by
Damien F. Mackey
Isaiah’s father, Amos-Micah,
also had an extremely long life and prophetic floruit. Incredibly, Micah first
emerges, as the prophet Micaiah, as early as the late reign
of king Ahab of Israel. Of
Micah it may be said that he was Micaiah redivivus.
For my
account of the incredibly long life and prophetic activity of Amos (Amoz), the father
of Isaiah (1:1), see e.g. my article:
God can raise up prophets at will - even
from a shepherd of Simeon
(4) God
can raise up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
The
long career of the prophet Isaiah also figured in this article, as did that of
his extraordinary relative, Judith.
Amos,
Isaiah and Judith were considered as three luminaries in a prophetic Simeonite
family.
Now,
one of Isaiah’s multi-identifications in this article was as the prophet Hosea.
Isaiah as Hosea
All
would probably agree, at least, that the long and amazingly multi-faceted
career of the prophet Isaiah ranged through the reigns of the following four
kings of Jerusalem (Isaiah 1:1): “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that
Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah”.
However,
Isaiah’s prophetic Weltanschauung would, as we shall learn, find him
concerned with more than just “Judah and Jerusalem”, albeit his main foci
of attention.
Right at the beginning of his career, the
prophet Isaiah, under the guise of Hosea:
Isaiah a truly great prophet of both the southern and northern kingdom
(4) Isaiah a truly great prophet
of both the southern and northern kingdom
would include king Jeroboam
II, and the northern kingdom of Israel, in his prophetic spectrum (Hosea 1:1):
“The
word of the Lord that
came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and
during the reign of Jeroboam … king of Israel”.
The prophet
would even marry a woman, Gomer, from the apostate northern kingdom, and he would
have children by her (vv. 2-9).
Isaiah’s paternity and origins
Isaiah was, as we read above,
the “son of Amoz” (Amos), generally considered to have been the same as the
prophet Amos.
But this Amos, like his son
Isaiah – {who, as we shall learn in the course of this article, had many names}
- had at least another name, Micah:
Prophet Micah as Amos
(DOC) Prophet
Micah as Amos | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Micah was so much like Amos
that he is considered by biblical commentators to be “Amos redivivus”.
Isaiah’s father, Amos-Micah,
also had an extremely long life and prophetic floruit. Incredibly, Micah
first emerges, as the prophet Micaiah, as early as the late reign of king Ahab
of Israel.
Of Micah it may be said that
he was Micaiah redivivus.
And Jewish traditions have
indeed connected Micaiah with Micah, which seems biologically untenable, given
that Micah was still prophesying in the early part of the reign of king
Hezekiah (cf. Jeremiah 26:18). Such longevity becomes possible, however,
though admittedly stretched, with my truncating of history as set out in my
article:
De-coding Jonah
(4) De-coding Jonah
This family, which was not of
prophetic origins as according to the testimony of the patriarch Amos himself
(7:14): “Amos
answered Amaziah, ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I
was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees’,” was, nonetheless,
princely.
Jewish legend has it that Amos
was the brother (perhaps, preferably, brother-in-law) of King Amaziah of Judah.
And Isaiah himself appears to have had seemingly easy access to successive
kings of Judah: namely, Ahaz and Hezekiah.
Soon we shall learn that Isaiah
was regarded as a prince of both Israel and Judah.
A Geography
of Amos
The following map will be
found to give mostly the wrong places of origin for supposedly four prophets -
which ‘four’, however, I am reducing to just two, namely:
1. the father
(Amos-Micah); and 2. the son (Hosea-Isaiah).
Four different locations.
Although we are not told from
whence Amos originated, we know that his alter ego, Micah, hailed from
“Moresheth” (Micah 1:1), thought to be the same as Moresheth-Gath: Moresheth-Gath
(jewishvirtuallibrary.org)
MORESHETH-GATH (Heb. מוֹרֶשֶׁת גַּת), town of the tribe of Judah in
the Shephelah, between Lachish and Achzib. It is mentioned by the prophet Micah, who was born there (Micah 1:1,
14; Jer. 26:18). Later sources (Eusebius, Onom. 134:10: Sozomenus, Historia
Ecclesiastica 9:17; Jerome, In Micam 1:10) identify
it with a village, which is also called Birat Satia or Kiryat Satia, in the
territory of Eleutheropolis (Bet Guvrin).
Amos did not hail from Tekoa,
as according to the map above.
