Among the besetting sins of Old Testament Israel was an unfortunate tendency do what seemed right in their own eyes. When faced with a difficult situation, many times the Israelites, both the common people and the leadership, chose to wing it rather than to seek God’s face.
Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God condemned this way of thinking in no uncertain terms.
“Woe to the rebellious children,” says the LORD,
“Who take counsel, but not of Me,
And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit,
That they may add sin to sin;
Who walk to go down to Egypt,
And have not asked My advice,
To strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh,
And to trust in the shadow of Egypt!” (Isaiah 30:1, 2)
Some commentators believe that the likely targets of these words originally were King Hezekiah’s counselors. Assuming that is the case, how can we apply these words to what is going on in our own day? To do this, a little history is in order.
Hezekiah succeeded his father Ahaz to the throne of Judah in 715 BC. Ahaz, who reigned in Judah from 735 – 715 BC, was regarded by the writers of Scripture in a decidedly negative light. 2 Kings provides us with the following assessment of Ahaz,
Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel; indeed he made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had cast out from before the children of Israel. And sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree (2 Kings 16:2-4).
Not a pretty picture, that. Ahaz, a direct descendent of King David, practiced child sacrifice and idolatry. And he didn’t just merely practice idolatry, but from the picture we get of him he was downright enthusiastic about it.
But this wasn’t the whole of his sin. 2 Kings 16 also details how Ahaz sought an alliance with the king of Assyria against the kings of Israel and Syria. Here again, Ahaz is noteworthy for the gusto with which he pursued the alliance.
Scripture tells us that Ahaz sent gold and silver to the Assyrian king, who in return brought his army and took the Syrian capital of Damascus. Ahaz went to Damascus to meet his “deliverer” and while he was in the city spotted and altar. Apparently, Ahaz was very impressed with this pagan altar, for he hastened to send the design back to Jerusalem to the priest Urijah. Urijah completed the new altar and it was set up and ready to go upon Ahaz’ return to Jerusalem. At that time, the Scriptures tell us, “the king [Ahaz] saw the altar; and the king approached the altar and made offerings on it.”
In short, what we have with Ahaz is a thoroughly apostate ruler who cared not a whit for the Lord or for the trust that was given to him as king of Judah.
Now Hezekiah, when he assumed the throne in 715 BC, showed himself to be of a wholly different spirit from his father. The writer of 2 Kings says of Hezekiah,
[H]e did what was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father David had done.
He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. For he held fast to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses. The LORD was with him; he prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. He subdued the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.”
As his father Ahaz was zealous for evil, so Hezekiah was zealous for good works. One implication for Christians in this apostate age is that we ought not lose hope. If righteous King Hezekiah can follow the evil Ahaz, there is no doubt but that God can also bring about reformation in our own time. Even if it seems to us, as it likely seemed to the Godly remnant in Judah, a distant hope.
Now returning to Isaiah, even though Judah had a godly king on the throne, the events set in motion by Ahaz had come back to haunt the nation, and not all of Hezekiah’s counselors were on board with his rebellion.
As is so often the case when men seek to do what is right in their own eyes, the end result if often exactly the opposite of what they set out to achieve. God had caused Ahaz’ grand alliance with Assyria to boomerang back on Judah. Instead of serving as a shield to the nation, Assyria had become an existential threat.
It is interesting to note that Scripture presents Hezekiah’s rebellion against the king of Assyria as a good thing. One implication of this is that Christians are not bound to honor agreements, the terms of which are themselves sinful. Far better it is to break a treaty than to continue on a sinful path. Of course, it’s better not to make sinful contracts in the first place.
But even though God approved of Hezekiah’s daring actions, apparently not all of his court counselors were on board with his plans. As is so often the case with men, once they have made a bad decision, they find it far easier to double down it than to undertake the hard work changing course.
Having aroused the ire of the king of Assyria, it seemed to many in Hezekiah’s court far better to seek another entangling foreign alliance than to repent and trust in the Lord for their nation’s defense. In this case, they decided to enlist the help of the Egyptians. And it is their trust in Egypt that God has condemned in Isaiah 30.
By seeking help from Egypt, Judah’s counselors added a new sin to their previous sin of allying with Assyria. Edward Young explains,
Sin is cumulative; one sin leads to another. Having turned to Assyria for help instead of relying upon God’s promises the nation finds a great enemy hovering over it. To avoid the bondage of this enemy, the people now look to another human source of deliverance, namely Egypt. Indeed, there may have been a pro-Egyptian party in Hezekiah’s court (The Book of Isaiah, A Commentary, Vol. 2, p.335).
How often we see a similar line of thinking from those in positions of authority in our own day! Leaders become trapped in an intellectual roach motel of their own making. That is to say, once having adopted a particular set of principles, they continue to operate from them long after they should have realized the folly of it all.
Take, for example, America’s policy of foreign military interventionism. Since 1990, the US has been continually at war in the Middle East. And to what end? All we have to show for the blood and treasure lost is a region in more turmoil than it was before we started. And if all this weren’t enough, the neoconservatives have big plans to bring the US into military conflict with Russia and China.
Or how about America’s financial condition. The financial crisis of 2008 was caused by too much debt. So what did our government officials and central bankers conspire to do? Attempted to solve a debt problem by adding to the debt! The end result of these actions was to boost Wall Street at the expense of the rest of the nation, creating tremendous understandable resentment in much of society. Nothing was solved.
Further, the economic distortions caused by debt-based growth model followed by the central bankers and government officials served to fuel the resentment that gave rise to Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. Who, based on his rhetoric, is committed to adding to the national debt in an attempt to stimulate growth in the economy.
Immigration is another seemingly intractable problem. The current situation is unsatisfactory to nearly everyone. To fix things, one side is determined to invite the whole world to the US at the expense of the American taxpayers, while the other side to build a wall to keep people out.
It is not surprising to see America’s pagan thinkers, whether conservative or liberal, continuing to pursue their flawed principles which lead inexorably to an ever downward spiral or war, debt and societal disintegration. In doing this, they are simply following the path of other unbelievers who have gone before them, Hezekiah’s counselors for example, in doubling down on their original bad ideas.
As Christians, though, we need to use Hezekiah as our model, not his counselors. The Bible says of Hezekiah that, “He did what was right in the sight of the LORD”, that, “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel,” that “[H]e held fast to the LORD,” and that, “[H]e did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments.”
Contrary to what many believe, the Bible is indeed a textbook, really the only textbook. for all public policy questions. It is the final word on foreign policy, economics and immigration. And following Hezekiah’s example, it is incumbent upon Christians to understand, to teach, and to act upon what Scripture says on these matters. To do otherwise is to go down to Egypt, to take counsel but not of the Lord.
