George M. Grena
“These are more proverbs of Solomon, copied by the men of Hezekiah king of Judah” (Prv 25:1).
Five lmlk handles representing five seal sets. Upper right: two-winged icon with only one word in the top register. Upper left: two-winged icon with divided words in both registers. Center: two-winged icon with divided word in the top but an undivided word in the bottom. Lower left: four-winged icon with a professional, lapidarist inscription. Lower right: four-winged icon with an amateurish, cursory inscription. Private collection, Redondo Beach CA.
People who criticize the historicity and reliability of the Biblical records presume that writers with vivid imaginations created the stories and popularized them as non-fiction propaganda. One example is the accusation against King Hezekiah’s worship reformation described in 2 Chronicles 29–31, an academic debate that began in 1806 and has continued for two centuries (Vaughn 1999:1–2). However, when we encounter incidental statements such as the one quoted above tucked away in the middle of Proverbs, it raises questions in our minds: Why Hezekiah’s men? Why not the men of some other king? Why this particular section of this particular book? If we could correlate this statement to some artifact dug up from a context identified with Hezekiah’s reign, it would deflate the claims of critics.
Such an artifact may already have been found: lmlk stamps on storage-jar handles.
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Archaeologists find this class of seal impressions in and around Jerusalem, mainly confined to the territory assigned by God to the Israelite tribes of Benjamin, Dan, Judah, and Simeon, which became known collectively as the Southern Kingdom of Judah after Solomon’s reign. Bible and Spade readers may recall photos of lmlk handles presented back in 1973 (Millard 1973: 78), a 1989 feature on Charles Warren, the first excavator of lmlk handles (Fisher 1989), and some notes about several theories in 1991 (Wood 1991b). Now publication of a website with over 500 pages devoted to the research of these artifacts has led to some new insights that Bible students may find helpful ().
Sites in Israel with lmlk handles. By the time of King Hezekiah’s reign, the three tribes east of the Jordan were lost (2 Kgs 10:32–33) and Naphtali had been taken captive by Tiglath-pileser (2 Kgs 15:29). At the beginning of his reign, he instituted a worship reformation in his southern Judean territory and was joined by a few northern Israelites from Asher, Zebulun, Issachar, Manasseh, and Ephraim (2 Chr 30:10, 18). Six years later every tribe north of Benjamin and Dan was taken captive to Assyria (2 Kgs 18:11; Younger 2002: 294–301). The lmlk jar distribution reflects this scenario rather accurately.
Evidence of Hezekiah’s Continued Independence
Generally speaking, artifacts are dated based on the lowest occupation layer (i.e., stratum) where archaeologists find them. The date can be controversial when only one or two specimens of an object are present at one excavation site. Dozens of lmlk stamps have been found in similar strata from several sites, and they all come from the time period of the Assyrian military campaign of Sennacherib documented in the Bible (2 Kgs 18–19; 2 Chr 32; Is 36–37), as well as in his own records excavated in the area belonging to ancient Assyria (Boyd 1988; Rabinovich 1983; Ussishkin 1979: 34, 45–55; Wood 1975a; 1975b: 46, 49–53; 1979: 92–93; 1982: 24–26; 1991a: 49). Because of this bi-partisan evidence, no one doubts the reality of the Biblical record. Lachish was completely captured and left in ruins. The chief debate revolves around what happened at Jerusalem.
One school of thought (the consensus upheld by scholars) is that King Hezekiah surrendered with a payment of silver and gold to Sennacherib (2 Kgs 18:14–16), who then returned triumphantly to Assyria, bragged about his victory, launched a building campaign, and lived—as in most fairytales—happily ever after.
A second opinion postulates that Sennacherib led two campaigns. The first one involved the capture of Lachish and submission of King Hezekiah in the middle of his reign; a second one towards the end of his reign resulted in a Judean victory when the Assyrians retreated from Jerusalem empty-handed.
