06/27/2020 – Day 027- Isaiah 18 -22
My Halley’s Bible Handbook, shed alot of context light on these chapters.
I will select to share Chapter 20 commentary here:
“Archaeological Note: Sargon. In Isaiah 20:1 it is said: ‘Sargon, king of Assyria sent Tartan and fought against Ashdod and took it.’ This is the only known mention of Sargon’s name in extant ancient literature. Thus mentioning the name of a king, never known to have existed, the critics said, was one of the Bible’s blunders.
But, amazing to be told, in 1842, Botta discovered the ruins of Sargon’s palace, in Khorsabad, on the north edge of Nineveh, with treasures and inscriptions showing him to have been one of Assyria’s greatest kings Yet his name had disappeared from history, save this lone mention in Isaiah, till Botta’s discovery.
Also of note in Chapter 20:
“Isaiah’s warning of their defeat and captivity, intended to discourage Judah from looking to Egypt for aid against Assyria. This was 713 B.C.. The prediction was fulfilled 12 years later. Sennacherib’s annauls for 701 B.C, says: ‘I fought with the kings of Egypt, accomplished their overthrow, and captured alive charioteers and sons of the king.”
Oh, Chapter 19 – Egypt“
The decline and disintegration of Egypt predicted here came to pass, See Jeremiah 46, Ezekiel 49.
And.., “After the Captivity, many Jews remained in the Euphrates valleny, and great numbers of them settled in Egypt. Alexandria, second city of the world in Jesus’ day, was predominately a Jewish city. There the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was made. At Heliopolis, city of the ‘the sun’, a temple modeled after that in Jerusalem, was erected (149 b.c.), as a center of worship for Egyptian Jews. At the time of Christ’s appearance, the Hebrew nation was composed of three main sections, with connecting highways: Palestinian, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian, making Israel to be a sort of three-fold nation. These regions were among the first to accept Christianity. Thus this chapter is a very accurate pre-charting of one phase of Israel’s history for the following six hundred years.”
Blessings!
Jimmy