="Let not thy God in whom thou trusteth deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly: and shalt thou be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them?... Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim?"= Against such taunts as these, the Hebrews, with their mistaken beliefs, could bring no answer. THE CRAZE FOR FOREIGN GODS With their faith in Jehovah breaking down there was a great running here and there after other gods and strange religions. Instead of trusting quietly in Jehovah's watchful care many of the people resorted in their terror to soothsayers and mediums, to "wizards that chirp and mutter." Jerusalem seems to have become almost as full of them as the cities of the Philistines, which had always been famous for their fortune-tellers and necromancers. =Alliances with other nations.=--Another favorite way of seeking safety was through alliances with other nations and their gods. According to the beliefs of that age, when two nations made an alliance their gods were included in it. To overcome the Assyrians, therefore, it would be necessary to make an alliance with some other nation whose gods were very powerful. So the people of Jehovah began to "strike hands with the children of foreigners." The rulers of Jerusalem set about making coalitions with the other nations of western Asia: with the Philistines, the Syrians, the Phoenicians and, most of all, the Egyptians. The gods of the Egyptians were supposed to be especially strong: Osiris and Isis were the chief of their deities and they were believed to be the gods of the underworld--of Sheol, or Hades, the abode of the dead. So when these poor ignorant politicians at Jerusalem finally did succeed in arranging for an alliance with the crafty and deceitful kings of Egypt they said to themselves: "Now we are safe. The Assyrians cannot hurt us now. We have made a covenant with Death." THE STATESMAN-PROPHET, ISAIAH It is good to know that among many misguided people there was one man whose wisdom of the eternal Truth of God made him stand like a rock while the multitudes ran to and fro in uncertainty and despair. Isaiah was a comrade and co-worker in spirit with the prophets named in the three preceding chapters, Amos, Hosea, and Micah. It is by no means impossible that he had listened to the sermons of Hosea, and thus caught from him his inspiration. He must certainly have known Micah personally, for they lived and preached only some twenty-five or thirty miles apart--Micah in the village of Moresheth and Isaiah in the city of Jerusalem.