=Isaiah's Counsel in a Later Crisis.= In this great crisis the wisdom of Isaiah's counsel was vindicated beyond question and his authority became so strong with king and people that an attempt was made to remove certain of the surviving heathen symbols from the popular worship. In the later crisis of 690 B.C., when Sennacherib advanced to the conquest of Egypt, the prophet by his advice was able to save Jerusalem. While engaged in the siege of Lachish, the imposing fortress on the Philistine Plain on the southern side of the Wady el-Hesy, Sennacherib sent messengers demanding the unconditional surrender of Judah's capital. From the point of view of the Assyrian king it was dangerous to leave in his rear a strong fortress like Jerusalem, which had already proved a centre of rebellion. His demand, however, was unreasonable, for there is no evidence that Jerusalem, at this later time, was guilty of sedition. In the light of these changed conditions, instead of predicting calamity as a penalty for rebellion, Isaiah advised Hezekiah to refuse to surrender his city to destruction. The calm, unflinching faith of the prophet overcame the fears of the king and thus preserved Jerusalem for another century. Without waiting to carry out his threats against Jerusalem, Sennacherib advanced against Egypt. From the variant traditions it appears that in the marshy land on the eastern side of the Nile delta his army was overtaken by a plague and he was forced ignominiously to retreat.
=The Reactionary Reign of Manasseh.= Assyria continued, during the reign of Hezekiah's successor, Manasseh, to maintain its control of Palestine. Assyrian and Babylonian customs and religious institutions pervaded the land as never before. Two legal contracts, drawn up in the usual Assyrian form and dating from the years 651 and 648 B.C. in the reign of Manasseh, have been discovered in the mound of Gezer. The one records the sale of a field and the other of an estate with the house and land. The owner of the land was a Hebrew (Nethaniah) but the joint owners of the estate and the twelve witnesses were nearly all Assyrians, indicating how strong was this foreign influence at the time. The weak Manasseh was a leader in a wide-spread reaction against the exalted religious and ethical teachings of the prophets. The old Canaanite cults were largely revived and the worship of Babylonian and Assyrian deities was introduced even into the temple at Jerusalem. Silenced by persecution, the faithful prophets and priests devoted themselves to putting the principles proclaimed by Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah into definite laws that would shape the daily life of the people. The results of their work are preserved in the book of Deuteronomy, which became the basis of the later reformation of Josiah.