Hezekiah’s Reform: The Archeological Evidence

The passage also appears Isaiah 36:7, in the narrative chapters taken from Kings that retell the period of Judah’s history that overlap with Isaiah’s lifetime, which conclude the first part of the book of Isaiah.

The dissertation was written in academic Latin, and is thus not accessible to most people. For a discussion and translation of this dissertation (which was only about ten pages long in the original), see Paul B. Harvey Jr. and Baruch Halpern, “W.M.L. de Wette’s “Dissertatio Critica …”: Context and Translation,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte [Journal for Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Law] 14 (2008): 47–85.

Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, introduction by W. Robertson Smith (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885), 46, see also pp. 47 and 480; trans. from Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1883); repr. of Geschichte Israels [Israelite History] (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1878).

This skepticism about the historicity of Hezekiah’s reform remains popular among Bible scholars, and nowadays, some scholars even disregard the historicity of Josiah’s reforms. For contemporary discussions, see Juha Pakkala, “Why the Cult Reforms in Judah Probably Did Not Happen,” in One God—One Cult—One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives, eds. Reinhard G. Kratz, and Hermann Spieckermann, BZAW 405 (Berlin: De Gruyter 2010), 201–235; Lester Grabbe, Ancient Israel. What do we Know and How do we Know it? (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 238–239.

Nowadays, many books portray Hezekiah’s cultic reform as one of the most significant shifts in the religious practices of ancient Israel, with considerable relevance to several central or even defining concepts of later Judaism (such as the centralization of cult and the exclusive worship of YHWH). See, e.g., Mario Liverani, Israel’s History and the History of Israel (London: Routledge, 2005), 155; Rainer Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, Studien zur Exegese des Alten Testaments und zur Religionsgeschichte Israels, BZAW 326 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 365.

Ze’ev Herzog, “Perspectives on Southern Israel’s Cult Centralization: Arad and Beer-Sheba,” in One God—One Cult—One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives, eds. Reinhard G. Kratz, and Hermann Spieckermann, BZAW 405 (Berlin,: De Gruyter 2010), 169–199; Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, “Temple and Dynasty: Hezekiah, the Remaking of Judah and the Rise of the Pan-Israelite Ideology,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30 (2006): 259–285.

See Saar Ganor and Igor Kreimerman, “An Eighth-Century B.C.E. Gate Shrine at Tel Lachish, Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 381 (2019), 211–236.

E.g., the example from the City of David (A. de Groot and H. Bernick-Greenberg, “Stratigraphy,” in Excavations at the City of David, 1978–1985. Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Volume VIIA, Area E: Stratigraphy and Architecture. Text, eds. A. de Groot and H. Bernick-Greenberg, Qedem 53 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012), 9–138 [p. 100]).

See Ganor and Kreimerman, “An Eighth-Century B.C.E. Gate Shrine,” fig. 8.

For a detailed discussion, see Sabine Kleiman, “The Iron IIB Gate Shrine at Lachish: An Alternative Interpretation,” Tel Aviv 47.1 (2020): 1–10.

Ze’ev Herzog, “Social, Historical and Cultural Ramifications,” in Beer-Sheba II. The Early Iron IIA Enclosed Settlement and the Late Iron IIA-Iron IIB Cities, ed. Ze’ev Herzog, Tel Aviv University, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Monograph Series 33 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 1452–1485 [p. 1476].

The date of the altar, as well as its original location is extensively discussed in literature. See, for example Nadav Na’aman, who dismisses altogether taking the altar as evidence for a sanctuary at the site and suggest the possibility of an open cult place (Na’aman, “The Abandonment of Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 593–595).

In a recent analysis of the surfaces of two of the altars, researchers were able to uncover even residue of cannabis, see Eran Arie, Baruch Rosen, and Dvory Namdar, “Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad,” Tel Aviv 47 (2020): 5–28.

See Yohanan Aharoni, “Arad: Its Inscriptions and Temple,” The Biblical Archaeologist 31.1 (1968): 1–32 [26–27]

Here presented are the revised strata suggested by Herzog. Aharoni’s original division of strata was slightly different.

Aharoni believed that the temple was decommissioned in stages, corresponding to the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah respectively, but Herzog’s analysis has shown the latter stage to be chimerical. See Ze’ev Herzog, “The Fortress Mound at Tel Arad: An Interim Report.” Tel Aviv 29 (2002): 3–109; Herzog, Perspectives on Southern Israel’s Cult Centralization, 175.

For arguments in favor of connecting the Assyrian campaign with the abandonment of the Arad sanctuary, see Nadav Na’aman, “The Abandonment of Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” Ugarit-Forschungen 34 (2002), 585–602; Diane Edelman, “Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 31 (2008), 395–434; Sabine Kleiman, “The End of Cult Places in 8^th Century Judah. Cult Reform or de facto Centralization?”, in Sakralarchitektur in Palästina / Sacred Architecture in Palestine, ed. J. Kamlah, ADPV 48 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, forthcoming), 257–274. It also possible that the destruction is connected to actions by the Arab leader Asuhili that occurred just after 701 B.C.E. For this possibility, see Edelman, “Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization,” 410–411.

See Amir Sumaka’i Fink, Late Bronze Age Tell Atchana (Alalakh): Stratigraphy, Chronology, History British Archaeological Reports International Series (Oxford: BAR Publishing, 2020), 56–60. See also, Nadav Na’aman “The Abandonment of Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” Ugarit-Forschungen 34 (2002): 585–602.

See Emmanuel Eisenberg, “The Temples at Tell Kittan,” The Biblical Archaeologist 40.2 (1977): 77–81.

Another reason may have been that Assyria would have frowned upon the reestablishment of cult sites throughout Judah. Official cult places such as those at Arad or Lachish possessed not only functional but also symbolic purposes. Sanctuaries had been a representation of the king and the royal court and projected their supremacy over the city, and Assyrian interests would not be served by allowing the vassal king of Judah to project his own power throughout his territory.

For the theory of a de facto centralization of cult in Jerusalem after the Assyrian campaign, see Lisbeth S. Fried, “The High Places (Bāmôt) and the Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah: An Archaeological Investigation,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 122 (2002), 437–65; Na’aman, “The Abandonment of Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah”; Edelman, “Hezekiah’s Alleged Cultic Centralization.”

Whether this was in the time of King Josiah, and represented a real reform, or whether this is a literary construct from the exilic period doesn’t matter for the purposes of this reconstruction.

My argument here is in line with the similar argument offered in David Glatt-Gilad, “How the Jerusalem Temple Was “Chosen” as the Only Place of Worship,” TheTorah (2017).