The Waters of Shiloh or the Euphrates River: All of Us Must Choose.

The Euphrates River

Photo by: Jayel Aheram from Iraq,USA.

Forasmuch as this people refuses the waters of Shiloah that go softly ... the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many.' ISAIAH 8:6, 7.


In the days of Isaiah, the prophet of God, Ahaz was King of Judah. The 10 tribes of Israel along with Damascus joined forces to take over the land of Judah and the city of Jerusalem. Ahaz and the people were frightened. They knew they couldn’t beat back the great force of those armies.


Isaiah came to Ahaz with these words from God, “Listen to me, and keep calm; don’t be afraid; don’t let your heart be easily moved. Aram, Ephriam and Rezin have plotted your ruin saying, ‘Let’s invade Judah; let’s tear it apart and divide it among ourselves and make Tabeel king over it.’ “But the Lord says, “It will not happen…” and God adds, “If you do not stand in your faith, you will not stand at all.”


The message was longer than this, but God was telling King Ahaz that if he trusted in him, God would protect Judah. But Ahaz did not believe in or listen to God. He had his own idea, which was to ask the kingdom of Assyria to come to his aid. So, he made an alliance with a ruthless, godless people. 


Because of Ahaz’s choice, God tells him that eventually the king of Assyria will turn to fight against Judah itself.

 “Because this people has rejected

the gently flowing waters of Shiloah

and rejoiced in Rezin

and the son of Remaliah,

the Lord will surely bring against them

the mighty floodwaters of the Euphratesc —

the king of Assyria and all his pomp.

It will overflow its channels

and overrun its banks.

It will pour into Judah,

swirling and sweeping over it,

reaching up to the neck;

its spreading streams will cover

your entire land, O Immanuel!

Isaiah 8:6-8


God compares his rule over Judah to the, “…gently flowing waters of Shiloah,” to the king of Assyria who was like a raging river, overflowing its banks and causing ruin.

The waters of Shiloah is the spring of water that bubbles up near Jerusalem. It is the water that filled the pool of Siloam, where Jesus told the blind man to go and wash and he would see. It is the water source where Jesus came and proclaimed, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!”


Alexander Mclaren writes:


“The waters of Shiloah that go softly stand as an emblem of the Davidic monarchy as God meant it to be, and, since that monarchy was itself a prophecy, they therefore represent the kingdom of God or the Messianic King. The 'waters strong and many' are those of the Euphrates, which swells and overflows and carries havoc, and are taken as the emblem of the wasting sweep of the Assyrian king, whose capital stood on its banks.


But while thus there is a plain piece of political history in the words, they are also the statement of general principles which apply to every individual soul and its relations to the kingdom, the gentle kingdom, of our Lord and Savior, or swift Euphrates in spate. That is what the rejecters have chosen for themselves.


Better to have lived by Shiloah than to have built their houses by the side of such a raging stream. Mark how this is a divine retribution indeed, but a natural process too. If Christ does not rule us, a mob of tyrants will.”


Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, “Whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.    John 4:14


I pray all of us will choose the gently flowing spring that flows from the throne of God.

Part 4 of, The End is Near. The Two Kingdoms of Israel.

Continued from previous posts:

“The past causes the present, and so the future.  Any time we try to know why something happened…we have to look for factors that took shape earlier.” (1)

We start this story way back in the 13^th Century BCE when God brought the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and gave them their own land. 

 God offered them a deal; God would take care of the Hebrews if they would serve him.  The Hebrews agreed, they entered the Promised Land, and all went well for a while. 

 But as time passed, the Hebrews split into two different kingdoms and both began to ignore their side of the bargain they had made with God.

Northern Kingdom: Israel           Southern Kingdom: Judah  

The people began worshiping other gods and sacrificing their children to these Gods. God used prophets to beg the people to return to him but that did not work.  So then God sent warnings, saying if they did not keep their side of the deal, he would be forced to withdraw his protection and, in effect, punish them.

Sometimes a good king would come to power that would listen and lead the people back to worshiping God, but that did not happen often and, when it did happen, it did not last long.  The Northern half of the split Hebrew kingdom was the worst, and evil king after evil king ignored God’s pleadings and warnings.  God finally withdrew his protection and, in the year 722 BCE, the Assyrian army invaded, killing and taking prisoners, virtually wiping out the entire Northern kingdom.

But the Southern kingdom had not yet reached the end of its probation, if you will.  For the most part, the people remained rebellious but God continued to plead with them and warn them until finally, more than a century after the Northern kingdom fell, he had to give up on the Southern kingdom.  By this time the Assyrian kingdom was no longer the big dog in the area…Babylon had become the world’s dominant empire and was swallowing up country after country.

            In Judah, the Southern kingdom of Israel, an evil king named Jehoiakim rose to the throne in the capitol city of Jerusalem.  Little did he know what was going to happen during his short reign…God was fed up with Judah and had withdrawn his protection.  During the third year of Jehoiakim’s turn as king, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched his army into Judah and conquered the entire country.

Good people often get caught up in bad things, and not all of Judah had abandoned the worship of God.  A young man named Daniel, and several of his friends, were faithful servants of God but, when Judah fell to Nebuchadnezzar, they were caught up in the fray and taken as prisoners to the capitol city of Babylon.  Here Daniel found favor with those in power and was assigned to work in the palace.