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Hello, and welcome to Oh Wow, That Really Happened, where your favorite true crimes podcast collides with your strangest Bible study.
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Hi there, I'm Julie West, and today we're opening what some would consider a cold case from the ancient world.
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It's a case that begins with a missing person, a tomb, and a city on the edge.
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Now, although we strive to keep the Oh Wow podcast family-friendly, because we are addressing incidents described in the Bible, there may be violence or content that some would find disturbing.
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That said, any shocking biblical content we cover will never be addressed in a glorified or gratuitous way.
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As always, I'm not going to pronounce things exactly like your pastor would, and until the guys in the story show up to correct one of us, we're not going to worry about it.
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And let's be honest, none of us will pronounce these names exactly as they would have thousands of years ago.
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Sometimes I may shorten names or give nicknames, but I won't ever be deliberately disrespectful, inaccurate, or blasphemous.
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I just want folks to focus on the details of the story instead of a long list of unfamiliar names.
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And some of the stories that we'll cover could range from creepy to weird and downright hilarious, and we are going to cover all of it, and the Bible and the Lord can handle it.
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In fact, God wants us to talk about all of His Word, including some of the unusual stuff.
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Finally, Captain Jack, my dog.
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Now, you may hear his voice someday, and that's okay.
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Right now, it seems as long as I warn you that it's a possibility, he's staying quiet, so I'm just gonna keep warning you.
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And so now that we've covered all of that, let's dust off our Bibles and get started.
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Okay, did anyone just have a brief Josiah Queen moment there? Yeah, you sang a little to yourself.
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Well, anyway, let's get back on track and get started Torn and battered and far from home, there's no other way to describe the body.
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Ironically, it's impossible to know exactly where the corpse fell before the birds and the wolves began to peck and claw and drag it.
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All that is sure is that he was far from Jerusalem, the land he had once helped lead.
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Before he was crumpled up like a piece of trash and hurled from the land.
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Now, the city was under siege.
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It's Jerusalem, 701 BC.
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The Assyrian army surrounds the walls.
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Descended from Noah's grandson, Asher, by Shem, the Assyrians had grown into the world's most terrifying superpower.
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Sennacherib, the Assyrian king that we're gonna call Sena, has already wiped out 46 fortified cities in Judah.
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Jerusalem is the last main holdout.
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Now, less than 100 years had come and gone since Jonah led the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, in a great revival.
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And if you're thinking, wait, the Assyrians are the Jonah and the whale people? Yes, and unfortunately that time of repentance and fear of the Lord that came with it, well, they had been forgotten long before the brutal nation's armies totally encircled Jerusalem between 50 and 75 years after Jonah's revival.
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See, there's this tendency to think of ancient people as being primitive and dusty.
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But before you picture the Assyrians as ignorant barbarians, understand the Assyrians were cruel, but there was nothing simple or basic about them.
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They were masters of hydraulic engineering, bringing water about 60 miles from the mountains to their beautiful hanging gardens, and there's evidence they were using water-raising screws more than three centuries before Archimedes was born.
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If you don't know what all of that is about, it really is worth a quick Google search.
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And Nineveh was such a big deal.
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It was an ancient tourist hub where people could rent donkeys and gondolas to tour the canals they had developed.
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It was known for exotic food and lush gardens, water features, and an 80-room lavish palace, and city walls wide enough for chariots to race side by side.
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In some ways, it was like an ancient Las Vegas.
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God had revealed himself in Nineveh.
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And as the Book of Nahum reveals, the Assyrians would forget the Lord sent a prophet to proclaim truth and redemption to the people.
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So yes, the Lord was reaching out to Gentiles even in the Old Testament.
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God's goodness isn't just a New Testament thing, but that's a podcast for another day.
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Long story short, the Assyrians had been given so much, and they still wanted more So less than 80 years after an Israelite, albeit reluctantly, brought the good news of redemption from the Lord to Nineveh, the Assyrians set camp just outside Jerusalem's walls.
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And this siege is one of the oldest confirmed biblical crossover events where both scripture and ancient historians documented the event.
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And what exactly was the Assyrian strategy with this siege? Well, it was starvation.
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Aside from starving the people of Jerusalem, the Assyrians were masters of psychological warfare.
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King Hezekiah is just trying to hold his nation together and encourage his people to believe that they would survive the siege.
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But the Assyrians were all about sucking away any remaining hope.
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See, they wanted to break the people's spirit by sending people to degrade their king and their God.
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So psychological torment outside the walls.
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Inside, fear and suspicion must have been running just out of control.
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And that's where the first clues would have begun to be found.
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Not only would the king's steward Shebna, but we'll call him Sheb, go missing, but that same man who was once the king's right hand would be disgraced.
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His tomb would be left unfinished, his legacy in ruins.
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To the ancients, a chariot was the equivalent of a supercar.
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Think Ferrari or McLaren.
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And Isaiah 22 tells us that Sheb was a chariot guy in the end, even his chariots would bring shame.
