In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it— - Isaiah 20:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 16, 2020): Isaiah 19 & 20

It is a lie that we tell ourselves sometimes. The falsehood is that the only way that we can learn something is by experiencing it. The concept is that the only way to discover what hot means is to touch the hot burner. The problem with the lie is twofold. First, there are too many lessons to learn all of them experientially. We have to be able to learn in other ways. And second, some lessons are simply too dangerous to learn by experience. We could learn in that way, but the lesson would radically alter or destroy our existence.

The truth is that often when we pull out the lie, the reality is that we want to do something that someone else warns us could be bad for us. We want to go to the party, we want to experiment with something, we want to do something dangerous, and someone is warning us that we could get hurt. And so we tell ourselves the lie; the only way that we can learn anything is to experience it. In our imagination, we declare that we might get injured, but we will definitely have fun in the process; and the only way that we can learn anything is by experiencing it.

Isaiah solidly anchors this part of his prophecy in history. In the year that Sargon, the king of Assyria, sent his supreme commander to Ashdod, and he attacked and captured the city. We know the year that that happened. It was in 711 B.C.E. By this point, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was gone, and it had been for almost a decade. Ashdod was a Philistine city, and Judah had no sympathy for the Philistines who had been nothing but trouble for Judah.

But the fall of Ashdod was also a warning and a lesson to be learned. It increased the pressure on Judah to ally with someone. There was no way that Judah could go it alone against the Assyrian monster. The problem was that allies didn’t seem to matter to the Assyrians. Israel and Syria had been allies, and now both were defeated. But their defeat could have been because their conflict with Judah had weakened them. Now that Ashdod was gone, and Judah felt the Assyrian pressure growing closer.

The only constant at this point was Isaiah’s insistence the Judah needed to stand alone. The temptation to run to Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush was strong, especially now that Ashdod had fallen. But Isaiah wanted Judah to learn the lesson of the nations around them. Allying with others did not necessarily save you, and that was a lesson that Judah didn’t need to experience to learn. At this point, salvation was up to God. The nation needed to turn to him and not to Egypt.

Eventually, even Egypt and Kush would also fall. But Judah would stand if they trusted in their God.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 21