History Is Never Just Political, It’s Theological

King Ahaz of Judah was in a tight spot, facing a conspiracy to dethrone him. Out of unfailing loyalty to the Davidic covenant, Yahweh graciously assured Ahaz, ungodly as he was, that he would not permit him to be overthrown from the throne of David. With faux politeness, Ahaz curtly declined Yahweh’s loyalty. He already had other plans, his own strategy. He would turn to Assyria for protection. (See Isaiah 7.) As Eugene Merrill (Kingdom of Priests) pointed out,

integrally connected with the religious declension of the nation under Ahaz was Judah’s dependency on Assyria. It was, in fact, the overtures to Tiglath-Pileser that had resulted in Ahaz’s wholesale abandonment of Yahweh and the covenant and his embracing of the religious system of pagan Assyria.

Ahaz’s deal with Assyria cast a long shadow over Judah even after Ahaz was dead and gone. Ten years into the reign of his son godly Hezekiah—a fierce anti-Assyrian—Sennacherib came to the Assyrian throne and commenced a campaign to cut off and strangle Jerusalem by constriction (Isa 10:5–19, 24–34). By 701 bc, the Assyrian army sat outside the gates of Jerusalem, waiting for the city to fall into their lap like an overripe fig (2 Chr 32:1; 2 Kgs 18:13; Isa 36:1).

Hezekiah combines prudent policy with religious reassurance:

Then he set military captains over the people, gathered them together to him in the open square of the city gate, and gave them encouragement, saying,  “Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid nor dismayed before the king of Assyria, nor before all the multitude that is with him; for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people were strengthened by the words of Hezekiah king of Judah. 2 Chr 32:6–8

If I may borrow Shakespeare’s description of the French in Henry V,

Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,
The confident and overlusty [Assyrians]
Do the low-rated [Judeans] play at dice.

Sennacherib (2 Chr 32:10–19) sends word through his emissaries:

Thus says Sennacherib king of Assyria: “In what do you trust, that you remain under siege in Jerusalem? Does not Hezekiah persuade you to give yourselves over to die by famine and by thirst, saying, ‘The LORD our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria’? . . . Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of other lands? Were the gods of the nations of those lands in any way able to deliver their lands out of my hand? Who was there among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed that could deliver his people from my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand? Now therefore, do not let Hezekiah deceive you or persuade you like this, and do not believe him; for no god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people from my hand or the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you from my hand?”

Furthermore, his servants spoke against the LORD God and against His servant Hezekiah. He also wrote letters to revile the LORD God of Israel, and to speak against Him, saying, “As the gods of the nations of other lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.” Then they called out with a loud voice in Hebrew to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten them and trouble them, that they might take the city. And they spoke against the God of Jerusalem, as against the gods of the people of the earth—the work of men’s hands.

These dire threats had ample concrete data to back them up. How did Hezekiah respond? “Now because of this, King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, prayed and cried out to heaven” (2 Chr 32:20). His magnificent prayer of abject and total dependence on Yahweh is recorded in 2 Kings 19. And God’s reply was an equally magnificent prophecy recorded in Kings. I will not take the space to record either here. But it’s crucial to note the direct connection between the human prayer of dependence and the divine reply in 2 Kings 19:20.

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Because you have prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.’

He not only heard, but also answered and acted magnificently (2 Chr 32:21). Never was a more unexpected and unimaginable miracle of intervention recorded in fewer, simpler, more matter-of-fact words.

Again, Eugene Merrill captured the essence and significance of this sacred historical record. What we have in these accounts is

a classic example of ‘sacred history,’ of a historiography which accurately reports the facts to be sure, but which is fundamentally concerned with the theological meaning of those facts. The real issue . . . is not the struggle between Assyria and Judah, but that between two conflicting ideologies or theologies. The question at stake is, Who is God? 

The Assyrians argue, offering apparently rather convincing empirical evidence, that all gods are inferior to theirs, and Judah’s god will be no different. Merrill continued,

Hezekiah correctly perceived the Assyrian threat as a theological issue, not a political or military one, for he turned to Yahweh and extolled Him as the sole sovereign over all the kingdoms of the earth. . . . Isaiah’s message in response to Hezekiah’s prayer regarding Sennacherib picks up the same refrain. . . . [Yet] another exhibition of the sovereignty of Yahweh over all competing religious systems occurred, ironically, in the very temple of the Assyrian gods in whom Sennacherib boasted (37:38). Sennacherib was slain in Nineveh while he was in the very act of worshipping his god Nisroch. The god who had failed him at Jerusalem was, twenty years later, exposed once and for all as a figment of Assyrian imagination: he could not even deliver his devotee who sought him in earnest worship.

What does all this have to do with 9/11? The events of that day—and the reverberating aftershocks from that day to this—crystalize the theological realities of our own history. The ongoing conflict is not merely a clash of cultures, a war of religions, or a conflict between ideologies. It is theological in the largest sense of the word: Who is God? Who is in charge? And where is your trust and your confidence?

God is constantly reminding us that when we boil everything down to its most basic truths and realities, all our anxieties, all our threats, all our battles are not about politics, or finances, or any issues of flesh-and-blood. We do not wrestle against flesh-and-blood. All our battles are, in fact, theological. The real issue is always: Who is God? Who is in charge? When we learn to perceive, and analyze, and trust, and pray, and make decisions on that basis, it changes everything.

We cannot share Hezekiah’s confidence on a national political/military scale—America is not Judah, Washington D.C. is not Jerusalem, and the presidency is not the Davidic line. But we can share Hezekiah’s confidence in the same God. We are given this account because we are meant to share the same confidence in the same God on a personal level, in every battle, trial, test, or temptation we face. Who is God? To whom is our allegiance, and in whom is our trust? How we answer those questions determines the outcome for us.