or near Babylonia, while Babylonian inhabitants were settled in the lands once occupied by the deported Ephraimites. Cf. Schrader, COT., ii. p. 267 foll. These exiled Israelite populations henceforth disappear from history..

These events must have made a profound impression on the neighbouring southern kingdom of Judah. The policy of Ahaz still continued to be one of subservience to Assyria, and Judah played the ignoble rôle of vassalstate. Aḥaz could therefore only be a passive spectator, while Ephraim in the grip of her remorseless foe, unaided by the allies upon whom she had reckoned, waged her last life-and-death struggle. The annals in the Books of Kings are too scanty to afford us any light as to what passed at this time in Jerusalem. The internal policies of her king and his court are shrouded in mystery save for the occasional and fitful gleams of light that emerge from the oracles of Isaiah.

It will be necessary at this stage to interpose a short discussion on the thorny subject of chronology, which at this point in the history of Judah becomes complicated and difficult. The question we have to settle is In what year did Aḥaz die and Hezekiah succeed to the throne? We have to deal with the following express statements in 2 Kings:-:

(a) 2 Kings xviii. 1. Hezekiah ascended the throne in the third year of Hoshea, King of Israel. When did the reign of Hoshea begin? According to the data of the cuneiform inscriptions (see Appendix I to Introd. p. 81), this would be somewhere between 734 and 732 B.C., but the biblical statements would assign Hoshea's accession to 730 B.C. Hoshea, as we learn from the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, was placed as Assyria's nominee on the throne of the defeated and slain Pekah, but it does not follow that his position as king was immediately recognized. The biblical date at all events is 730, when we consider the verses which follow.

(6) 2 Kings xviii. 9, 10. War against Samaria began in the fourth year of Hezekiah, the seventh of Hoshea, and Samaria was captured in Hezekiah's sixth year, which was Hoshea's ninth.

Now, it is extremely fortunate that this tragic event, the capture of Samaria, can be assigned to a very definite date. From the data of the cuneiform inscriptions (more fully explained in the appendix), with which the biblical statements agree, we know that the capture of Samaria took place in 722-I B.C. This at once determines the date of Hoshea's accession as 731-301, and of Hezekiah's as 727-6 B.C. f

(c) But as we read further, in verse 13 (Isa. xxxvi. 1; 2 Chron. xxxii. 1), we are told that the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib took place in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah. Now this memorable invasion and the siege of Jerusalem (of which more will be said later) were naturally events of immense importance. Of this episode we possess a long account both in the Bible and in the cuneiform annals of Sennacherib. It is hardly probable that there would be any serious error as to its date in the biblical annals. In fact after the overthrow of Samaria, when we have only the history of Judah recorded for us, and have no longer any cross-references between the two sets of national records belonging to the northern and to the southern kingdom respectively, we are beset with much fewer difficulties, though they do not altogether disappear. There cannot be any doubt that the records of the northern kingdom, not only during the ninth cen tury, but also and especially during the troubled years of Tiglath-Pileser's invasions (745-27), have come down to us in a very defective state, and nearly all our chronological difficulties and the discrepancies between the

Respecting this margin of uncertainty extending to one year, see the author's article on Chronology in Schrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions and the O. T., vol. ii. pp. 321 foll., and in Wright's Bible Handbook ('Old Test. Chronology'), p. 58.

biblical statements and those of the cuneiform inscriptions arise from these defective records. Unfortunately Judaean history before 722-1 has become entangled in the chronological confusion in which the records of the northern kingdom (of Ephraim) have been involved. But after 722-1, when the latter history abruptly ends, our course becomes clearer, and we may fully trust the assertion that Sennacherib invaded Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah.

About the date of Sennacherib's invasion we obtain precise information, fortunately, from the Assyrian records. It occurred in the year 701. Accordingly, 2 Kings xviii. 13 makes it clear that Hezekiah ascended the throne in 715-14 B.C., and this date is accepted by Wellhausen and Kamphausen. Here we seem to have an irreconcilable contradiction with the statements contained in (a) and (b).