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Yet a third interpretation can be arrived at by taking the Bible at face value: Sennacherib led a single campaign against Judah in the 14th year of King Hezekiah’s 29-year reign (ca. 700 BC). He captured Lachish but was miraculously defeated at Jerusalem, so that Hezekiah was able to maintain Judah’s independence.
Excavations at Lachish uncovered the largest quantity of the stamps at a single Judean site (Grena 2004: Table 34). Findings there and at other sites demonstrate that of the 21 different lmlk seal designs known, stamps from about half of them were used prior to Sennacherib’s campaign and the other half were used after the campaign (Grena 2004: 338), all within the reign of Hezekiah.
That is a fabulous coincidence because the Bible records the Assyrian attack occurring in the middle of Hezekiah’s reign, with him remaining on the throne in power! If he was defeated and became a vassal subject to Sennacherib, we would not expect to find so many stamped jars from the latter period of his reign.
What do the Stamps on These Unbiased Jar Handles Tell Us?
Maintaining a system of stamped jars required effort and coordination between the skilled potters who made the jars, the group of individuals who had to stamp the handles while the clay was still malleable prior to firing them in the kiln, and the workers who delivered both the stamped and unstamped jars to wherever they were filled. So what was the purpose?
One school of thought (the consensus upheld by scholars) is that King Hezekiah ordered the contents of these jars—wine and/or oil, possibly even wheat—collected as taxes from all over the kingdom and stored them at strategic sites for military rations.
A second opinion views them as part of the same function but collected from his royal farms in villages he provided for himself (2 Chr 32:29), which he allocated to his army during the war preparations.
Yet a third interpretation can be arrived at by again taking the Bible at face value: the people responded to a worship reformation instituted by King Hezekiah upon his inauguration with an overwhelming amount of vegetable tithes and offerings, so he developed a new economic infrastructure for the priests and Levites (2 Chr 29–31).
Contained within the oval borders of the seals are letters and a little piece of artwork—an icon. Throughout most of the 20th century, scholars classified them in three generalized groups based on the number of wings in the icons and the inscription styles on the ones with four wings (Diringer 1941: 91). Originally it was believed these three groups were made during three distinct reigns of Judean kings (Albright 1943: 74). Excavations at Lachish directed by David Ussishkin, however, conclusively demonstrated that specimens from all three groups were made and used just before the Assyrian destruction layer concealed them like a time capsule awaiting 20th-century spades (Ussishkin 1976:1).
All 21 lmlk seal designs. The four-winged icons along the bottom left side are well constructed and symmetrical, while the four along the bottom right side appear amateurish; the same can be said for their inscriptions. Above those are two sets with two-winged icons separated by a centimeter scale. The only significant differences are whether the words in the bottom register are divided like the word in the top register. Across the top of the figure is an unusual set of five with only a single word in the top register (except for one oddball reminiscent of the set below it, but it belongs in the top set based on the poor quality of its execution and the rarity and distribution of its stamps).
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The one with four wings is obviously a scarab, or beetle, of the zoological order Coleoptera—a dung beetle, named as such due to its rolling of animal droppings in which its eggs are hatched and newly born beetles emerge. It appears mostly in ancient Egyptian artwork symbolizing resurrection and rebirth, but also in Israel, presumably brought from Egypt.
The other icon with two wings and a central circular object has been found all over the region surrounding Israel—Egypt to the south, Assyria to the north, and along the Mediterranean coast to the west. The academic consensus interprets it as the sun, based on pagan texts that accompany some of the art. An objective interpretation of the object in the lmlk seal context however, suggests it is a light source shining above OT writers frequently described God as a radiating glory using several synonymous Hebrew words (e.g., Ps 50:2, Is 60:1–3, Ez 10:4).
Now that we know what they are and that they were made during the reign of King Hezekiah, one of the few Judean kings consistently faithful to Yahweh, the one true God of the Bible, why would either of these two icons appear on jars during his reign?
You know the routine by now: One school of thought (the consensus of most scholars) is that they represent symbols interpreted by contemporaries in the region as royal insignia.
