by
Damien F. Mackey
The Assyrian king
Tiglath-pileser supposedly boasted of having received tribute from “Azriyahu of Yaudi”, generally
thought by historians to refer to (but the chronology would be over-stretched)
the great King Azariah (= Uzziah) of Judah.
Could this “Azriyahu of
Yaudi” actually be an historical reference to our man, the high priest
Azariah of Judah?
One may recall that I have identified Sobna (Shebna)
with the high priest Azariah of the time of King Hezekiah, and with the high
priest Uriah of the time of King Ahaz – and have further identified him as the
rebellious Azuri of Ashdod of the Assyrian records of King
Sargon II.
Though there is nothing to suggest that our
composite character had rebelled during the reign of the Assyrian king,
Tiglath-pileser [III] - {he, the high priest, then being an obedient lackey of
the idolatrous Ahaz who was pro-Assyrian} - there is now to be considered that
intriguing view of Nadav Na’aman, below (taken from Yigael Levin’s The
Chronicles of the Kings of Judah):
that the Assyrian reference to Azriyahu of Yaudi properly
belongs to the time of Sennacherib’s assault on Jerusalem (701 BC being a
conventional date) – the approximate time when the high priest Azariah was
indeed revolting.
“However Na'aman (1974) showed
that one of one of the inscriptions
that connected this
Azriyahu to a land called Yaudi was actually attributed
to Tiglath-pileser
III erroneously, and was actually a part of an inscription
by Sennacherib describing his
campaign to Yaudi/Judah in 701,
long after the death of [King]
Azariah”.
This, then, would make it highly likely that “Azriyahu of Yaudi” was the rebellious Azuri of
Ashdod (= Lachish) of Sargon II’s records, and it would further strengthen my
view that the:
Assyrian King Sargon II, [was] Otherwise
Known As Sennacherib
https://www.academia.edu/6708474/Assyrian_King_Sargon_II_Otherwise_Known_As_Sennacherib
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