Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards.
I will pour down her stones into the valley,
and uncover her foundations.
7 All her images shall be beaten to pieces,
all her wages shall be burned with fire,
and all her idols I will lay waste
From this text in Micah, we get a sense of what is made explicit in 2 Kings 17:7, that in the world of the text ‘this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God’.
A similar dynamic is at work in first Isaiah. 2:5-7, which mentions ‘Jacob’ - another way of talking about the northern kingdom - says:
6 For you have forsaken the ways of your people,
O house of Jacob.
Indeed they are full of diviners from the east
and of soothsayers like the Philistines,
and they clasp hands with foreigners.
7 Their land is filled with silver and gold,
and there is no end to their treasures;
their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots.
The nature of their sin in both texts is idolatry and assimilation - becoming like their neighbours rather than remaining a set apart people.
Often in the bible, a lack of faithfulness to God is cited as the reason for disaster coming upon a nation. This is particularly clear in the theology of Deuteronomy, which emphasises that unfaithfulness will be punished. Williamson summarises the understanding of moral agency in Deuteronomy as being that 'the people should have been able to obey the covenant but failed, thus bringing deserved punishment upon themselves’.2
This is exactly what we see play out in Micah and Isaiah. The prophets understand the people as moral agents (as people who choose how they act and have control over that) who have chosen unfaithfulness. This is the only rational explanation for the disaster that has come to them…
Unless it isn’t.
One of the main differences between 8th-century texts such as Isaiah and Micah (writing in the south), Amos and Hosea (the northern prophets), and those writing after the Babylonian exile roughly 200 years later is the sense in which disaster has an explanation. In books such as Lamentations, a post-Babylonian exile text, there are no such straightforward answers. The text simply sits with the enormity of the disaster and laments.
So in summary, before the Babylonian exile took the southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom had been captured by the Assyrians. This earlier exile had an enormous influence on the eighth-century prophets and so when we read their texts it is good to think of the historical context in which they were writing.
For further thinking…
In our own day, and particularly in light of the pandemic are we tempted to explain away disaster like the eighth-century prophets? Or, can we bring our lamentation before God in its raw form - unable to explain what has happened to us, but trusting in his goodness to sustain us.
For an exploration of the division of Isaiah into three parts. written during different time periods, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/Isaiah
Williamson, R., ‘Taking Root in the Rubble: Trauma and Moral Subjectivity in the Book of Lamentations’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 40.1 (2015), 7–23, p 9