Isaiah 39:1

BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY THREATENED.

1. At that time Soon after the recovery of Hezekiah; for Merodach-baladan, governor or king of Babylon, had heard that Hezekiah had been sick and was now recovered. Much difficulty exists as to the time of this message. The most natural meaning of the biblical account of the time, is, that it was a short time after the complete rout of Sennacherib’s army. The invasion of Sennacherib was in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign. Isaiah 36:1. The expression, “at that time,” therefore, as the Scriptural account runs, means probably but a few years after the destruction of the Assyrian army, and but a few years before the end of Hezekiah’s reign, which was about 698 B.C., a sufficient time at least for the replenishment of his treasures, (2 Chronicles 32:23,) with which he had before purchased peace of Sennacherib in his first invasion. 2 Kings 18:15-16. This view of chronology is, according to Josephus and Jerome, and the fragments of Berosus in Eusebius’s Chronicle, so far as that chronicle relates to the case of Merodach-baladan. The name of Merodach-baladan is located by both the Assyrian Inscriptions and the Canon of Ptolemy between 721 and 709 B.C.; and Polyhistor gives him a short reign as king of Babylon, in 702 B.C. (See Dictionary of the Bible.) These authorities all concur with the biblical indefinite date at that time, and make the period of Hezekiah’s sickness to come easily after the Assyrian army had departed. Rawlinson’s dates ( Monarchies, vol. ii) are against this by many years, but the conclusion results from insufficient determinations in respect to the history as yet furnished in the Inscriptions.