Friday
Friday
Church and State in Judah
Do not be afraid of what you have heard—those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
2 Kings 19:6
During the rise and fall of the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom lived its parallel existence, although its kings were not very well known. Then, after the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians in 722 BC, and the consequent demise of the northern kingdom, Judah lasted another 135 years (722–587 BC). This period was distinguished by two religious reforms in which kings and prophets cooperated. The first was led by King Hezekiah, with the encouragement of the prophets Micah and Isaiah. The second was led by King Josiah, with the encouragement of his distant cousin the prophet Zephaniah and of the young prophet Jeremiah. We will read more about these prophets in three and four weeks’ time.
Hezekiah purged Judah of all the remaining vestiges of Assyrian idolatry, and Isaiah and Micah fulminated against the nation’s religious hypocrisy and social injustice. Their witness was summed up in Micah’s moving appeal:
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
A national crisis occurred in 701 BC when the Assyrian leader Sennacherib laid siege to Jerusalem, shutting Hezekiah up (in his own words) “like a bird in a cage.” But Isaiah urged him to stand firm, and the siege was wonderfully lifted. Though Hezekiah’s apostate son Manasseh reversed his father’s religious policy, Hezekiah’s great-grandson Josiah (639–609 BC), while still a young man, initiated another great reform, aided and abetted by the prophet Jeremiah.
These two examples of church-state cooperation should inspire us today. It was not that the king tried to prophesy or that the prophet entered politics. Each stuck to his own calling, but together they were effective.
For further reading: Micah 6:6–8