If one is to understand the Old Testament in context one has to know some of the history of ancient Mesopotamia its rulers and kings. The Ethiopian kingdom of Cush is talked about throughout the Old Testament as one of the saviors of the Israelites when they got into trouble. This video although a little long explains a lot about the Old Testament narratives.
You had King Cyrus of Persia who toppled king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon 5th Century and freed the Israelites from captivity.
Then you had the Pharaoh Taharqa who was one the most powerful Pharaoh of the 25th Dynasty. In the Old Testament he is known as, “Tirhakah” he was the son of Piye and successor of Shebitku. Shebitku was his uncle both ruled Egypt for only 75 years. Together they changed the history and politics of Egypt for centuries to come.
Names;
Tirhakah— Isa. 37: 9— “and he is hearing on Tirhakah king of Cush to to say-of he marches forth to to fight you and he is hearing, and he is sending messengers to Hezekiah to to say of….
King Hezekiah– according to the Hebrew Bible he was the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah who reigned between 715 and 686 BC. He witnesses the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by Sargon’s Assyrians 722 BC. He enacted sweeping religious reforms a strict mandate for the sole worship of Yahweh and a prohibition on the veneration of other deities within the Temple of Jerusalem.
It must be noted that Yahweh has no etymology or origin of birth.
A course in history of the Old Testament;
Taharqa had ascended at a favorable moment for the 25th dynasty. The delta warlords had been laid low. The Assyrians, after failing to best him at Jerusalem, wanted no part of the Nubian ruler. Egypt was his and his alone. The gods granted him prosperity to go with the peace. During his sixth year on the throne, the Nile swelled from rains, inundating the valleys and yielding a spectacular harvest of grain without sweeping away any villages. As Taharqa would record in four separate stelae, the high waters even exterminated all rats and snakes. Clearly the revered Amun was smiling on his chosen one. Taharqa did not intend to sit on his profits. He believed in spending his political capital. Thus, he launched the most audacious building campaign of any pharaoh since the New Kingdom (around 1500 B.C.), when Egypt had been in a period of expansion. Inevitably the two holy capitals of Thebes and Napata received the bulk of Taharqa’s attention. Standing today amid the hallowed clutter of the Karnak temple complex near Thebes is a lone 62-foot-high column. That pillar had been one of ten, forming a gigantic kiosk that the Nubian pharaoh added to the Temple of Amun. He also constructed a number of chapels around the temple and erected massive statues of himself and of his beloved mother, Abar. Without defacing a single preexisting monument, Taharqa made Thebes his. He did the same hundreds of miles upriver, in the Nubian city of Napata. Its holy mountain Jebel Barkal—known for its striking rock-face pinnacle that calls to mind a phallic symbol of fertility—had captivated even the Egyptian pharaohs of the New Kingdom, who believed the site to be the birthplace of Amun. Seeking to present himself as heir to the New Kingdom pharaohs, Taharqa erected two temples, set into the base of the mountain, honoring the goddess consorts of Amun. On Jebel Barkal’s pinnacle—partially covered in gold leaf to bedazzle wayfarers—the black pharaoh ordered his name inscribed. Around the 15th year of his rule, amid the grandiosity of his empire-building, a touch of hubris was perhaps overtaking the Nubian ruler. “Taharqa had a very strong army and was one of the main international powers of this period,” says Charles Bonnet. “I think he thought he was the king of the world. He became a bit of a megalomaniac.” The timber merchants along the coast of Lebanon had been feeding Taharqa’s architectural appetite with a steady supply of juniper and cedar. When the Assyrian king Esarhaddon sought to clamp down on this trade artery, Taharqa sent troops to the southern Levant to support a revolt against the Assyrian. Esarhaddon quashed the move and retaliated by crossing into Egypt in 674 B.C. But Taharqa’s army beat back its foes. The victory clearly went to the Nubian’s head. Rebel states along the Mediterranean shared his giddiness and entered into an alliance against Esarhaddon. In 671 B.C. the Assyrians marched with their camels into the Sinai desert to quell the rebellion. Success was instant; now it was Esarhaddon who brimmed with bloodlust. He directed his troops toward the Nile Delta. Taharqa and his army squared off against the Assyrians. For 15 days they fought pitched battles— “very bloody,” by Esarhaddon’s grudging admission. But the Nubians were pushed back all the way to Memphis. Wounded five times, Taharqa escaped with his life and abandoned Memphis. In typical Assyrian fashion, Esarhaddon slaughtered the villagers and “erected piles of their heads.” Then, as the Assyrian would later write, “His queen, his harem, Ushankhuru his heir, and the rest of his sons and daughters, his property and his goods, his horses, his cattle, his sheep, in countless numbers, I carried off to Assyria. The root of Kush I tore up out of Egypt.” To commemorate Taharqa’s humiliation, Esarhaddon commissioned a stela showing Taharqa’s son, Ushankhuru, kneeling before the Assyrian with a rope tied around his neck. As it happened, Taharqa outlasted the victor. In 669 B.C. Esarhaddon died in route to Egypt, after learning that the Nubian had managed to retake Memphis. Under a new king, the Assyrians once again assaulted the city, this time with an army swollen with captured rebel troops. Taharqa stood no chance. He fled south to Napata and never saw Egypt again. A measure of Taharqa’s status in Nubia is that he remained in power after being routed twice from Memphis. How he spent his final years is a mystery— with the exception of one final innovative act. Like his father, Piye, Taharqa chose to be buried in a pyramid. But he eschewed the royal cemetery at El Kurru, where all previous Kushite pharaohs had been laid to rest. Instead, he chose a site at Nuri, on the opposite bank of the Nile. Perhaps, as archaeologist Timothy Kendall has theorized, Taharqa selected the location because, from the vista of Jebel Barkal, his pyramid precisely aligns with the sunrise on ancient Egypt’s New Year’s Day, linking him in perpetuity with the Egyptian concept of rebirth.
The thing about Egypt is that they never rebirthed they remain mired in the religions, gods of the Pharaohs of Luxor, the tombs of the Pharaohs.
The takeaway here is that ever time Israel got in trouble it took an outside source to secure their liberty. You can pray for someone, but it takes a physical action to help someone.
Hebrew extant; Isa. 11: 11—“ and he becomes in the day the he he shall proceed my Creation second time hand of him to to acquire of remnant of people of him which he shall remain from Assyria and from Egypt and from Pathros and from Cush an Elam and from Shinar and from Hamath and from coastlands of the sea”…..
Fathers teaching children about Creation
