Artifact Facts: The Seal of Eliakim

Hi, welcome to Evidence for Faith, it's your host Michael Lane, back with another artifact

fact.

You know, many people wonder if the Bible is accurate or even true.

I come across people like this all the time as I travel around.

Matter of fact, tomorrow I'm leaving for another short tour speaking on biblical archaeology,

which I could come to your place too.

We don't charge the speaking fee, but I'm not going to do a commercial here.

We're coming in here and listening about an artifact fact.

Now many major biblical characters have been verified numerous times.

People like David, Hezekiah, Pilate, Pontius Pilate, and so many more.

They've been confirmed by archaeologists many times and it seems that to me that's

really strong evidence that the Bible is true, but I always thought that if you could

find a minor character that hardly anybody ever comes across in the Bible, and if you

could find evidence with His name in the position or whatever that He was in, that

would be a really, really big piece of evidence, very strong piece of evidence, because minor

people, you don't think about them looking for, you know, looking for those kind of things

to see if something is accurate.

But if you can find something like that, I always thought that would be really strong evidence.

Well we have one like that.

It's a guy, most people have never heard of unless you really study the Bible carefully.

Though he appears numerous times in the Bible, he is often in the Bible, he's described

many times.

His name is Eliakim, the son of Hilkaya, and he's mentioned as we're going to see numerous

times in an official capacity.

Now where was the discovery found?

The discovery was found in the city of Lequeche.

Now we have a picture of the gateway going up to Lequeche on this town, this mountain where

the city was built, a very, very important city during the time of the Old Testament.

And it was extremely fortified, probably most fortified city we believe, of all of Judea,

much more fortified and protected even Jerusalem, the capital.

Situated about 42 kilometers, which is approximately 25 miles to the southwest of Jerusalem.

We have a map there showing you that you can see this, and its position on roads and

stuff made it very important for the protection of Jerusalem.

So that's why it was a key place and so well fortified.

It protected Jerusalem from the West.

Now during the reign of King Hezekiah, the good king Hezekiah, which we talked about

many times before and have lessons on him, Lequeche became surrounded by the Assyrian army

under King Sinacrib.

King Snapper was probably the most powerful of all of the kings of Assyria, and he had

his eyes set on Judea and Jerusalem, etc.

So he comes down and he starts from the north, he invades, and he starts conquering all

these cities.

He surrounds the city of Lequeche and destroys it.

I mean, he destroyed it and he was so proud of his achievement.

I mean, so proud because this was, like I say, the strongest city, militarily speaking,

most fortified city in all of Judea.

And so when he conquered this, he had it made into a mural.

He had people, actually artists, make this into a mural that was on his palace walls.

Parts of that mural exist in different museums.

A large part of it exists in the museum in Israel and Jerusalem.

We have a picture here showing up there.

Even has a section showing Sinacrib himself sitting on a throne that during the battle,

he sat on a throne watching the fall of this city.

And it took a long time.

It was one of the last cities to fall, this very, very strong fortified city.

Now that's where this discovery takes place, what we're going to be talking about.

In 2013, Telekiche was being excavated by archaeologists, Dr. Joseph Garfinkle, Michael

G. Hassel, and Martin G. Klingbeel, working at the 8th century BC Strait of that would

be the time of Sinacrib.

They started finding as they dug around different areas on this tell.

They found artifacts that were amazing, one of which was a jugglet, something like what

I'm holding here, this is not it, but this is a copy of one of those kind of things.

And they found one of these buried in ash and in just sediment, gravel, rock sand and

stuff like this in the thresh way of a doorway of one of the buildings.

Now as they saw this and it hadn't been busted, it had not been cracked, it was, it was

unique.

Just sitting there, they carefully excavated this thing out and out of the ground.

And then when they emptied the container, they found, as they shook it out, gravel

sand came out, but they also found three Bola, Bola, pardon me, three Bola.

And there was another one sitting as they were cleaning up the area around and they found

another one.

So they found four, four of these.

Now they identified them as ABCD, but what is, now I should explain first of all, what

is a Bola?

You see in ancient times, if you're going to send a letter or a document or something

officially, you might do it on papyrus like this here.

And then you would fold it up nice and neat, just like this.

They put string around it to tie it.