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And suddenly I've got that 1980s John Waite song I Ain't Missing You at All kind of stuck in my head because, well, Shabna was a guy who had disappeared from people's lives, but there's a big question about whether or not he was actually missed so who brought down Sheb? Was it a rival, a political coup, or something much more mysterious? Today, we're the detectives.
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We'll follow the evidence, question the suspects, and dig through the clues left in scripture and history.
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By the end, hopefully we'll have an answer to the question, who really brought down Sheb and why? The struggle.
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Oh, the struggle was real.
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But let's step back and -picture it for ourselves.
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Jerusalem, 701 BC, the city is bursting with refugees.
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Food must have been scarce and water precious.
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And this siege was such a big deal that evidence of it still exists today.
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Watching city after city fall, Hezekiah, the king, orders construction of a secret tunnel to bring water from the Gihon Spring, which archeologists have found.
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In fact, you can still walk through it today.,
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Um, also, in 1867, a British archeologist, Sir Charles Warren, discovered a trove of storage jars stamped LMLK, meaning belonging to the king, and they were tucked away everywhere.
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And that's a big deal because it's evidence of the biblical account, not just that a siege happened, uh, but that the biblical story really did take place.
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It's evidence that citizens of Jerusalem watched other cities fall.
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They saw the disaster coming for a while.
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They had time to prepare.
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Yeah, I mean, they were getting ready for some time.
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In fact, the city's population probably doubled fairly quickly.
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People needed to be fed.
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Tension was everywhere.
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In crowded places, well, they can be dirty places.
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If the city was so jammed packed, how could they possibly keep it clean? And, well, let's not sanitize it.
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Do you see what I did there? So being under siege meant that things could get pretty gross pretty fast.
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And the Assyrians were relentless.
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Eventually, they would cut off every road, every field, every well.
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Inside Jerusalem, the people's world would shrink to the space between the walls.
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Food would become scarce.
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The city's leaders would walk the city walls, staring out at a sea of enemy tents and hearing their taunts in their own language.
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Horrific words that they understood, but could not ignore.
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Think about that.
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In the midst of the preparation for battle, Assyrian leaders took the time to find someone with enough of a connection to Israel to be fluent in their language.
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Yes, psyops aren't a new thing.
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And they did it just to torment the people inside Jerusalem.
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Yes, exactly.
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And this guy's name was Rabshakeh.
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Which means chief of the princes.
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So we're not really sure if that was his name or his title.
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But because he spoke the people's language so well, there's some speculation that he may have even been an Israelite traitor.
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Now, whether he was or not, Rabs was not a good guy.
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I mean, can you imagine what this must have felt like to the people in Jerusalem? Every day, the city gets more crowded.
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There are tents going up around outside the city.
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Things are becoming more dirty.
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Food becomes scarcer.
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It's crowded and, well, stressful inside the city.
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And by now you may be thinking "Just leave.
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Get out of Dodge or at least Jerusalem."
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So here's the question: and go where? Really, once you flee the walled city, are you prepared to face the Assyrian army on your own? Could farmers or fishermen really be expected to outrun chariots? Look, I'm not saying being walled up in Jerusalem was a great option, but maybe it was the only option.
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And it gets worse.
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Hezekiah knew the Assyrian King Sennacherib was sending Rabshakeh to torment the people.
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So he sends three guys of his own.
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Hezekiah sends his chief of staff Shebna he sends Joah the recorder, the guy responsible for keeping the records.
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And by the way, Joah gives off some serious fifth crew member vibes.
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He only appears once, and then it's like, "Beam me up, Scotty."
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And finally, there's Eliakim.
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Now, he was an advisor who ran the palace for the king, and so we'll call him Sheb, Jel, and Eli, or maybe Elias at times.
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So you're probably thinking they meet with the enemy at the palace or a government building, right? Well, that's a good guess.
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But actually, no.
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They meet on the side of the road by the washer's field.
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And this meeting is described in Isaiah 36 and 2 Kings 18.
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And in case you're wondering, what does it even mean to meet by the washer's field? This was a paved highway next to the place where everyone did their laundry.
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So they're doing international relations on the side of the road next to an ancient laundromat? In one word, yep.
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Okay, and if you're wondering why, because it was on the side of the busy road next to the giant laundromat.
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everyone needs clean clothes, especially with a siege coming.
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And you can laugh and think this is not a big deal, but access to clean clothes is such a big deal even today that laundromats are considered one of the safest investments you can find.
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They've got a success rate in the US of better than 95%.
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For the Assyrians, you've got to understand this was about getting in the heads of the common people, not actual negotiations.
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So the whole conversation was meant to break the spirit of everyday citizens.
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And at this point, preparation was still underway.
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The full siege hadn't yet begun, so it's very likely that there were a whole lot of folks out there doing laundry, making sure they had plenty of clean drawers for when the city went on lockdown.
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And yikes.
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So, uh, what did the guys Sheb, Jo, and Eli do? Well, there wasn't a lot that they could do.
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They wrote a report.
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They took that report back to the king because apparently one of the key indicators of being grown has always been plenty of paperwork.
