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Hebrew
HIZQIYYA, Greek EZEKIAS, son of Ahaz, and the 13th successor of
David as king of Judah at Jerusalem. The dates of his reign are often
given as about 715 to about 686 BCE, but inconsistencies in biblical and
Assyrian cuneiform records have yielded a wide range of possible
dates.
Hezekiah reigned at
a time when the Assyrian empire was consolidating its control of
Palestine and Syria. His father had placed Judah under Assyrian
suzerainty in 735 BCE. Hezekiah may have taken part in a rebellion
against King Sargon II of Assyria (reigned 721-705 BCE), which the
Assyrians apparently crushed in the year 710. At the accession of
Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), further rebellions broke out all over the
Assyrian empire. Hezekiah may have been the leader of the rebellion in
Palestine, which included the city-states of Ascalon and Ekron and
gained the support of Egypt. In preparing for the inevitable Assyrian
campaign to retake Palestine, Hezekiah strengthened the defenses of his
capital, Jerusalem, and dug out the famous Siloam
tunnel (2 Kings 20:20, 2 Chronicles 32:30), which brought the
water of the Gihon springs to a reservoir inside the city wall.
Sennacherib finally
put down the rebellion in 701 BC, overrunning Judah, taking 46 of its
walled cities, and placing much conquered Judaean territory under the
control of neighboring states. While Sennacherib was besieging the city
of Lachish, Hezekiah sought to spare Jerusalem itself from capture by
paying a heavy tribute of gold and silver to the Assyrian king, who
nevertheless demanded the city's unconditional surrender. At this point
Jerusalem was saved by a miraculous plague that decimated the Assyrian
army. This event gave rise to the belief in Judah that Jerusalem was
inviolable, a belief that lasted until the city fell to the Babylonians
a century later. Contradictory dates for Sennacherib's invasion are
given in the Book of Kings, and he may possibly have invaded Judah a
second time near the close of Hezekiah's reign.
Hezekiah's ascension
to the throne in Jerusalem was accompanied by a comprehensive religious
reform and substantial political changes. He restored the worship of
YAHWEH following a lengthy period when idol-worship had prevailed in the
city, and he renewed the pilgrimage tradition of the Passover week.
Hezekiah took advantage of that festival to consolidate his religious
reforms and to bring the people back to the worship of God.
Concurrently
Hezekiah revised the political approach of his father Ahaz, asking Egypt
to halt the Assyrian expansion. His pragmatism was scornfully criticized
by the prophet Isaiah, who was highly influential in Jerusalem during
this period. The prophet's theological-political approach held that the
Assyrian conquests were merely a sign to the people to resume the
worship of God. For the same reason he rejected the attempts to form an
alliance with Babylon. Hezekiah also took concrete measures to prepare
for the Assyrian siege, which was finally implemented in 701 BCE by
Sennacherib, notably an amazing engineering feat in which a tunnel 533
meters long was dug to provide access to the waters of the Gihon Spring
which lay outside the city. In addition, a wall was built around the
city, which in this period expanded to the slopes of Mount Zion. An
impressive and still visible remnant of this structure, the building of
which is described in Isaiah 22:11, is the "broad wall".
Miraculously the city was spared the siege, a fact which has also been
explained in realistic terms.
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