"For it is a rebellious people, lying sons,
Sons who will not heed Jehovah's instruction,
Who say to the seers, 'See not!'
And to those who have visions, 'Give us no vision of what is right!
Speak to us what is agreeable, give us false visions!
Turn from the way, go aside from the path,
Trouble is no more with Israel's Holy One.'"

When Sennacherib's armies finally came into Judah, Isaiah still saw the possibility of saving the country from the horrors of devastation, and he warned the king and people in these words:

"Therefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel,
Because ye reject this word,
And trust in perverseness and crookedness and rely thereon,
Therefore this guilty act shall be to you
Like a bulging breach in a high wall about to fall,
Suddenly, in an instant, will come its destruction;
Yea, its destruction shall be as when one dashes an earthen vessel
in pieces, shattering it ruthlessly,
So that not a potsherd is found among the pieces
With which to take up fire from the hearth or to draw water from
a cistern."

Notwithstanding the utter failure that faced Hezekiah in his course, neither he nor his counselors gave heed until Sennacherib had captured and destroyed forty-six fortified Judean cities and towns and had actually begun preparations for a siege of Jerusalem.

It was then that Hezekiah came to his senses. When Sennacherib was at Lachish, Hezekiah sent him a message which was almost a duplicate of the one sent by Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser:

"I have offended; withdraw from me; whatever you lay on me I
will bear."

The tribute that Sennacherib laid on Hezekiah was three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To meet this, Hezekiah was forced to ransack the Temple in Jerusalem and the treasure-chamber of the royal palace. He was even forced to strip the doors and pillars of the Temple of their gold decorations in order to make up the enormous tribute to send to Sennacherib.

Judah once more lay a helpless tributary at the feet of Assyria. Sennacherib withdrew his armies and returned to Nineveh. Hezekiah had proved himself both a coward and a traitor; a traitor because he did not do all in his power to assist such allies as Tyre and Ekron; a coward because, unlike Tyre and Ekron, he did not fight Sennacherib to the bitter end.

It was only after his own country had been terribly devastated by the Assyrian mercenaries that he followed the advice which Isaiah gave him in the first place. Had he followed it before, he would have saved not alone his country and his people from the ravages of war, but he would have been spared the payment of so large a tribute and the desecration of the Temple.

The real reason why Sennacherib withdrew from before Jerusalem was the fact that, while he was engaged in Palestine, all the Babylonian provinces rebelled. He, therefore, received Hezekiah's message with a great deal of pleasure. In truth, he was eager to act upon it, for he had to hurry to Babylonia to subdue the rebels there.

Immediately after the Assyrian troops were out of Palestine, however, Hezekiah returned to his old policy and began a war to regain the forty-six cities which Sennacherib had conquered and in which he had left Assyrian governors.

CHAPTER VIII.

_The Prophet Triumphs._