A second opinion views them as representations of pagan deities borrowed by King Hezekiah from his heathen neighbors.
Yet a third interpretation can be arrived at by again taking the Bible at face value: they represent God’s promise of life after death and the glory of the unseen God.
I can hear my readers now: “Yikes!” “That’s absurd!” “Everybody knows that God commanded ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above or that is in the earth beneath’” (Ex 20:4; Dt 5:8 KJV).
Really? No, actually God did not command that. Most people lose the context of the original commandment by abbreviating it. God commanded people not to make images of creatures to bow down to and worship, and even took the time to clarify it further by explaining, “I…am a jealous God” (Ex 20:5; Dt 5:9). Furthermore, God specifically commanded Moses to engrave images of creatures in the Wilderness Tabernacle (Ex 26:1) and above the Ark containing the commandments (Ex 25:18–21). Solomon incorporated images of creatures in the Jerusalem Temple (1 Kgs 6:23–35; 2 Chr 3:7–14), which obviously pleased God. So we should not be surprised to find icons of creatures—one in heaven and another commonly found on earth—stamped on the handles of jars, especially if they contained tithes and offerings paid by God’s people in and around Jerusalem. The ancient Hebrews did not have a detailed taxonomy for insects, so their word for “scarab” may have been the root associated with cherubs that decorated God’s dwelling places.
What was the Significance of the Icons?
Icons are generally beautiful, colorful, gilded works of art, but such is not the case with the lmlk stamps. The vast majority of them were stamped inconsistently and quite carelessly. This contrasts dramatically with the quality of the jars themselves, which represent a sophisticated level of ceramic craftsmanship. That is why it seems clear that somebody other than the potters stamped the jars. If the same group of people had performed both tasks, we would expect either sloppy stamps on sloppy jars, or excellent stamps on excellent jars. Apparently the act of stamping was more important than the quality of the stamp (Zimhoni 1990:19), which implies a bureaucratic or ritualistic function.
Modern letters from old letters. The Hebrews who lived during OT times did not write with the same form of letters as modern Jews. As you can see, the letters we use for English resemble the old Hebrew quite a bit, which should not surprise us since they passed from Paleo-Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. “Modern” Hebrew, in use since the late third century BC, came directly from the Aramaic that flourished in Mesopotamian Babylon.
Statistics from two well-excavated and well-documented sites support the notion that a tithe (i.e., 10 percent of the jars) was being represented by the stamped jars. At Lachish, 17 percent of the restored jars were stamped (Zimhoni 1990: 15); at Timnah, 9 percent of the excavated handles were stamped (Mazar and Panitz-Cohen 2001: 195). It is impossible to determine the exact ratio due to the fact that an inconsistent number of handles were stamped on each four-handled jar (i.e., one of four, two of four, or all four), and also due to the fact that most of the digs conducted in the 19th and 20th centuries unfortunately ignored unstamped handles.
How could these icons be associated with the one true God? It is possible that the descendants of Seth preserved these symbols that became perverted, distorted, and more widely used by pagans. That thought has led me to believe the cherubs depicted in the Wilderness Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple were not human-headed lions or lions with wings or other hybrid creatures as most books portray them, but scarabs and winged light sources.
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Is there any support for this in the inscriptions? If they were made for the army/garrison/troops/military host, we would expect to find one of those words on the seals. If they were for holy tithes/offerings, we would expect to read such on the seals. Yet that is not the case, and that is why this subject continues to baffle Biblical archaeologists!
These seals contain one or two of five different Paleo-Hebrew words. As you can see in the figure on page 21, most of the seals contain a pair of words consisting of lmlk above the icon and hbrn, mmst, swkh, or zyf (sometimes spelled zf) below the icon. They all read from right to left, but can legitimately be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. They may look foreign at first glance, but the figure above demonstrates how the letters more closely resemble our English alphabet (via Greek and Latin) than modern Hebrew!