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Oh, and they did do one other big thing.
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They asked Rabbs to speak in Aramaic rather than Hebrew to keep the people from being upset.
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Now, did Rabbs agree? What do you think? Okay, solidly, solidly no.
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Oh, and the guy wasn't just mocking them.
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He wasn't just calling them names.
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He's telling the people, they're just trying to do laundry, what they should expect to happen to them.
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Now, how bad could it be? In 2 Kings 18:27 and Isaiah 36:12, you get a polite translation, which basically says something like, "You will eat your own dung and drink your own urine."
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And in person, the Assyrians weren't polite.
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By the way, this whole poo-eating thing, gross as it is, was something that's actually known to have happened during sieges.
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Yeah, it's gross.
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I get it.
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There's always a little gross for the 12-year-olds.
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But still, history tells us in sieges like this, even worse happened.
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Parents watched their children starve.
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Neighbors got into physical fights over scraps.
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And at times, the people resorted to cannibalism.
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According to Lamentations 4:10, 2:20, Ezekiel 5:10, Jeremiah 19:9, and I'm sure there are a whole bunch of others that I've missed, there were times when even the people of Jerusalem resorted to cannibalism So the smell of fear and filth is everywhere.
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Rab's message to the people of Jerusalem, oh, it was full of bragging, of blasphemy, of bold-faced lies.
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He questioned who they trusted, their God and Hezekiah.
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He ridiculed Hezekiah's strategy as weak and ineffective, and then mocked the idea that anyone, even the Egyptians, would help them.
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Rab's told them that the Lord had turned against them, and get this, he claimed that God specifically sent him to destroy the land of Judah.
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He was gross and crude and reminded the people of Jerusalem of the horrors of being under siege and, um, what they might have to eat.
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Rab's even accused Hezekiah of lying to the people, making them believe that only a fool would trust their leaders.
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In fact, he even mocked the idea of trusting in the Lord.
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And if all of that wasn't enough, he started offering bribes to the people just to give up, offering them land and peace for surrender.
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Sure, odds are they'd end up enslaved, but to some, that seemed better than being dead or even the proposed diet.
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He reminded them that no nation's gods had yet been able to deliver them from Assyria or its gods, and he claimed that the Lord was no better than any of the gods of any of the other nations that they had already devastated.
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And he pointed them to all of the Israelite cities that had already fallen.
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In some ways, there were tiny morsels of what Rab's was saying that was true..
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The people of Judah had turned away from the Lord, and the prophet had warned them that judgment and devastation were coming.
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But still, imagine you're just trying to do your laundry, and this is what you end up having to listen to.
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I mean, wow, that's a lot.
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And how did Hezekiah handle that? He handled it like a champ.
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Hezz went to the house of God.
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He faced the wall so that he wouldn't be distracted by anything or anyone else, which I've personally found to be a great strategy when you really, really need to talk to and hear from God.
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Then Hezekiah pulls out that paperwork from Sheb and Joah and Eliakim, you know, the stuff that had all of the threats from Rabshakeh, and he spread out the report with all of the attacks and all of the threats in it, and he basically said, "Lord, this isn't about me.
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It's about you, and you need to defend your name."
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And this is such a wise way to handle attacks.
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God, I'm yours, so this isn't about me.
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This is what they're saying about you, and Lord, I know that you will defend your name.
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Whoa, so the king didn't make it about himself or his kingdom even.
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It wasn't a big boo-hoo session of, "Here's all I've been through, Lord, and you don't know how hard this is for me."
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Hezekiah kept the focus on the Lord's reputation rather than his own.
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And what did the Lord do? Well, basically, God said, "Don't worry.
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Be happy.
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I've got this."
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Cue the Bobby McFerrin, man.
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In fact, the Lord told Hezekiah, "Not a single arrow will come over your walls."
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Okay, so that is a whole bunch of background.
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Now, for the crime.
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What a scene.
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Can you picture it? The sun is just rising over Jerusalem.
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The city is tense.
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The air is thick with dust and dread.
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And this is where, in the necropolis, Jerusalem's city of the dead, workers would stumble upon an unfinished tomb.
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And in case you're thinking, hold up, what is this necropolis, this city of the dead talk? We don't do zombie talk around here.
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Okay, let me explain.
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So back in the day, Israel wouldn't bury people inside the city walls.
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So Jerusalem is surrounded by the world's largest and oldest cemetery.
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Now, you could say giant cemetery surrounding the city, but the name necropolis, or city of the dead, it just works better with the podcast, right? Anyway, so what's going on with the tomb? The stonework is rough, the inscription incomplete.
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And maybe over there among the rubble lies Shebna's signet ring, the symbol of his authority.
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Or maybe there was some other overlooked clue, but now it's worthless.
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The man himself was gone without explanation.
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Well, sort of.
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It's a scene straight out of a mystery novel.
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The tomb was fit for a king, but it was being built for someone else.
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Today, it's hard to imagine luxury graves.
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But the pyramids and the Taj Mahal, those were royal graves.
