This morning, as I was reading in Isaiah 37 as part of my personal daily study, I was struck by the list of cities the Assyrian king claimed to have destroyed or subjugated. This story goes backward into chapter 36 of Isaiah, and you can find the same story in the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah in 2 Kings chapters 17-19, almost word-for-word, just like what you'd expect if a writer, like the chronicler, was consulting a historical book, or vice versa.
The short story is this: the Assyrians had swept thru Israel and were now besieging Jerusalem. The king's army commander sent a demand for the city to surrender. Included in the demand is a prideful claim to be greater than the gods, include the God of Israel. His proof that he is greater is that he had conquered a whole list of cities, each of which had its own gods supposedly defending it. As Hezekiah prays before God, there is a major difference in the case of Jerusalem. Those other gods were nothing at all, but the Assyrians have now come up against the One True God. The list of cities can be seen in the following quote:
"Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?"
Anyway, not out of doubt but out of curiosity, I wanted to see what I could find out about these cities. Because I don't have forever today and because I was interested in a non-Bible-based answer, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, I simply checked Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become a far better source than it once was, I say for those who still think of it as unreliable from its early days. It still isn't Gospel, but it is now backed up by sources, which gives you a fact trail to check out. In fact, for anyone doing research papers, of course Wikipedia isn't a good source at all, but it is a good place to find a quick list of others good sources to look into. Anyway, I digress. I have also found Wikipedia to be decidedly liberal as it reports on matters of our faith and of the Bible. That is why I was interested in what it might say about these cities. This is essentially an archaeological matter, which can definitely be interpreted but also must provide some basic facts that can't be messed with too much. So, I expected that anything I found that was an admission to the truth and/or reliability of this biblical record should be considered a significant proof. The admission is coming from a source that is not generally friendly to a view of Scripture that it is inerrant.
All that to say, you should see what I found! I'm not going to summarize it here, but link to it so you can read for yourself, if you're so inclined. For me, the cool thing is that nearly all of these cities are known to archaeology and have histories that match that of the biblical record.
