"Patriotism" and God

A Case from the 8th Century B.C.E.

In 701 B.C.E., the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded the Levant, including Judah, and famously conquered all of the fortified cities of Judah except Jerusalem. The story is well known to anyone who had Sunday School lessons in their childhood; it’s a staple of what kids in church are taught. Eventually, Sennacherib’s force is defeated/departs (perhaps more on that later), but at the start there’s a famous confrontation between the Assyrian king’s chief of staff, the “Rabshakeh,” and Hezekiah, the king of Judah at the time.

Remember that Hezekiah is a “good guy,” one of the better kings of Judah, as recorded both in 1 Kings and Isaiah.

Here is the beginning of Isaiah’s account of the conflict between Judah and Assyria:

The Rabshakeh spoke to [Hezekiah’s emissaries, outside Jerusalem’s city wall]: “Give this message to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, ‘What kind of reliance is this reliance of yours? Do you think that mere words add up to sound strategy and military strength? So on whom are you relying, that you have rebelled against me? Are you actually relying on Egypt, that broken reed of a support, which pierces a man’s hand when he puts his weight on it? That is what Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is like to anyone who relies on him!’ And as for saying to me, “Our trust is in Yahweh our God,” was it not his high places and altars that Hezekiah demolished and declared to Judah and Jerusalem:¹ “You shall only worship at this altar?” Come, make a bargain with my lord the king of Assyria. . . . And in fact, do you imagine that it was without Yahweh that I have invaded this land and destroyed it? It was Yahweh who said to me: ‘Go into this land and destroy it.’ ” [Isa 36:4–8, 10; translation: Gordon McConville]

There’s a lot going on in Rabshakeh’s rhetoric, as reported. The item I want to focus on is the last couple of sentences, in which the Assyrian king’s commander claims that he was besieging Jerusalem on Yahweh’s instructions.

Can that be true? Did God sometimes instruct Israel’s enemies to attack Israel?

Yes. And Isaiah would agree, in fact, about the Assyrians being called by Yahweh to attack Israel. Isa 10:5–6 reads:

Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger! The staff in their hands is my wrath! I dispatch them against a godless nation [Israel is the godless nation, in this statement], and commission them against a people that has angered me, to plunder and despoil them, trample them like mud in the streets. [trans. Gordon McConville]

The chapter goes on to criticize Assyria for having an ungodly desire for power. Isaiah’s criticism is not so much for what the Assyrians do but for the spirit that they brought to their attack on Judah, a spirit of pride and arrogance.²

Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that Isaiah and Rabshakeh were thinking pretty much in parallel with each other in 701 at the time of the invasion.

No wonder the prophets were frequently accused of lack of patriotism, of supporting the enemy, with the result that some of them were imprisoned or killed!

If we think about modern analogies to this sort of situation and think metaphorically about our place in the world, it’s possible that we could draw two conclusions.

1. God sometimes uses enemies to correct a people.³ God is not always on “our side.”

2. People who are not blindly patriotic—that is, they don’t believe “my country right or wrong” and who are willing to criticize their own people and nation—may well be considered unpatriotic or even as supporting another people or nation. Criticism and persecution may result.

We Christians have a first allegiance to God; and only a secondary or tertiary allegiance to any political power, including the nation that we call “ours.”

Perhaps you can think of additional conclusions to draw from this incident and this text. Or modern examples that are analogies to this text. Those who drafted the Barmen Declaration come to mind for me.⁴ Feel free to comment!

1. This is true, of course. See1 Kings 18:1–5, where it is reported that Hezekiah destroyed many local places of worship, which would not have been an action that most of the populace welcomed.

2. Assyria is hardly alone in being an arrogant conqueror. Can we think of any nations in history that saw themselves as humble?

3. There are quite a few texts in Isaiah that show that God chooses to punish/correct nations that are contemporaries of ancient Judah, with a goal not to completely destroy them but with the intent to redeem them. This is what much of the section of Isaiah referred to as the OAN = Oracles about/against the Nations is concerned with. Perhaps another time!)

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmen_Declaration