And then they would take soft clay and put soft clay on these strings to seal them.

Once that was done, the person would take a signant ring, if they're an important person,

somebody having port and it's a clerk or something like this, a governor, whatever.

They would take the signant ring or a seal and they would press it into the clay as they

did this.

Now it's officially sealed.

It's like the notary public, if you will, of the ancient world.

This is now to be sent off in mail.

The person when they get this, the recipient would take this and the first thing they could

examine and see if anybody been tampering my mail.

No, it's all intact.

This one's intact.

And what they would do is they would just pull these off and break the string and the

Bola and they would just pull these off.

Now the Bola that you see, they have a symbol on one side, sometimes they have a fingerprint

or a thumbprint on them too, as you make these, because it's just clay.

But when they would get these things, they would many times just discard them, sort of like

just throw them on the ground or whatever, maybe they had a waste basket someplace, sort

of like those of you who are like my age, you might remember back in the 60s, 70s, 80s,

bottle caps.

Like Coca-Cola and stuff came, seven up and things, and you popped the bottle cap with

a bottle opener, then you found bottle caps all over the place.

I mean, I've scooped and dived in ponds where I've found hundreds of bottle caps.

Along the sides of their roads, you would see bottle caps if you took a walk back then.

But now we don't have that.

Now we have to twist tight, twist caps.

But Bola were sort of like that.

They would just be discarded many times.

But the thing is, they have names on it.

I'm holding little bullies here.

The one we're going to be talking about looks like this.

This is blown up quite a bit, so that you can see it better.

And you can see that there's characters on here, there's little things and stuff.

And we have a close up there on the screen.

And this is what they came across with these bullies.

Now Bola letter A that they called it that was in excellent condition.

We have an actual image of it there that we can show you.

But like I said, they also found the other ones.

But A was in phenomenal condition.

The markings were so clear they could be read immediately.

Now this Bola has, if you can see on the original one, I'm holding this one here.

But on the original, you'll see that there's dots that go around it.

Just dots.

It's sort of decoration, if you will.

And they put this.

In the center, there's, you see there's three registers or lines, if you will.

Three layers here of characters that are on this.

I want to talk about the middle one first, because the middle one is really interesting.

There's two deer, female deer, and they're grazing, facing each other.

Now this has been seen on a number of other Bola.

We have found them on, for instance, the Isaiah Bola that we have a lesson on prior,

which was one of the Bola, a Bola that was cracked and broken off at the top.

But we can see part of a deer standing right where the crack is.

So we know that even at the time of Isaiah, they had this.

Why did they put these on their Bola when they would do this or on their seals?

We believe, we don't know for certain.

But most scholars believe it was a sign of prosperity.

That's what they think.

And there's many Psalm talking about deer and things and deer all over in the country.

And that's what they believe.

It is, like I said, we believe it is also on the Isaiah, these two deer that we grazing,

facing each other.

But it's what's on the top and the bottom.

That's what's really important.

The top register or layer or level here, if you will, it reads up here at the top,

belonging to Eliakim.

Now, the bottom line reads the name Yehazzara.

Yehazzara is the name at the bottom.

So we have Eliakim at the top.

This means, the meaning of this whole thing is Eliakim, the son of Yehazzara.

So that's what is actually, we would read in an English translation of this as it is.

The word Ben, you might be wondering, wait a minute.

If it says son of shouldn't the word Ben be there, Ben was not always found on bully.

He only have so much space.

Sometimes they would put a little dot there, signifying meaning that the word means son of.

But a lot of bullied, they just don't have that.

Some of the kings that we have, they do not have it.

It's like, for instance, has a chia, the son of Yehazzara, and it doesn't have Ben in there.

The Hebrew word Ben.

So it doesn't always appear on, on bully and stuff like that.

So you just can't go by that.

The whole question is, who is Eliakim?

Who is this dude?

Well, it's a name that is common in ancient Israel.

And there are individuals named in both the old covenant and the new covenant with the name Eliakim.

So that gives us a clue.

But we also have a major clue because his name appears on a bully.

That means he's not a common person.

He's somebody of importance because only people of importance would be doing this notary public, ancient notary public system.

So it has to be somebody who is important.

That's a clue.

