An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 143: Drinking urine, Hezekiah’s boil, and religious road-signs (Isaiah 36-40)

Isaiah 36-40
Drinking urine, Hezekiah’s boil, and religious road-signs.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Isaiah 36

“Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them.”

Rather thankfully Isaiah leaves prophecy aside for a moment, and turns to history. I find these passages more interesting as they recount a sequence of events that is pretty straightforward, rather than attempting to unpick meaning from metaphor and oblique references.

And we’ve been here before, back in Kings and Chronicles. King Sennacherib of Assyria sends his envoy, Rabshakeh, to meet with the envoys of King Hezekiah of Jerusalem. A lot of the detail in this chapter is very close to that in Kings 18, including the very specific point about the meeting by the conduit of the upper pool in the fuller’s field, and how Rabshekah promises to take the people of Jerusalem to a “land of bread and vineyards”. Not seen before is his threat that otherwise the people will “eat their own dung, and drink their own piss”! As before, the envoys of Hezekiah – Eliakim, Shebna and Joah – ask Rabshekah to speak in Syrian, but Rabshekah continues in Hebrew and addresses his comments to the people on the wall more than the envoys. He tells them that the Egyptians will not help them as military allies, and that their God will prove just as ineffective to protect that as all the gods of the other people conquered by the Assyrians.

But the people have been told not to reply, and the parley breaks up. Eliakim, Shebna and Joah go in sorrow to bear the news to Hezekiah.

Isaiah 37

“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria”

Hezekiah sends for Isaiah, who tells him not to worry and that God will “send a blast” upon Sennacharib who will die by the sword in his own lands. Meanwhile, Rabshekah repeats his threats under Sennacharib’s orders, about how no nation has withstood the Assyrians. Here there is an interesting point, about the gods of the other nations being destroyed because they were idols of wood and stone made by men: by not representing their God, the Israelites have good insurance that He cannot be destroyed by a like means. Even if idol-worshippers accept that the idol merely represents the god, rather than is the god, there must be a terrible psychological effect if someone destroys it. However, the God of the Israelites is represented by an absence. Even with the great temple of Solomon with its giant winged cherubim and gold doors, there is no image of God. God is the space beyond the altar and the ark. So even if the temple is destroyed (Spoiler: it is), the despoilers can’t destroy God, who one presumes lives instead within the hearts and minds of the worshippers.

Anyway, Hezekiah shows this letter to God on the altar, and Isaiah gives the reply, which is to say that God’s powers are greater than those of Sennacharib. It’s a big boasting contest in a way – the Assyrians destroyed the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah, but God was responsible for those victories in the first place, and can just as easily place a defeat on the Assyrians as grant them victory.

Then the Assyrians suffer a plague, and the rest of them go home, where Sennacharib is assassinated and replaced by his sons.

Isaiah 38

“In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.”

This chapter seems to be a recommendation for death-bed repentance. Hezekiah is sick and dying, but he offers a prayer to God, not asking to live but just asking for remembrance that he did what was right. Through Isaiah, God grants Hezekiah another fifteen years of life (we learn later in the chapter that Hezekiah had some kind of boil or abscess that Isaiah treated with a fig poultice), and the rest of the chapter is Hezekiah’s thoughts on the matter, how he was ready to die but will praise God because he was given this extra life. There’s an element of redemption in Hezekiah’s thoughts – “thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption”, he says. As we’ve seen before, though, there’s no concept of an afterlife – “For the grave cannot praise thee”; once you are dead there’s no chance for redemption or understanding; compare with later ideas such as those in Dante.

Isaiah 39

“At that time Merodachbaladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered.”

Ah, yes, this incident. In which Hezekiah rather unwisely shows the Babylonian envoys all of his great treasures and riches which, although it doesn’t happen in this chapter, causes them to decide to take them for themselves. Isaiah warns Hezekiah of this, that there will come a time when all his riches will be taken from him and his sons will become eunuchs in the service of the King of Babylon.

Strangely, Hezekiah says “Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken […] for there shall be peace and truth in my days”. To which Isaiah must surely have replied “…were you actually listening to me just then?”

Isaiah 40

“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Apparently it’s thought that the book of Isaiah actually has three different authors. Even if I hadn’t found this out already it might be possible to guess from the change of tone in this chapter. The language is subtly different, it feels slightly more direct, but on the other hand I wonder if I really would have spotted it. Perhaps the differences will become more clear in future chapters.

There are a few well-quoted lines from this chapter. The “voice in the wilderness” I know get’s applied to John the Baptist. And “All flesh is grass” I’ve come across before, used as a calling card for a serial killer in some crime drama (possibly Cracker?). There are hints of the Preacher of Ecclesiastes here, with the fragility of flesh and references to everything being vanity. This is, however, part of a lengthy section about how great and powerful God is. And interestingly this includes some of the thoughts I had for Isaiah 37, that the Israelite God cannot be confined and defined by a statue; “To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?”, rather it is by looking at the world around you and recognising it as His work that a person can comprehend such a deity.

I’ve mentioned before that, as far as appreciation of the enormity and complexity of the universe, I tend towards Carl Sagan rather than biblical ideas, but the sentiment stems, I think, from the same place. This chapter does add, however, what an idea of the universe based on faith can give that one based on science cannot, the idea of gaining inner strength from one’s faith “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.”

Oh, and if that line about the desert highway in the quote above isn’t written on a road sign somewhere near Salt Lake City, I will be very surprised.