by
Damien F. Mackey
Isaiah 14:12-27
How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High’.
But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
to the depths of the pit.
Those who see you stare at you,
they ponder your fate:
‘Is this the man who shook the earth
and made kingdoms tremble,
the man who made the world a wilderness,
who overthrew its cities
and would not let his captives go home?’
All the kings of the nations lie in state,
each in his own tomb.
But you are cast out of your tomb
like a rejected branch;
you are covered with the slain,
with those pierced by the sword,
those who descend to the stones of the pit.
Like a corpse trampled underfoot,
you will not join them in burial,
for you have destroyed your land
and killed your people.
Let the offspring of the wicked
never be mentioned again.
Prepare a place to slaughter his children
for the sins of their ancestors;
they are not to rise to inherit the land
and cover the earth with their cities.
‘I will rise up against them’,
declares the Lord Almighty.
‘I will wipe out Babylon’s name and survivors,
her offspring and descendants’,
declares the Lord.
‘I will turn her into a place for owls
and into swampland;
I will sweep her with the broom of destruction’,
declares the Lord Almighty.
The Lord Almighty has sworn,
‘Surely, as I have planned, so it will be,
and as I have purposed, so it will happen.
I will crush the Assyrian in my land;
on my mountains I will trample him down.
His yoke will be taken from my people,
and his burden removed from their shoulders’.
This is the plan determined for the whole world;
this is the hand stretched out over all nations.
For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?
His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?
If, as I have proposed in my article:
The 1100 BC Nebuchednezzar
(2) (DOC) The 1100 BC Nebuchednezzar | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
he, supposedly ‘the most potent monarch of the (so-called) second Isin dynasty’, was none other than Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’ himself (conventionally known as II), then it would follow that Ninurta-nadin-shumi was not the father of Nebuchednezzar, as is generally thought, but was Ashur-nadin-shumi, Nebuchednezzar’s predecessor on the throne of Babylon.
According to Marc Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC, Blackwell, 2004, p. 166): “… the second Isin dynasty. Its most forceful and famous ruler was Nebuchadnezzar I (ruled 1125-04) …”.
These dates will now need to be lowered on the timescale by about half a millennium.
On p. 292, Van de Mieroop will give this sequence of rulers of Babylon:
Tiglath-pileser III … Sennacherib … Assur-nadin-shumi … Esarhaddon … Assurbanipal.
But, with Nebuchednezzar (now I-II) also re-set as a ruler of Assyro-Babylonia, as Esarhaddon:
Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar
(4) Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
then Van de Mieroop’s conventional scenario will need to be re-shaped like this:
Tiglath-pileser III [= I] … Sennacherib [= Nabopolassar] …
Assur-nadin-shumi [= Ninurta-nadin-shumi] …
Esarhaddon … Assurbanipal [= Nebuchednezzar I and II].
Ashur-nadin-shumi (= Ninurta-nadin-shumi), now to be regarded as the oldest brother of Esarhaddon (= Nebuchednezzar I-II), will play a massive, though ill-fated, rôle in ancient biblico-history:
“Nadin” (Nadab) of Tobit is the “Holofernes” of Judith
(2) (DOC) "Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the "Holofernes" of Judith | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Apart from Ninurta-nadin-shumi, the other character connected with Nebuchednezzar supposedly of Isin, and who may have seemed right out of place in my revised chronology, is the Assyrian who fought against him, Ashur-resha-ishi.
I explained about him in “The 1100 BC Nebuchednezzar” article:
As to Ashur-resha-ishi, he seems to create something of a problem as an Assyrian fighting against Nebuchednezzar, when the latter I have also identified as a ruler of Assyria, as Esarhaddon/Assurbanipal. I would suggest that this Ashur-resha-ishi was the Sharezer (shureshi) who was one of the two sons who murdered their father, Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:37):
“One day when [Sennacherib] was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon succeeded him”.
Nebuchednezzar (as Esarhaddon) was thus fighting, against one of Sennacherib’s remaining sons, in a life or death civil war for the control of Assyria.
These names, at least, are common to the supposedly two eras:
Tiglath-pileser;
Merodach-baladan;
(three Elamites);
Ninurta-nadin-shumi/Ashur-nadin-shumi;
NEBUCHEDNEZZAR;
Ashur-resha-ishi/Sharezer
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