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And in Matthew 23 and Luke 11, when Jesus talks about whitewashed graves, well, the necropolis is exactly where he was standing, and these are the elaborate tombs that he was talking about.
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But this tomb, well, the one they had just discovered, it was unfinished and empty except for faint echoes of ambition and failure.
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So what happened to Sheb, and why? In the middle of Jerusalem's nightmare, watching city after city fall, when leaders were supposed to be seeking God or coming up with ways to save the city or feed the city, Shebna was thinking about legacy.
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Not his people, not his king's, his own.
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Even if construction began before enemy troops started camping outside the city walls, this crisis had been coming for a while.
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And while the king was concerned about collapsing cities, the slaughter of his nation, and getting people in Jerusalem food and water, Sheb, his steward, was focused on his own legacy.
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And if you're wondering, okay, so what is a royal steward? Sheb's job was an administrator.
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He oversaw the palace, the staff, access to the king, major, economic and political operations.
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This was a position of immense power and strategic importance.
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In the midst of this unimaginable national crisis, he had people carving out a tomb fit for a king, an honor reserved for the greatest in Israel, a symbol of glory and permanence for, well, kings and high priests, and maybe some prophets.
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And this is what Sheb had workers doing.
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While people all over Judah were desperate just to survive.
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In the midst of the crisis, Sheb is still planning for more glory, chiseling his name into stone as if he could outlast the judgment falling on the city.
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Or maybe he's embracing the ideas from the enemy that, well, he's convinced that they were doomed and trying to preserve his legacy.
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Either way, this is the work that he had his people doing, and it's a jarring contrast.
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The city is dying and Sheb is dreaming of immortality.
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His priorities are so exposed, not by his enemies, but by his actions and the crisis itself.
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Let's think about this.
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Why would a steward build himself a royal tomb? And why was it left unfinished? Let the interviews begin.
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Now, if we could interview the people of Jerusalem, what would they say? Let's try to imagine it.
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Witness number one, an old stonecutter.
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That guy Sheb, oh, he was always racing through the city in some new chariot, robes trailing.
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Boy, he thought he was something.
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Said he was building a tomb to last a thousand years.
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But the work stopped like that overnight.
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No one knows why.
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Oh, there's witness number two, maybe a palace servant.
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Yeah, I saw him arguing with the prophet There was yelling.
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Isaiah warned him, said pride comes before a fall.
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Next thing you know, Sheb is gone.
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Poof, like that, replaced.
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Witness three, a city guard.
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See, rumor has it that Sheb had friends in Egypt, where all of his horses and chariots come from, and thought he could save us with foreign gold.
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Thankfully, the king, he might not be perfect, but at least he knows better than to trust in Egypt.
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And that Egypt thing, it's a big deal.
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Some scholarly materials suggest that the name Shebna may have Egyptian origins or at least connections.
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And certain scholars have noted that the name Shebna does not fit typical Hebrew naming patterns.
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In fact, it may be more of an Egyptian name than a Hebrew one.
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And that's crazy, especially given all of the political context of Hezekiah's time when alliances with Egypt really were being considered.
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And right now, there are probably folks who want an, explanation of a Hebrew naming pattern versus an Egyptian one.
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And breaking down all of the specifics would get really convoluted, but it's something we still recognize today.
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We know that Jose is likely to be Hispanic.
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Frank is probably not Chinese.
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Polynesian, African, Arabic names all have a distinctive sound, and that could be why folks were looking at Sheb and saying, "You're not from around here, are you?" In Sheb's defense, there are some experts who argue that his name could have just been short for Shebnyahu, but that seems to be undermined by Isaiah 22, where Isaiah calls out Sheb by name as an outsider and asks, "What are you even doing here?" More on that later.
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But Isaiah the prophet and the Lord had been warning people not just about relying on Egypt for help, but also warning about people telling them to rely on Egypt.
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So if Shebna was an Egyptian name, like it seems, well, it's likely that Sheb was at least somewhat connected to those warnings.
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So we have pride, conflict with a prophet, and whispers of political intrigue.
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The plot thickens.
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And just like that, Shebna goes missing.
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Unfortunately, that is all the time that we have.
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I hope you really enjoyed this episode of Oh Wow! That Really Happened? If you'd like to read Shebna's story for yourself, you'll find it in Isaiah 22, Isaiah 36 and 37, II Kings 18, II Kings 19.
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Oh, and to answer a question, yes, significant portions of the text are lifted directly from scripture.
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Uh, because the Lord gets executive producer credits, no, we don't consider that plagiarism.
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If you want to find out about support for the biblical account outside the Bible, you may want to look into the Royal Steward Inscription.
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Again, that's the Royal Steward Inscription.
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Be sure to come back and check out part two when we'll find out what happens to Jerusalem, the Assyrians, and Shebna.
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Oh, and also Eliakim.
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Until then, be sure to like, subscribe, and spread the word.
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One more time, I'm Julie West, and a big thank you for listening to Oh Wow, That Really Happened.
