Q&A: Evidence Against “The Lord Has Forsaken the Land”
Evidence Against “The Lord Has Forsaken the Land”
Question
According to your view, in the past there were miracles and individual providence. As far as I remember, it was written here on the site that in your opinion, during the First Temple period there were probably still miracles and providential intervention.
In the description of Sennacherib’s siege of Hezekiah’s Jerusalem, a clear miracle is recounted (not a private miracle or anything like that) that was visible to everyone: the enormous Assyrian army was destroyed in a single night by an angel of the Lord.
According to the historical documentation, we know that Sennacherib did in fact withdraw from the siege (which seems very puzzling), but not because his entire army was destroyed in one night, but apparently because he received a bribe or for some other political reason.
So the fact that Sennacherib’s siege was lifted is a historical fact — the question is what caused it:
A crazy miracle (as written in the Hebrew Bible, and in Michi’s view probably to be taken seriously), or a completely natural and normal reason.
Logically, it seems there is no reason to think there was some “crazy miracle.” I’ll explain in a few lines why:
The explanation: if such a large part of the Assyrian army (maybe even the whole army) was simply destroyed, you can safely bet there’s no way Assyria would have continued to exist as the strongest world power for many more decades afterward (we know it continued to exist as the world’s superpower for nearly another hundred years after this story, until the rise of the Babylonians).
What do you think, Michi? Shouldn’t the historical facts presented above cause you to back away from the thesis that “there were open miracles in the past”?
I’ll note in passing that your thesis violates Occam’s razor, and in my opinion that is enough to show that it is plainly incorrect (why not adopt a completely natural faith-based approach, and instead assume that there really were miracles in the past?).
Answer
I haven’t checked the historical facts. Your claims are very weak (I don’t know how much of the Assyrian army was destroyed there). It is obvious that historical scholarship will explain it as bribery, because they rule out the possibility of a miracle a priori. So I wouldn’t bring proof for anything from historians. And this also isn’t the only miracle in the Bible.
Discussion on Answer
The IDF “at full strength” — meaning including reserve battalions and everything — numbers (if I’m not mistaken; I checked this once) about 450,000 soldiers.
In the past — when there was a need to conquer territory and not just attack within it, and when there were only swords and spears and you couldn’t control 10 kilometers with a single tank — armies really did number huge amounts of soldiers. Also, almost all men fought.
Rabshakeh was an apostate Jew, as written in the Hebrew Bible, and in any case it makes perfect sense that he went himself. Also, Titus and Vespasian personally stood at the head of their army when they fought Judah in the Great Revolt, and there Judah was already broken and not a kingdom with a king ruling wide territories as in Hezekiah’s time. And they were there even though it wasn’t even a quarter of their army.
In the Hebrew Bible it says that 185,000 men from the Assyrian army died. Do you not accept that either?
That is an enormous number of fighters, even for a modern army (of course, populations in the past were smaller by orders of magnitude, which only further highlights the magnitude of the “miracle”). Just for comparison, the IDF (which is considered a very respectable army) has fewer than 185,000, and that even includes combat-support personnel.
Another point is that Assyria went out with its army to wage war against all the kingdoms to its south (these are historical facts), and one may assume that this was probably almost the whole army, or at least a very large part of it.
Another proof that this was the main Assyrian army is that the one who led the army was the Rabshakeh, one of the kingdom’s senior ministers, so this wasn’t some tiny detachment attacking the kingdom of Judah.
And again, my argument is based on the fact that if the Assyrian army had suffered such a devastating blow as described in the Hebrew Bible, it is very reasonable to assume that kingdoms like Egypt would have stepped in and taken over the situation as the regional empire. And that did not happen. Because apparently 185,000 Assyrian soldiers did not really die.
In my opinion, this argument can serve as very strong evidence that the Hebrew Bible describes completely natural events as miracles. The fact that you are less persuaded by the historians’ arguments is already your business.
But I recommend that you take a few things into account:
Historians rely on archaeology. Archaeology nowadays is largely based on absolute dating according to dating methods taken from the exact sciences (as far as I know, someone even won a Nobel Prize for that).
In addition, historians use astronomy — things that were documented as having been observed in the past — and compare that with our current ability to predict whether that astronomical event really took place in the past. So here it’s not 100% exact, but someone once said there is certainty about nothing, so I don’t see any reason not to adopt it.