Tekoa was the region to where Amos
had to go for the sycamore-fig trees (Amos 7:14), which would not have found
suitable terrain in his home region of Moresheth.
Isaiah may well have
accompanied his father, Amos, when the latter was commanded by the Lord to go
to the northern kingdom, where Amos seems to have set up in the important city
of Bethel (7:12-13): “Then Amaziah [the priest of Bethel]
said to Amos, ‘Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your
bread there and do your prophesying there. Don’t
prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the
temple of the kingdom’.”
The northern Bethel I have identified as both the “Bethulia”
of the Book of Judith, and - following Charles C. Torrey - the strategically
important and most ancient city of Shechem. On this, see e.g. my article:
Judith’s City of
‘Bethulia’
Though this uprooting and
moving to the north would presumably have been something of a burden for Amos,
it would not have been the completely lonely exile that one might imagine.
Amos, and his family were, as
we shall soon discover, of the southern tribe of Simeon. But it appears that
there were also plenty of Simeonites situated in the north as well.
Thus I explained in my
university thesis (2007):
A Revised History
of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its
Background
(DOC) Thesis 2: A
Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background |
Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
(Volume Two, p. 60):
Northern Simeonites
The magistrates of the
town of Bethulia before whom Achior appeared are named: “…Uzziah son
of Micah, of the tribe of Simeon, and Chabris son of Gothoniel, and Charmis son
of Melchiel” (v.15). I intend to argue in the next chapter
that this Uzziah (var. Ozias) was none other than Isaiah
himself. In BOJ [Book of Judith] chapter 8 we shall be told that Judith too was
- like Uzziah - of the tribe of
Simeon. Now, with Simeon being one of the southernmost tribes of Judah, with
enclaves even in the Negev (1 Chronicles 4:28), is it a peculiarity having a
bastion of Simeonites situated in Ephraïm? It certainly would have been in the
earliest periods of Israel’s settlement in Canaan, but it would be quite
allowable from the time of king Asa of Judah (c. C9th BC) onwards; for it is
recorded in 2 Chronicles 15:9 that, at the time of Asa, Simeonites were
residing in the north “as aliens” amongst
the Ephraïmites and Manasseh-ites. Bruns has elaborated on this in his context
of trying to locate BOJ to the Persian era: ….
Nor ... is the most
important geographical detail in the book [of Judith], namely the reference to
a Jewish (Simeonite) settlement on the border of the valley of Dothan, a
fabrication.
For a combination of
various sources (Meg. Ta’an, for 25 Marheshvan (chap. 8); Jos., Ant. 13:275f.,
379f; Wars 1:93f.; and also apparently I Macc. 5:23) shows that at the time of
the return in the region of Samaria, in the neighbourhood of what was known as
“the cities of Nebhrakta,” there was a Jewish-Simeonite settlement (which may in effect have existed as early
as in the days of the First Temple and being of Semite origin: cf. II Chron.
34:6, 15:9; and also I Chron. 4:31)
....
Thus there were Simeonites dwelling in this
northern part of the land during, and beyond, the era of the Divided Kingdom. ….
[End
of quotes]
Moreover,
Amos had apparently already dwelt in the north in an earlier period, as
Micaiah, no doubt situated amongst Simeonite relatives, he being well-known to
(and hated by) the treacherous king Ahab of Israel (I Kings 22:8): “The king of
Israel [Ahab] answered Jehoshaphat, ‘There is still one prophet through whom we
can inquire of the Lord,
but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me,
but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah’.”
That would suggest that
the prophetic calling referred to in Amos 7:14 was actually Amos’s second
calling unto the northern region.
Isaiah himself was definitely in
the north as the prophet Hosea, who prophesied as early as the reign of
Jeroboam II of Israel, and also as Uzziah, son of Micah (= Amos), the
Simeonite chief of Bethel (= “Bethulia”) (Judith 6:14-15), late in the reign of
Sennacherib, king of Assyria.
In my article, “Isaiah
a truly great prophet of both the southern and northern kingdom” (above), amongst others, I quoted the Douay version of
Judith 8:34 and 13:23 to the effect that Uzziah the Simeonite was “the prince
of Juda[h]” and “the prince of
the people of Israel”.
He was obviously a person of
great substance!