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Hello, and welcome to Oh Wow, That Really Happened, where your favorite true crimes podcast collides with your strangest Bible study.
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Hi there, I'm Julie West, and today we're opening what some would consider a cold case from the ancient world.
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It's a case that begins with a missing person, a tomb, and a city on the edge.
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Now, although we strive to keep the Oh Wow podcast family-friendly, because we are addressing incidents described in the Bible, there may be violence or content that some would find disturbing.
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That said, any shocking biblical content we cover will never be addressed in a glorified or gratuitous way.
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As always, I'm not going to pronounce things exactly like your pastor would, and until the guys in the story show up to correct one of us, we're not going to worry about it.
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And let's be honest, none of us will pronounce these names exactly as they would have thousands of years ago.
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Sometimes I may shorten names or give nicknames, but I won't ever be deliberately disrespectful, inaccurate, or blasphemous.
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I just want folks to focus on the details of the story instead of a long list of unfamiliar names.
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And some of the stories that we'll cover could range from creepy to weird and downright hilarious, and we are going to cover all of it, and the Bible and the Lord can handle it.
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In fact, God wants us to talk about all of His Word, including some of the unusual stuff.
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Finally, Captain Jack, my dog.
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Now, you may hear his voice someday, and that's okay.
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Right now, it seems as long as I warn you that it's a possibility, he's staying quiet, so I'm just gonna keep warning you.
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And so now that we've covered all of that, let's dust off our Bibles and get started.
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Okay, did anyone just have a brief Josiah Queen moment there? Yeah, you sang a little to yourself.
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Well, anyway, let's get back on track and get started Torn and battered and far from home, there's no other way to describe the body.
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Ironically, it's impossible to know exactly where the corpse fell before the birds and the wolves began to peck and claw and drag it.
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All that is sure is that he was far from Jerusalem, the land he had once helped lead.
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Before he was crumpled up like a piece of trash and hurled from the land.
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Now, the city was under siege.
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It's Jerusalem, 701 BC.
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The Assyrian army surrounds the walls.
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Descended from Noah's grandson, Asher, by Shem, the Assyrians had grown into the world's most terrifying superpower.
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Sennacherib, the Assyrian king that we're gonna call Sena, has already wiped out 46 fortified cities in Judah.
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Jerusalem is the last main holdout.
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Now, less than 100 years had come and gone since Jonah led the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, in a great revival.
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And if you're thinking, wait, the Assyrians are the Jonah and the whale people? Yes, and unfortunately that time of repentance and fear of the Lord that came with it, well, they had been forgotten long before the brutal nation's armies totally encircled Jerusalem between 50 and 75 years after Jonah's revival.
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See, there's this tendency to think of ancient people as being primitive and dusty.
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But before you picture the Assyrians as ignorant barbarians, understand the Assyrians were cruel, but there was nothing simple or basic about them.
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They were masters of hydraulic engineering, bringing water about 60 miles from the mountains to their beautiful hanging gardens, and there's evidence they were using water-raising screws more than three centuries before Archimedes was born.
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If you don't know what all of that is about, it really is worth a quick Google search.
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And Nineveh was such a big deal.
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It was an ancient tourist hub where people could rent donkeys and gondolas to tour the canals they had developed.
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It was known for exotic food and lush gardens, water features, and an 80-room lavish palace, and city walls wide enough for chariots to race side by side.
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In some ways, it was like an ancient Las Vegas.
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God had revealed himself in Nineveh.
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And as the Book of Nahum reveals, the Assyrians would forget the Lord sent a prophet to proclaim truth and redemption to the people.
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So yes, the Lord was reaching out to Gentiles even in the Old Testament.
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God's goodness isn't just a New Testament thing, but that's a podcast for another day.
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Long story short, the Assyrians had been given so much, and they still wanted more So less than 80 years after an Israelite, albeit reluctantly, brought the good news of redemption from the Lord to Nineveh, the Assyrians set camp just outside Jerusalem's walls.
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And this siege is one of the oldest confirmed biblical crossover events where both scripture and ancient historians documented the event.
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And what exactly was the Assyrian strategy with this siege? Well, it was starvation.
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Aside from starving the people of Jerusalem, the Assyrians were masters of psychological warfare.
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King Hezekiah is just trying to hold his nation together and encourage his people to believe that they would survive the siege.
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But the Assyrians were all about sucking away any remaining hope.
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See, they wanted to break the people's spirit by sending people to degrade their king and their God.
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So psychological torment outside the walls.
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Inside, fear and suspicion must have been running just out of control.
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And that's where the first clues would have begun to be found.
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Not only would the king's steward Shebna, but we'll call him Sheb, go missing, but that same man who was once the king's right hand would be disgraced.
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His tomb would be left unfinished, his legacy in ruins.
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To the ancients, a chariot was the equivalent of a supercar.
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Think Ferrari or McLaren.
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And Isaiah 22 tells us that Sheb was a chariot guy in the end, even his chariots would bring shame.
