* 2 Kings xxi. 18-26; cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 20-25.  The reign of fifty-five years attributed to Manasseh by the Jewish annalists cannot be fitted into the chronology of the period; we must either take off ten years, thus reducing the duration of the reign to forty-five years, or else we must assume the first ten of Manasseh to be synchronous with the last ten of Hezekiah.

     ** 2 Kings xxii. 1; cf. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 1.

Thus, for more than fifty years, Judah enjoyed almost unbroken peace, and led as happy and prosperous an existence as the barrenness of its soil and the unruly spirit of its inhabitants would permit.

But though its political activity had been almost nothing during this interval, its spiritual life had seldom been developed with a greater intensity.  The reverse sustained by Sennacherib had undoubtedly been a triumph for Isaiah, and for the religious party of which we are accustomed to regard him as the sole representative.  It had served to demonstrate the power of Jahveh, and His aversion for all idolatrous worship and for all foreign alliances.  In vain did the partisans of Egypt talk loudly of Pharaoh and of all those principalities of this world which were drawn round in Pharaoh’s orbit; Egypt had shown herself incapable of safeguarding her friends, and things had gone steadily from bad to worse so long as these latter held the reins of government; their removal from office had been, as it were, the signal for a welcome change in the fortunes of the Jews.  Jahveh had delivered His city the moment when, ceasing to rely upon itself, it had surrendered its guidance into His hands, and the means of avoiding disaster in the future was clearly pointed out to it.  Judah must be content to follow the counsels which Isaiah had urged upon it in the name of the Most High, and submissively obey the voice of its prophets.  “Thine eyes shall see thy teachers:  and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.  And ye shall defile the over-laying of thy graven images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold:  thou shalt cast them away as an unclean thing; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence.”  Isaiah seems to disappear after his triumph, and none of his later prophecies have come down to us:  yet the influence of his teaching lasted throughout the reign of Hezekiah, and the court, supported by the more religious section of the people, not only abjured the worship of false gods, but forsook the high places and discontinued the practices which he had so strenuously denounced.  The great bulk of the nation, however, soon returned to their idolatrous practices, if, indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them; rites abhorrent to Jahveh found favour even among members of the king’s own family, and on Hezekiah’s death, about 686 B.C., a reaction promptly set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he had introduced.*