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(d) We have to consider the data of the respective ages of Ahaz and Hezekiah at their accession. 2. Kings xvi. 2, Aḥaz was twenty at his accession; 2 Kings xviii. 2, Hezekiah was twenty-five. There is nothing improbable about these statements, and taken by themselves we have no reason to dispute them. But let us now look at the consequences if we accept (a) and (b). The date of the accession of Ahaz is determined by the facts of Bible history, viz. the Syro-Ephraimite war and the war of Tiglath-Pileser against Pekaḥ that immediately followed, which the Assyrian annals illustrate for us. It is comparatively easy of proof that Ahaz did not come to the throne earlier than 735 1. We are therefore driven

This is the date assigned by Kamphausen in his valuable Chronology of the Hebrew Kings, and accepted by the present writer in his edition of Schrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions and O. T., vol. ii. p. 32г. Precisely the same date is given in Hastings' DB., article 'Chronology,' vol. i. p. 402, left-hand col., and in Enc. Bibl., vol. i. col. 795, though the writer (Marti) seems disposed to place it a year later.

by (a) and (b) to the conclusion that Ahaz was three or four years old when he became the father of Hezekiah!

If we accept (c) in its entirety, we are thereby compelled to reject (a) and (b) with their repeated assertions that Hoshea and Hezekiah were contemporary in their reigns, and that the capture of Samaria took place when Hezekiah was king.

The hypothesis which the present writer advanced in 1888 (Schrader, COT., vol. ii. p. 322), that Hezekiah was associated by Aḥaz with himself on the throne in 727-6 B. C., and that their joint reign lasted from that date till 715 B.C., appears to solve the problem more completely than any other theory hitherto proposed, and involves fewer rejections of biblical statements. The assertion that Hezekiah was twenty-five at his accession (2 Kings xviii. 2) refers, of course, to his sole reign in 715-14, and not to his joint reign with Aḥaz. The latter began when he was thirteen. How can this hypothesis be justified?

The death of the powerful Assyrian monarch TiglathPileser III in 727 B. C. (like that of Sargon in 705) was an event of immense importance throughout Western Asia. We have already seen how it awoke the dormant energies of the Ephraimite kingdom which the strong personality of the Assyrian monarch had held under restraint. It was talked of in all the streets and bazaars of every Palestinian town, from Gaza to Damascus. Every cowed and subject vassal-state began now to breathe more freely. In Samaria the popular antiAssyrian feeling became so strong that it would have remorselessly swept King Hoshea, Assyria's vassal-puppet, from place and power if he had not swum with the current of revolt. And Jerusalem was no exception. There can be little doubt that Ahaz was exposed to like influences. The death of Tiglath-Pileser, his powerful support in 734 B.C., the hour of his extreme danger, must now have caused him many anxious moments. Isaiah was, we know (chap. viii), no friend of the Assyrian alliance, and

his personal influence was a powerful factor. Doubtless strong influences were brought to bear on Jerusalem from Samaria. If alliance with Egypt was out of the question as a counterpoise to Assyria, because Egypt was then weak, why not follow Ephraim's policy and cooperate with Sibi (Seveh) of the north Arabian land Musri? It was a dangerous moment for a strong and persistent friend of Assyria. The King of Judah had now a most difficult and perilous rôle to sustain. He had to maintain his position at the head of the state when Ephraim once more began to move actively against the new and less energetic successor of the deceased Napoleon of Western Asia. Aḥaz naturally looked to the security of his throne and dynasty. He placed his young son, then about thirteen years of age, on the throne. Perhaps the latter had already become popular. Moreover, he had comparatively recent precedent for such an act. Azariah (Uzziah) his grandfather had delegated the office of kingship to his son when he was incapacitated from the discharge of its duties. shi

No change of policy was involved in the act, for Hezekiah was too young to exercise personal influence. It served only to perpetuate the succession.

On the other hand, the continuance of Ahaz on the throne serves to explain many facts which to the historical student would be otherwise obscure. Aḥaz still held all the reins of power, and felt himself sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the anti-Assyrian movement. We can now fully understand the quiescent attitude of Jerusalem while the tragedy of the sister-state in those terrible years 724-21 was enacting. Such an attitude would

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It might be argued that the chronology proposed by Winckler, which places the death of Ahaz in 720, solves the problem of Judah's political attitude while his Israelite kindred were suffering at the hands of Assyria. This date is adopted by Marti, article 'Chronology' in Enc. Bibl., also by Guthe in his History of the People Israel, and it has recently