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And suddenly I've got that 1980s John Waite song I Ain't Missing You at All kind of stuck in my head because, well, Shabna was a guy who had disappeared from people's lives, but there's a big question about whether or not he was actually missed so who brought down Sheb? Was it a rival, a political coup, or something much more mysterious? Today, we're the detectives.
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We'll follow the evidence, question the suspects, and dig through the clues left in scripture and history.
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By the end, hopefully we'll have an answer to the question, who really brought down Sheb and why? The struggle.
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Oh, the struggle was real.
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But let's step back and -picture it for ourselves.
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Jerusalem, 701 BC, the city is bursting with refugees.
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Food must have been scarce and water precious.
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And this siege was such a big deal that evidence of it still exists today.
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Watching city after city fall, Hezekiah, the king, orders construction of a secret tunnel to bring water from the Gihon Spring, which archeologists have found.
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In fact, you can still walk through it today.,
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Um, also, in 1867, a British archeologist, Sir Charles Warren, discovered a trove of storage jars stamped LMLK, meaning belonging to the king, and they were tucked away everywhere.
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And that's a big deal because it's evidence of the biblical account, not just that a siege happened, uh, but that the biblical story really did take place.
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It's evidence that citizens of Jerusalem watched other cities fall.
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They saw the disaster coming for a while.
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They had time to prepare.
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Yeah, I mean, they were getting ready for some time.
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In fact, the city's population probably doubled fairly quickly.
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People needed to be fed.
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Tension was everywhere.
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In crowded places, well, they can be dirty places.
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If the city was so jammed packed, how could they possibly keep it clean? And, well, let's not sanitize it.
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Do you see what I did there? So being under siege meant that things could get pretty gross pretty fast.
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And the Assyrians were relentless.
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Eventually, they would cut off every road, every field, every well.
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Inside Jerusalem, the people's world would shrink to the space between the walls.
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Food would become scarce.
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The city's leaders would walk the city walls, staring out at a sea of enemy tents and hearing their taunts in their own language.
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Horrific words that they understood, but could not ignore.
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Think about that.
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In the midst of the preparation for battle, Assyrian leaders took the time to find someone with enough of a connection to Israel to be fluent in their language.
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Yes, psyops aren't a new thing.
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And they did it just to torment the people inside Jerusalem.
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Yes, exactly.
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And this guy's name was Rabshakeh.
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Which means chief of the princes.
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So we're not really sure if that was his name or his title.
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But because he spoke the people's language so well, there's some speculation that he may have even been an Israelite traitor.
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Now, whether he was or not, Rabs was not a good guy.
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I mean, can you imagine what this must have felt like to the people in Jerusalem? Every day, the city gets more crowded.
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There are tents going up around outside the city.
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Things are becoming more dirty.
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Food becomes scarcer.
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It's crowded and, well, stressful inside the city.
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And by now you may be thinking "Just leave.
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Get out of Dodge or at least Jerusalem."
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So here's the question: and go where? Really, once you flee the walled city, are you prepared to face the Assyrian army on your own? Could farmers or fishermen really be expected to outrun chariots? Look, I'm not saying being walled up in Jerusalem was a great option, but maybe it was the only option.
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And it gets worse.
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Hezekiah knew the Assyrian King Sennacherib was sending Rabshakeh to torment the people.
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So he sends three guys of his own.
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Hezekiah sends his chief of staff Shebna he sends Joah the recorder, the guy responsible for keeping the records.
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And by the way, Joah gives off some serious fifth crew member vibes.
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He only appears once, and then it's like, "Beam me up, Scotty."
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And finally, there's Eliakim.
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Now, he was an advisor who ran the palace for the king, and so we'll call him Sheb, Jel, and Eli, or maybe Elias at times.
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So you're probably thinking they meet with the enemy at the palace or a government building, right? Well, that's a good guess.
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But actually, no.
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They meet on the side of the road by the washer's field.
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And this meeting is described in Isaiah 36 and 2 Kings 18.
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And in case you're wondering, what does it even mean to meet by the washer's field? This was a paved highway next to the place where everyone did their laundry.
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So they're doing international relations on the side of the road next to an ancient laundromat? In one word, yep.
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Okay, and if you're wondering why, because it was on the side of the busy road next to the giant laundromat.
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everyone needs clean clothes, especially with a siege coming.
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And you can laugh and think this is not a big deal, but access to clean clothes is such a big deal even today that laundromats are considered one of the safest investments you can find.
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They've got a success rate in the US of better than 95%.
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For the Assyrians, you've got to understand this was about getting in the heads of the common people, not actual negotiations.
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So the whole conversation was meant to break the spirit of everyday citizens.
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And at this point, preparation was still underway.
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The full siege hadn't yet begun, so it's very likely that there were a whole lot of folks out there doing laundry, making sure they had plenty of clean drawers for when the city went on lockdown.
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And yikes.
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So, uh, what did the guys Sheb, Jo, and Eli do? Well, there wasn't a lot that they could do.
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They wrote a report.
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They took that report back to the king because apparently one of the key indicators of being grown has always been plenty of paperwork.