For more, see my article:
Prophet
Hosea better understood when identified with Uzziah of the Book of Judith
(5) Prophet Hosea better
understood when identified with Uzziah of the Book of Judith
Whilst we do not know for sure
whether the prophet, as a young man, had accompanied his father northwards when
Amos was commissioned to go there (presumably for the second time), it is
likely that Isaiah, later, as a family man, may have had to flee away from
Jerusalem to escape the wrath of king Ahaz of Judah (I am indebted to Charles
Boutflower, Book of Isaiah, for this suggestion), to whom Isaiah had
spoken so bluntly (Isaiah 7:13-17):
Then Isaiah said, ‘Hear
now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of
humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? Therefore
the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive
and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to
reject the wrong and choose the right, for before
the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the
land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. The Lord will bring on you and on
your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim
broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria’.
Isaiah often in Jerusalem
Isaiah was certainly in
Jerusalem, on and off at least, for king Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, to have been
able to consult him.
Famous are Isaiah’s various
prophetic interventions during the invasion of king Sennacherib of Assyria, who
laid siege to Jerusalem and deported many of its citizens.
Isaiah would also effect a
cure for the ailing king Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:1-11), but would excoriate the
king as well for his reckless courting of the Babylonian envoys of Merodach-baladan
- Isaiah thereby predicting the Babylonian Captivity (vv. 12-19).
Now, according to my revised
merging of the era of the reforming king Hezekiah with that of king Josiah, and
with Hezekiah as Josiah (see e.g. “De-coding Jonah” article), there is
more substance yet to the king of Judah; to the prophet Isaiah; and to Judith,
the Simeonite heroine of “Bethulia”.
Isaiah now emerges as “Asaiah
the king’s servant” (a highly important office) of Hezekiah’s alter ego, king
Josiah, when, in Josiah’s 18th regnal year, the Book of the Law was
discovered (2 Kings 22:3-12).
The extraordinary thing here
is that the king does not send to Isaiah (Asaiah), or to Jeremiah, for
consultation about the extraordinary find. No, he sends the delegation,
including Asaiah, to a woman, the prophetess Huldah (vv. 13-14), whom I have
identified as Judith herself:
Judith and Huldah
(DOC) Judith and
Huldah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
the presumably young woman
whom Uzziah, when in “Bethulia”, will acclaim as having displayed wisdom from
her very earliest years (Judith 8:29): ‘… from the beginning of your life all
the people have recognized your understanding, for your heart’s disposition is
right’.
This is a most extraordinary
situation, to say the least!
The king’s most honoured
delegates, including the princely prophet Isaiah (here as Asaiah), being sent
by king Josiah to consult a, presumably young, woman, about a scriptural
matter!
Although Jerusalem and its
surrounds will be reduced to turmoil by Sennacherib’s Assyrian forces – now to
be identified as the formerly enigmatic ‘northern foe’ of the Book of Jeremiah (1:14)
– Isaiah will pick up on Sennacherib’s blasphemous words against Yahweh (Isaiah
37:23), and foretell that Jerusalem will not in future experience invasion (vv.
33-35):
“Therefore this is what the Lord says
concerning the king of Assyria:
‘He will not enter this city
or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before it with shield
or build a siege ramp against it.
By the way that he came he will return;
he will not enter this city’,
declares the Lord.
I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant!”
Sennacherib, of course, had done
all of these things during his successful first invasion.
He will not do them again.
When, later, he will send his
eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi, with an army of 185,000 - when Isaiah (as
Uzziah) was situated in “Bethulia” in the north where Judith also lived - Judith
will take matters into her own hand, with Divine aid, with the consequence that
the massive Assyrian army will be routed.
As Isaiah had predicted, Jerusalem,
this time, will not be affected.
Isaiah and Nineveh
Chaos now ensues for the
nation of Assyria.
Sennacherib’s eldest son had
been decapitated by Judith:
“Nadin” (Nadab)
of Tobit is the “Holofernes” of Judith
(DOC)
"Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the "Holofernes" of Judith |
Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Assyria’s massive army has
been humiliated, completely routed.
Not long afterwards, Assyria’s
very king, Sennacherib, will be murdered by two of his sons.
Esarhaddon, who was not a
direct son of Sennacherib, will have to fight civil wars to hold on to Nineveh.
Into all of this turmoil,
fresh from his sojourn in a whale, comes forth Isaiah, as the prophet Jonah. In
the guise of Isaiah, he had already written much about Assyria.
Isaiah-Jonah is also the
prophet Nahum. See e.g. my articles:
Prophet
Nahum and resistance to Assyria
(5) Prophet Nahum and resistance
to Assyria
Tobit’s Jonah and
Nahum interchange
(5) Tobit's Jonah
and Nahum interchange
Now this complication, merging
Isaiah with Jonah, and with Nahum, brings in new geographical complications, as
we shall next have to consider.
