A TALE OF TWO WORLD VISIONS

The historical record indicates that the first country to become a world power, the first super-power that controlled most of the civilized world of its time, was the Assyrian Empire based in the ancient city of Nineveh. Until that time, individual kingdoms had conquered their neighbours embarked on expeditions of plunder and murder but none had yet successfully conquered and goverened the world as they knew it.  Around the year 745 The Assyrian warlord Tiglat Pileser III extended the empire to include Israel and Judea and those that followed him Shalmanesser and Saragon exiled most of the ten tribes of the Land of Israel.  By the year 701 Hizkiyahu the king of Judea was also rebelling against the Assyrian Empire and its oppressive policies.  Sancherib organized a new expedition to Israel to regain control of Judea and other rebellious hotspots.

Lachish city walls

The situation in the kingdom of Judea was tense.  Sancherib had proven to be vicious to those that opposed him.  His armies were undefeated.  The leaders and monarchs of the cities he captured were cruelly executed and tortured.  Despite all the preparations and the treaties and the preparations for was on Jewish city after the other was falling before the practised tactics of the ruthless Assyrian army.  The seemingly impregnable city of Lachish in the Judean Lowlands fell to Sancherib and he seemed unstoppable.  Then as Sancherib arrived at the walls of the city of Jerusalem and lay seige to the capital of Judea and the home of King Hizkiyahu, the prophet Yeshayahu and last refuge of Jewish independence - something happened.


The Bible tells us that a miracle happened and the armies of Sancherib were decimated by a plague.  The Bible also tells us that the prophet Yeshayahu urged Hizkiyahu not to surrender predicting that Sanherib will abandon Jerusalem and take his armies back to Mesopotamia. Some years later, Sanherib himself commissions a large stone hexagonal prism where he lists in detail and the cities he has destroyed and the spoils he has taken and the suffering of those rulers who had the temerity to stand up against him.  About Jerusalem he writes the following:


"and Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape..."

Sancherib's Prism

The Prism does not claim to have conquered Jerusalem or to have tortured its rulers - its only claim is to have captured Hiskiyahu like a BIRD IN A CAGE. Why so meek???   Perhaps even more significant is the prominence given to the conquering of the city of Lachish.  Lachish was only the second most prominent city in Judea next to Jerusalem.  When In 1847 the young British adventurer Sir Austen Henry Layard explored the ruins of the Assyrian Palaces near the modern city of Mosul, ancient Ninveh, he found amazing alabaster reliefs that described the conquest of Lachish in detailed pictures and wall carvings.   The reliefs described what happened at Lachish in great detail but more imroptant thay do not describe the conquest of the capital city, Jerusalem.  It appears as we stated earlier that - something happened at Jerusalem.  While the Biblical records goes on for chapters in several different places about the confrontation between Judea and the king of Assyria, The account of how the confrontation ended is covered in a few sentences.  


Will we ever have a more detailed idea of how the story ended?  The probability of other historical sources coming to light is relatively small.  However the true climax of the story is evident for all to see.  The Assyrian kings devoted their lives and all their power into creating one of the most powerful empires the world has ever seen.  Where is their empire now?  Iraq is barely recovering from years of oppression and war and It sometimes seems that Iran is determined to drag its own population into a similar pattern of civil war and oppression.  The ruthless aggression and power of the Assyrian dynasty is long since gone and almost forgotten.  On the other hand, Jerusalem remains a city that the world looks to for religious inspiration.  Yeshayahu predicted that Jerusalem  would persevere and remain free and undefeated.  He also inspired all of humanity with his vision of a world where conquest and persecution were not considered to be desirable national values or legitimate goals.  It is the words of Yeshayau that have stood as a lamppost through the ages and to this day appear as the motto engraved near the United Nations Building in NewYork City.


"THEY SHALL BEAT THEIR SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES AND THEIR SPEARS INTO PRUNING HOOKS. NATION SHALL NOT LIFT UP SWORD AGAINST NATION. NEITHER SHALL THEY LEARN WAR ANYMORE."