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Oh, and they did do one other big thing.
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They asked Rabbs to speak in Aramaic rather than Hebrew to keep the people from being upset.
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Now, did Rabbs agree? What do you think? Okay, solidly, solidly no.
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Oh, and the guy wasn't just mocking them.
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He wasn't just calling them names.
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He's telling the people, they're just trying to do laundry, what they should expect to happen to them.
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Now, how bad could it be? In 2 Kings 18:27 and Isaiah 36:12, you get a polite translation, which basically says something like, "You will eat your own dung and drink your own urine."
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And in person, the Assyrians weren't polite.
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By the way, this whole poo-eating thing, gross as it is, was something that's actually known to have happened during sieges.
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Yeah, it's gross.
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I get it.
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There's always a little gross for the 12-year-olds.
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But still, history tells us in sieges like this, even worse happened.
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Parents watched their children starve.
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Neighbors got into physical fights over scraps.
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And at times, the people resorted to cannibalism.
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According to Lamentations 4:10, 2:20, Ezekiel 5:10, Jeremiah 19:9, and I'm sure there are a whole bunch of others that I've missed, there were times when even the people of Jerusalem resorted to cannibalism So the smell of fear and filth is everywhere.
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Rab's message to the people of Jerusalem, oh, it was full of bragging, of blasphemy, of bold-faced lies.
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He questioned who they trusted, their God and Hezekiah.
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He ridiculed Hezekiah's strategy as weak and ineffective, and then mocked the idea that anyone, even the Egyptians, would help them.
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Rab's told them that the Lord had turned against them, and get this, he claimed that God specifically sent him to destroy the land of Judah.
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He was gross and crude and reminded the people of Jerusalem of the horrors of being under siege and, um, what they might have to eat.
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Rab's even accused Hezekiah of lying to the people, making them believe that only a fool would trust their leaders.
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In fact, he even mocked the idea of trusting in the Lord.
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And if all of that wasn't enough, he started offering bribes to the people just to give up, offering them land and peace for surrender.
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Sure, odds are they'd end up enslaved, but to some, that seemed better than being dead or even the proposed diet.
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He reminded them that no nation's gods had yet been able to deliver them from Assyria or its gods, and he claimed that the Lord was no better than any of the gods of any of the other nations that they had already devastated.
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And he pointed them to all of the Israelite cities that had already fallen.
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In some ways, there were tiny morsels of what Rab's was saying that was true..
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The people of Judah had turned away from the Lord, and the prophet had warned them that judgment and devastation were coming.
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But still, imagine you're just trying to do your laundry, and this is what you end up having to listen to.
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I mean, wow, that's a lot.
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And how did Hezekiah handle that? He handled it like a champ.
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Hezz went to the house of God.
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He faced the wall so that he wouldn't be distracted by anything or anyone else, which I've personally found to be a great strategy when you really, really need to talk to and hear from God.
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Then Hezekiah pulls out that paperwork from Sheb and Joah and Eliakim, you know, the stuff that had all of the threats from Rabshakeh, and he spread out the report with all of the attacks and all of the threats in it, and he basically said, "Lord, this isn't about me.
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It's about you, and you need to defend your name."
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And this is such a wise way to handle attacks.
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God, I'm yours, so this isn't about me.
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This is what they're saying about you, and Lord, I know that you will defend your name.
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Whoa, so the king didn't make it about himself or his kingdom even.
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It wasn't a big boo-hoo session of, "Here's all I've been through, Lord, and you don't know how hard this is for me."
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Hezekiah kept the focus on the Lord's reputation rather than his own.
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And what did the Lord do? Well, basically, God said, "Don't worry.
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Be happy.
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I've got this."
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Cue the Bobby McFerrin, man.
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In fact, the Lord told Hezekiah, "Not a single arrow will come over your walls."
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Okay, so that is a whole bunch of background.
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Now, for the crime.
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What a scene.
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Can you picture it? The sun is just rising over Jerusalem.
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The city is tense.
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The air is thick with dust and dread.
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And this is where, in the necropolis, Jerusalem's city of the dead, workers would stumble upon an unfinished tomb.
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And in case you're thinking, hold up, what is this necropolis, this city of the dead talk? We don't do zombie talk around here.
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Okay, let me explain.
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So back in the day, Israel wouldn't bury people inside the city walls.
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So Jerusalem is surrounded by the world's largest and oldest cemetery.
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Now, you could say giant cemetery surrounding the city, but the name necropolis, or city of the dead, it just works better with the podcast, right? Anyway, so what's going on with the tomb? The stonework is rough, the inscription incomplete.
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And maybe over there among the rubble lies Shebna's signet ring, the symbol of his authority.
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Or maybe there was some other overlooked clue, but now it's worthless.
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The man himself was gone without explanation.
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Well, sort of.
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It's a scene straight out of a mystery novel.
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The tomb was fit for a king, but it was being built for someone else.
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Today, it's hard to imagine luxury graves.
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But the pyramids and the Taj Mahal, those were royal graves.
