This was but the least of his offences:  for had he not offered his own son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the league of Israel and Damascus?  Among the people themselves there were many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the God of their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations, and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any other source; the worship of Jahveh was confounded with that of Moloch in the valley of the children of Hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or Tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites:  a large and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* Isaiah complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their idols, “worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers had made."** The new king, obedient to the divine command, renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which the superstition of his predecessors had cumbered the temple, and which they had connected with the worship of Jahveh, and in his zeal even destroyed the ancient brazen serpent, the Nehushtan, the origin of which was attributed to Moses.***

     * Isa. xxx. 33, where the prophet describes the Tophet
     Jahveh’s anger is preparing for Assyria.

     ** Isa. ii. 8.

*** 2 Kings xviii. 4.  I leave the account of this religious reformation in the place assigned to it in the Bible; other historians relegate it to a time subsequent to the invasion of Sennacherib.

On the occasion of the revolt of Yamani, Isaiah counselled Hezekiah to remain neutral, and this prudence enabled him to look on in security at the ruin of the Philistines, the hereditary foes of his race.  Under his wise administration the kingdom of Judah, secured against annoyance from envious neighbours by the protection which Assur freely afforded to its obedient vassals, and revived by thirty years of peace, rose rapidly from the rank of secondary importance which it had formerly been content to occupy.  “Their land was full of silver and gold, neither was there any end of their treasures; their land also was full of horses, neither was there any end of their chariots."*

     * Isa. ii. 7, where the description applies better to the
     later years of Ahaz or the reign, of Hezekiah than to the
     years preceding the war against Pekah and Rezin.

Now that the kingdom of Israel had been reduced to the condition of an Assyrian province, it was on Judah and its capital that the hopes of the whole Hebrew nation were centred.