The Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah

Abstract

In the first volume of The History of Israel (Oesterley and Robinson), Dr T. H. Robinson points out that at the time of the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel, Judah remained loyal to Assyria, and he goes on to suggest1: ‘It is possible that some part of the more southerly hill country was handed over to Ahaz, for we know that the Assyrian monarchs did take this means of rewarding vassals who had remained faithful when those around them were in revolt.’ Some confirmation of this, as Dr Robinson points out, may be found in the fact that some twenty years later when Judah did rebel on the death of Sargon, Sennacherib claims to have captured forty-six fortified cities of Judah, for as the narrative of Sennacherib's Third Campaign from the Taylor Cylinder says: ‘But Hezekiah of Judah, who had not bowed himself under my yoke, forty-six of his fortified towns, fortresses, and small cities in their neighbourhood innumerable, with casting down of battering-rams and assault of siege-engines, with attack of infantry, of mines … I besieged, I captured.’ (See Burney's Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings, Appendix 5.) The biblical records refer to ‘all the fenced cities of Judah’ (cf. 2 Kings 18.13) and to ‘Sennacherib's being encamped against the fenced cities’ (see 2 Chron. 32.1).