So well, we have to look back in history, find an Eliakim who has some type of official capacity as a job.

So that helps us also since this was found in the destruction layer dealing with King Hazakaya, King Sinakarib.

We know that it has to be in that time period, which would put us around second kings, 1819, also in the book of Isaiah.

So we have those things.

Now, Eliakim is associated because just get this.

Since this was found in that layer, we know that Eliakim is living at the time frame of Sinakarib.

The King of Assyria of King Hazakaya, also of Hazakaya's friend and prophet Isaiah.

He fits into all of this.

So the question is, is there any Eliakim mentioned in the Bible associated with those men?

Yes, there is.

Yes, he is mentioned.

Are you ready?

Nine times.

Nine.

His name appears to, let me just say where you can read and check.

So I'm not making this up.

You can verify in second kings chapter 18 verse 18, he appears there.

He also appears in second kings 1826.

He also appears in second kings 1837.

And he appears in second kings chapter 19 verse two.

But as I said, he's also a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah.

So going over to the book of Isaiah, if you look at chapter 22,

he's there.

He's also in chapter 36 verse three, he's in chapter 36 verse 11.

He's in chapter 36 verse 21 and he is in chapter 37 verse two of the book of Isaiah.

So the guy is mentioned in the Bible.

So he's fitting these criteria.

Now, since these bullay, all four of them are associated with people and all bullays are

with official capacities.

From what we read in the Bible, is this Eliakim that we're talking about, is this a person

that fits that type of requirement?

Yes, he does.

He is depicted as a high official in the court of King Hezekiah.

For instance, if we take a look at Isaiah chapter 36 verse one through three, we read, quote,

in the 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacher of King of Assyria came up against all the

fortified cities of Judah and took them.

And the King of Assyria sent Rob Shekah of Lacheesh to Hezekiah, King Hezekiah at Jerusalem

with a great army.

And he stood by the conduit in the upper pool of the highway to the washers' field.

And there came out to meet Eliakim, the son of Hylkaya, get that now, Eliakim, son

of Hylkaya, who was over the household and Shabna the Secretary and Joah, the son of

Asaph the recorder.

Thus, we have him in an official capacity.

He's over the household.

In other words, over the affairs of King Hezekiah, he's in a very elevated position.

As a matter of fact, Isaiah chapter 22 verses 23-24, records that Eliakim was indeed an

official person in the capital under King Hezekiah.

But in these cases, you see, the Bible records that Eliakim was the son of Hylkaya, whereas

this bullet that we have has written that Eliakim was the son of Yehuzara.

Well, is there a Yehuzara mentioned in the Bible here?

Is the Bible an heir?

No.

For the seal was discovered, there was a seal that was discovered in 1974.

It's now in the Israel Museum that reads, belonging to Yezazora, son of Hylkaya, servant

of Hezekiah.

Thus we know that Hylkaya was the grandfather of Eliakim.

We know many circumstances when the term son does not always refer to the direct father

son relationship, but is talking about the relationship between the son here with his

grandfather.

It's very numerous times that it has done in the Bible.

Actually, it was common in the ancient world with many cultures.

It was common among the Jews to do this.

So there you have it, folks.

Another piece of antiquity that supports the Bible.

And you know something?

There are a lot of information about this.

You can actually, I went to the library and actually got the copy of the four bullay from

the 2014 season at Tel Lakish.

This was Garfinkel's and his colleagues.

They're studied on these bullay that we've just mentioned here.

Also, another excellent source you've heard me talk about this before is the article or

the magazine called Let the Stone Speed by the Armstrong Institute.

It has a phenomenal study also, an article here dealing with the seal impression of Eliakim

son of Hylkaya.

Has it been discovered?

Has the picture of the original thing here?

Phenomenal.

This is a great magazine.

In fact, you can get this for free if you go to the Armstrong Institute.

Their site and pull it up.

There you go, folks.

There are a lot of information out there.

You got to dig for it, but you can't find it if you don't believe me.

Or if you want to verify what I'm saying, this is all on there.

Well, like I say, the Bible is not a book of myths.

It's not a book of folklore.

It's real.

It's true.

It's a source of truth.

And I hope this has really added to your faith.

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Well, my friends, until we meet again, take care and make God bless.