The Assyrians are coming. No one has stopped them yet. The Assyrian empire stretched from the Persian Gulf in the southeast, to the Black Sea in the north, and to the Mediterranean in the west, and now reached to the very borders of Judah, just a few miles from Jerusalem.
Just to give you a feel for the size difference, the Assyrian empire was roughly the size of all the “Big Ten”
university states put together. Judah is the size of St. Joseph and LaPorte counties together.
Maybe with the addition of some folks from the northern tribes, we should throw Berrien county Michigan into the mix!
Yeah, that's going to make a difference! The Assyrians have the resources of Ninevah and Babylon and Damascus and… perhaps it would communicate better to say, “Chicago and Detroit, and Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, and Cleveland and Columbus…” but hey, we got Niles!
As we've seen over the last couple weeks, Hezekiah is convinced that the only way to save his people from the Assyrians is to reform Jerusalem's worship!
But of course, he doesn't stop there! Reformation always starts with worship – but then it covers everything else as well! |