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And in Matthew 23 and Luke 11, when Jesus talks about whitewashed graves, well, the necropolis is exactly where he was standing, and these are the elaborate tombs that he was talking about.
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But this tomb, well, the one they had just discovered, it was unfinished and empty except for faint echoes of ambition and failure.
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So what happened to Sheb, and why? In the middle of Jerusalem's nightmare, watching city after city fall, when leaders were supposed to be seeking God or coming up with ways to save the city or feed the city, Shebna was thinking about legacy.
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Not his people, not his king's, his own.
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Even if construction began before enemy troops started camping outside the city walls, this crisis had been coming for a while.
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And while the king was concerned about collapsing cities, the slaughter of his nation, and getting people in Jerusalem food and water, Sheb, his steward, was focused on his own legacy.
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And if you're wondering, okay, so what is a royal steward? Sheb's job was an administrator.
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He oversaw the palace, the staff, access to the king, major, economic and political operations.
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This was a position of immense power and strategic importance.
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In the midst of this unimaginable national crisis, he had people carving out a tomb fit for a king, an honor reserved for the greatest in Israel, a symbol of glory and permanence for, well, kings and high priests, and maybe some prophets.
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And this is what Sheb had workers doing.
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While people all over Judah were desperate just to survive.
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In the midst of the crisis, Sheb is still planning for more glory, chiseling his name into stone as if he could outlast the judgment falling on the city.
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Or maybe he's embracing the ideas from the enemy that, well, he's convinced that they were doomed and trying to preserve his legacy.
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Either way, this is the work that he had his people doing, and it's a jarring contrast.
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The city is dying and Sheb is dreaming of immortality.
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His priorities are so exposed, not by his enemies, but by his actions and the crisis itself.
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Let's think about this.
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Why would a steward build himself a royal tomb? And why was it left unfinished? Let the interviews begin.
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Now, if we could interview the people of Jerusalem, what would they say? Let's try to imagine it.
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Witness number one, an old stonecutter.
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That guy Sheb, oh, he was always racing through the city in some new chariot, robes trailing.
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Boy, he thought he was something.
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Said he was building a tomb to last a thousand years.
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But the work stopped like that overnight.
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No one knows why.
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Oh, there's witness number two, maybe a palace servant.
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Yeah, I saw him arguing with the prophet There was yelling.
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Isaiah warned him, said pride comes before a fall.
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Next thing you know, Sheb is gone.
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Poof, like that, replaced.
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Witness three, a city guard.
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See, rumor has it that Sheb had friends in Egypt, where all of his horses and chariots come from, and thought he could save us with foreign gold.
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Thankfully, the king, he might not be perfect, but at least he knows better than to trust in Egypt.
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And that Egypt thing, it's a big deal.
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Some scholarly materials suggest that the name Shebna may have Egyptian origins or at least connections.
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And certain scholars have noted that the name Shebna does not fit typical Hebrew naming patterns.
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In fact, it may be more of an Egyptian name than a Hebrew one.
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And that's crazy, especially given all of the political context of Hezekiah's time when alliances with Egypt really were being considered.
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And right now, there are probably folks who want an, explanation of a Hebrew naming pattern versus an Egyptian one.
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And breaking down all of the specifics would get really convoluted, but it's something we still recognize today.
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We know that Jose is likely to be Hispanic.
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Frank is probably not Chinese.
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Polynesian, African, Arabic names all have a distinctive sound, and that could be why folks were looking at Sheb and saying, "You're not from around here, are you?" In Sheb's defense, there are some experts who argue that his name could have just been short for Shebnyahu, but that seems to be undermined by Isaiah 22, where Isaiah calls out Sheb by name as an outsider and asks, "What are you even doing here?" More on that later.
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But Isaiah the prophet and the Lord had been warning people not just about relying on Egypt for help, but also warning about people telling them to rely on Egypt.
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So if Shebna was an Egyptian name, like it seems, well, it's likely that Sheb was at least somewhat connected to those warnings.
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So we have pride, conflict with a prophet, and whispers of political intrigue.
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The plot thickens.
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And just like that, Shebna goes missing.
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Unfortunately, that is all the time that we have.
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I hope you really enjoyed this episode of Oh Wow! That Really Happened? If you'd like to read Shebna's story for yourself, you'll find it in Isaiah 22, Isaiah 36 and 37, II Kings 18, II Kings 19.
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Oh, and to answer a question, yes, significant portions of the text are lifted directly from scripture.
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Uh, because the Lord gets executive producer credits, no, we don't consider that plagiarism.
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If you want to find out about support for the biblical account outside the Bible, you may want to look into the Royal Steward Inscription.
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Again, that's the Royal Steward Inscription.
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Be sure to come back and check out part two when we'll find out what happens to Jerusalem, the Assyrians, and Shebna.
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Oh, and also Eliakim.
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Until then, be sure to like, subscribe, and spread the word.
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One more time, I'm Julie West, and a big thank you for listening to Oh Wow, That Really Happened.
