Psychological warfare
In the British Museum you can see the stone panels from Sennacherib's Palace in Nineveh. They show the siege and capture of Lachish. The city's inhabitants trudge into captivity; its officials are tortured and executed.
The same fate awaited Jerusalem when the Assyrian king sent his ambassador to reason with Hezekiah. Jerusalem's prospect looked bleak and the Assyrians knew it. So they began to 'reason' with the Israelites.
They questioned the Israelites' confidence by questioning their alliances. They questioned their faith in God and their military strength. They even questioned God's plans: 'The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.' This is a brilliant example of psychological warfare.
Many of us are familiar with this kind of psychological attack. Sometimes it comes from other people, sometimes from the weight of circumstances; sometimes it's the voice of 'reason' within us, telling us that we simply don't have the ability. 'You can't trust your friends, your ability, your faith, your God...' Self-doubt can be a very healthy thing, humbling us, challenging our arrogance and encouraging us to trust God more than we naturally would. But it can also tempt us to cowardice, weakness and surrender. Are we prepared to whistle blow knowing what the consequences might be? Would we intervene if we witnessed an injustice? Will we risk a rupture in our family, by resisting pressure to do something that we believe to be wrong?
None of us, God willing, will ever have to face a dilemma like Hezekiah's, when the fate of an entire city rested on his resolve. But we all encounter injustice and we all face psychological warfare when our conscience fights against our 'common sense'. At such times we need not only Solomon's wisdom to know how to act but also Hezekiah's resolve to ignore the 'Assyrian reasons' and to trust God.
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