Summary so far
The father of Isaiah was Amos-Micah
(also Micaiah), not of the prophetic line, a Simeonite, who hailed
from Moresheth-Gath in southern Judah. He tended sycamore trees in Tekoa, from
whence he was called to prophesy in the north, including Bethel, during the
reign of Israel’s king, Jeroboam II.
It appears that the prophet had
already been involved in the north as early as the reign of king Ahab of
Israel, to whom he was well-known, and hated.
Amos, continued on into the
early reign of king Hezekiah of Judah.
Isaiah of Judah may, perhaps, have accompanied his father to
the northern kingdom. He, as Hosea, certainly dwelt in the northern kingdom,
where he married a local woman and had a family.
He, too, prophesied as early
as the reign of Jeroboam II.
Later, after an encounter with
king Ahaz in Judah, he may have had to flee Jerusalem with his family. He was
back in Jerusalem, though, to heal an ailing king Hezekiah during the war with
Assyria. And he was part of the delegation sent by the king to the prophetess
Huldah when the Book of the Law was found. Later, we find him in again in the
north, in “Bethulia”, where he will eye-witness the rout of the Assyrian army
of 185,000, thanks to the heroic intervention of Judith (Huldah).
With the nation of Assyria in
complete chaos, Isaiah, as Jonah, will go to Nineveh, reluctantly, to preach
against the city.
He now merges also with Nahum.
A Geographical Minefield
According to the map above, Amos
was from Tekoa and Micah from Moresheth-Gath. That, though, was simplified,
with Amos, who only worked in Tekoa, becoming Micah from Moresheth-Gath.
We can perhaps simplify things
a bit further by identifying Jonah’s father, Amittai (Jonah 1:1), with Amos
(Amaziah), and Jonah’s home of “Gath-hepher” with Moresheth-Gath.
There is no way that Jonah
could have hailed from a Gath-hepher in Galilee (cf. John 7:52).
The map also had Isaiah from
Jerusalem and Hosea from further north, location unspecified. While Isaiah was
frequently in Jerusalem during his lifetime, as, too, was he in the north,
nowhere is it said that he actually came from Jerusalem.
As Uzziah, son of Micah, we
would expect our prophet to have hailed from Moresheth-Gath, tentatively
identified as Jonah’s town of Gath-hepher.
While, after this, things get rather
more complicated, there is a definite trend towards Simeonite and southern
Judean.
For instance, Asaiah, one of
my alter egos for Isaiah, may appropriately link up with Asaiah the Simeonite
of 1 Chronicles 4:36.
Nahum is called an Elcesite,
or from Elkosh (Nahum 1:1), place unknown, but traditionally considered to have
been in Simeonite territory in southern Judah, thereby keeping
our pattern alive: Bible
Query from Nahum (muslimhope.com)
Southern
Judah, 58 kilometers
southwest of Jerusalem in Simeonite territory. The Bible
Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament p. 1493 mentions different views but favors southern Judah.
The Wycliffe Bible Dictionary p.522 says a more defensible view is that it is in southern Judea
near either Beth-Gabre … modern Beit-Jibrin between Jerusalem and Gaza.
Most recently, though, I have
tentatively identified Nahum’s Elkosh as Al-Qush, near Nineveh, my proposed
home for Nahum-Jonah during his brief sojourn in Assyria.
Book of
Tobit provides template for the geography of Job-Tobias
(3) Book of Tobit provides
template for the geography of Job-Tobias
Isaiah
martyred
My final identification of
Isaiah, as a martyr during the reign of king Jehoiakim (= Manasseh), is as
“Uriah (var. Urijah) the son of Shemaiah of Kiriath Jearim” (Jeremiah
26:20-23).
This adds further
complications.
“Shemaiah”, here, may perhaps connect
with the Simeonite patriarch of the same name in close connection with Asaiah
of 1 Chronicles 4:36.
But Kiriath Jearim is not generally
thought to have been in Simeonite territory.
There may be two possibilities
here.
Isaiah might have moved to
live, now, in Kiriath Jearim upon his return south from “Bethulia”, and after
the Jonah incident.
Or Kiriath Jearim may yet need
to be properly identified. For instance, we read at:
Kiriath-Jearim
- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - (studylight.org)
“The exact position of this
important Israelite sanctuary has never been satisfactorily settled. Some of
the data appear to be contradictory”.
