Isaiah 26

Jerusalem’s walls kept Assyrian King Sennacherib’s army outside in their tents. They never broke through during their siege when Hezekiah reigned over Judah. They suddenly broke camp and left in a hurry. A Bible writer said an angel killed 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19:35). A Greek writer 250 years later, Herodotus, wrote that the army got stopped by a rat infestation that killed some of the soldiers. Some scholars speculate that the rats carried diseases—plagues such as bubonic, septicemic, pneumonic. Those three diseases—all from the same bacterium (yersinia pestis)—affect the immune system, blood, and lungs.

Which is it? “The dead don’t live” (14) or “the dead live again” (19)? Scholars say verse 14 refers to the wicked people the writer mentions in that verse, possibly the Assyrian ruler who oppressed and exploited weaker kingdoms. Verse 19 is a puzzle. Is it a metaphor, perhaps of the suffering Israelite nations doomed to be erased from the political map? The northern kingdom of Israel leaves in 722 BC, escorted into exile by Assyrians of what is now northern Iraq. The southern kingdom of Judah goes in 586 BC, escorted into exile by Babylonians of what is now southern Iraq. Or is verse 19 an anomaly—a rare Old Testament glimpse of what might be the belief in a resurrection and an afterlife?

Metaphor? (see note for 26:14). Or an early Old Testament reference to Glory Hallelujah, New Testament resurrection, and life after death? Some Jewish scholars say this verse helped convince Jews in Medieval times that there is a resurrection. Rabbinic Judaism, like much of Christianity, teaches that all people will rise from the dead. But when most Old Testament writers referred to death, they talked about Sheol, a place where dead spirits go and tend not to come back (Genesis 37:35), with the exception of Samuel, conjured up by a medium (1 Samuel 28:15). Many scholars, Jewish and Christian, say several Old Testament passages point to an end-time, apocalyptic day of resurrection for the dead: Isaiah 24—27; 25:8; 26:19; Daniel 12:2-3; 13).

Morning dew in the dry Middle East—where rains are few and far between—is the difference between life and death for plants that depend on that daily brush of moisture.

The background here might be Assyria’s continued oppression of the Israelites. Isaiah said God would use Assyrians to punish the Israelites. Most surviving Israelites would end up living in exile in what is now Iraq. “Head down and mouth shut” would have been good advice for them. Low profile. Don’t make waves. It’s a key to survival during an oppressive exile under an emperor or in a corporate job working for someone who goes by various names.