=Alliances with other nations.=—­Another favorite way of seeking safety was through alliances with other nations and their gods.  According to the beliefs of that age, when two nations made an alliance their gods were included in it.  To overcome the Assyrians, therefore, it would be necessary to make an alliance with some other nation whose gods were very powerful.  So the people of Jehovah began to “strike hands with the children of foreigners.”  The rulers of Jerusalem set about making coalitions with the other nations of western Asia:  with the Philistines, the Syrians, the Phoenicians and, most of all, the Egyptians.  The gods of the Egyptians were supposed to be especially strong:  Osiris and Isis were the chief of their deities and they were believed to be the gods of the underworld—­of Sheol, or Hades, the abode of the dead.  So when these poor ignorant politicians at Jerusalem finally did succeed in arranging for an alliance with the crafty and deceitful kings of Egypt they said to themselves:  “Now we are safe.  The Assyrians cannot hurt us now.  We have made a covenant with Death.”

THE STATESMAN-PROPHET, ISAIAH

It is good to know that among many misguided people there was one man whose wisdom of the eternal Truth of God made him stand like a rock while the multitudes ran to and fro in uncertainty and despair.  Isaiah was a comrade and co-worker in spirit with the prophets named in the three preceding chapters, Amos, Hosea, and Micah.  It is by no means impossible that he had listened to the sermons of Hosea, and thus caught from him his inspiration.  He must certainly have known Micah personally, for they lived and preached only some twenty-five or thirty miles apart—­Micah in the village of Moresheth and Isaiah in the city of Jerusalem.

=Isaiah’s message.=—­Isaiah’s special message to his people was that all the nations of the world are subject to the righteous rule of the God of righteousness, Jehovah; and that the attempt to find safety for their nation by alliances with other nations and their gods was utterly foolish and wrong.  Undoubtedly this message found a response in the hearts of those who remained faithful to Jehovah.

This message grew out of the great and splendid ideas as to Jehovah’s character which Amos and his successors had been working out:  that he was a God of righteousness and love, not greedy for burnt-offerings, not flaring up into fits of anger, and needing to be soothed and mollified by peace offerings; but a God who asks only for justice and fair-dealing among men, and for true love in response to his own.  Isaiah repeated these great truths to his own people in Jerusalem in glowing words whose eloquence is unsurpassed.  For example: