When, however, six years later, in the year 715, Hezekiah joined the coalition of Palestinian states against Assyria, Isaiah was not only disappointed, but became greatly alarmed. To permit Hezekiah to follow the advice of his father's counselors, Isaiah knew would be national suicide. For three years, therefore, while the agitation for coalition and rebellion was going on, Isaiah cast off his prophet's mantle and sandals, and walked barefooted and in the garb of a captive through the treets of Jerusalem, as an object lesson to the people of Judah, to show them what might await them if they rebelled against Assyria. But even this, for the time being, was of no avail. Rebellion was in the blood of the king and the court clique. Somehow the very thought of it in Jerusalem seemed to reach the Assyrian capital. Hardly had Hezekiah begun to carry his contemplated revolt into action when Sennacherib, the new Assyrian king, was on the march. Once more Judah was invaded by the Assyrian hosts, and once more Judah's rulers bent their knee in submission and undertook to pay a tribute that was heavier than ever before. Yet Isaiah, though heartbroken, was in no way dismayed. His unbounded faith in the final triumph of God's purposes led him to go on, fearlessly, to oppose the king and his associates to the very end. CHAPTER VII. _Like Father, Like Son._ A chain, we are told, is as strong as its weakest link. The weak link in the long chain of Assyrian provinces was the fact that whenever a new king came to the throne, if he happened to be away, fighting in the field, he had to hurry back to the capital, backed by the complete military force under his command, in order to establish himself firmly in his dominions. Immediately upon the withdrawal of the king's armies from the field, all the provinces that hated Assyria bitterly, rebelled. Naturally, all the work of conquest had to be done over again. Then, when another change took place in the rulership of Assyria, the new king met the same conditions and the same difficulties. When Tiglath-Pileser died, Shalmaneser IV., who laid siege to Samaria, was forced to reconquer all the Syrian and Palestinian tributaries. The great Sargon, who reduced Samaria and carried its inhabitants captive into the northern part of the Assyrian Empire, left his successor, Sennacherib, no better legacy. With Sennacherib's ascension to the throne in the year 704, therefore, the usual thing happened--rebellion broke out all along the line of his possessions. In Palestine, King Hezekiah of Judah became the leader of a movement for a strong organization of all Palestinian and Syrian states and cities with the purpose of concerted rebellion against the new king.