"God is our hope and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved, Though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea. There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, The Holy City where dwells the Most High. God is in the midst of her; therefore shall she not be shaken: God shall help her, and that right early. Heathens raged and kingdoms trembled: He lifted His voice--the earth melted away. Jehovah of Hosts is with us; Elohim of Jacob is our refuge."[495] It was no doubt the spirit of renewed confidence which led Hezekiah to undertake his one military enterprise--the chastisement of the long-troublesome Philistines. He was entirely successful. He not only won back the cities which his father had lost,[496] but he also dispossessed them of their own cities, even unto Gaza, which was their southernmost possession--"from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city."[497] There can be no doubt that this act involved an almost open defiance of the Assyrian King; but if Hezekiah dreamed of independence, it was essential for him to be free from the raids and the menace of a neighbour so dangerous as Philistia, and so inveterately hostile. It is not improbable that he may have devoted to this war the money which would otherwise have gone to pay the tribute to Shalmaneser or Sargon, which had been continued since the date of the appeal of Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser II. When Sargon applied for the tribute Hezekiah refused it, and even omitted to send the customary present. It is clear that in this line of conduct the king was following the exhortations of Isaiah. It showed no small firmness of character that he was able to choose a decided course amid the chaos of contending counsels. Nothing but a most heroic courage could have enabled him, at any period of his reign, to defy that dark cloud of Assyrian war which ever loomed on the horizon, and from which but little sufficed to elicit the destructive lightning-flash. There were three permanent parties in the Court of Hezekiah, each incessantly trying to sway the king to its own counsels, and each representing those counsels as indispensable to the happiness, and even to the existence, of the State.