What do they mean? This can be difficult to discern. Hebrew has an ambiguous, relatively small vocabulary compared to more complex languages like Greek and English. Each Hebrew word can carry diverse semantics depending on its context. Another factor is that some ancient inscriptions were heavily abbreviated as votive expressions. Without being present at the time they were written, or without some other document explaining their meaning, various translations into English are possible.
One school of thought (the consensus upheld by scholars) is that each word should be read separately as the name of a place:
hbrn (sometimes spelled hbrwn in the Hebrew Bible) = Hebron, the original capital of the Israelite kingdom before David moved to Jerusalem (2 Sm 5)
swkh (sometimes spelled skh or swkw in the Hebrew Bible) = Socoh, either the city where the Philistines camped when David killed Goliath (1 Sm 17:1), or a lesser known village southwest of Hebron (Jos 15:48)
zyf = Zif, either the famous site where David composed Psalm 54, or a lesser known town located somewhere south (Jos 15:24)
mmst = a city not mentioned in the Bible or any other ancient record besides these seals
A second opinion views them as the districts/regions/zones surrounding those cities even though three of them have never been positively identified.
Yet a third interpretation comes from a literal reading of the inscriptions, as so often is necessary to fully understand the Bible. For example, Micah’s cryptic word-play dirge, “The town of Aczib will prove deceptive” (Mi 1:14), demonstrates dual meaning when you read “Aczib” as “deception” in Hebrew. Here are some possible literal translations for the lmlk seal words, based on their broader meanings in ancient Hebrew:
hbrn = alliance, association, company, community, friendship, society
swkh = enclosure, protection, tabernacle
zyf = bristle, forge, mouthful, pinnacle
These are all speculative since Merriam-Webster did not publish a Hebrew dictionary back in 700 BC. Some meanings could apply equally to either a military rations context or a worship offerings context. The basis for this third interpretation comes from the fact that a tremendous quantity of the impressions are illegible—the ancient Judeans could not have read them, so they could not have been used to identify four places. Furthermore, a similar series of Judean jars made less than a century later were stamped with rosette symbols, which had no relation to any place other than the overall territory of Judah where they were used exclusively by and for Judeans (possibly during Josiah’s worship reforms).
mmst remains mysterious. I am tempted to interpret it as an abbreviation of the Hebrew words for 20-percent interest on a redeemed tithe (hmswt, Lv 27:31), or something related to Seth. Another possibility is a grammatical relation to the word mmsltw in reference to Hezekiah’s “kingdom” (2 Kgs 20:13; Is 39:2) and Sennacherib’s “forces” (2 Chr 32:9).
These mysterious inscriptions remind me of the inscribed pillars in Solomon’s Temple, Jakin and Boaz (1 Kgs 7:21; 2 Chr 3:17). If we had no Biblical record of them and archaeologists dug them up from a pile of rubble, they might be read as the names of two men—maybe two prominent donors or builders of the temple. Who would have guessed they should be read literally as attributes of God? (Jakin means “He establishes” and Boaz means “in Him is strength.”)
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What about the keyword lmlk? Prior to Ussishkin’s excavations at Lachish, some people interpreted lmlk as indicating that the capacity of the jars represented a royal standard like the weight mentioned in 2 Samuel 14:26. However, thanks to the meticulous efforts of excavators at Lachish to restore many of the jar shards they found, we now know that their volumes varied significantly—anywhere from 9–14 gal (40–52 l) (Ussishkin 1983:162–63). So what else could it mean?
Unlike the other four words, lmlk is a compound consisting of the prefix l and the root noun mlk. The lamed prefix on a seal usually indicates that the seal belonged to the person named following the lamed, yet that is not how the consensus of scholars reads the lmlk seals. Contrary to the way they read most ancient Near East seals, they see this lamed as indicating that the contents of the jars belonged to the government. Nobody seems to believe that King Hezekiah owned these seals or stamped these jars even though mlk means “king”!
An alternative interpretation could justifiably read the mlk in the most common manner as someone’s name. The Bible mentions a pagan deity, Molech, in multiple books (Lv 18:21; 20:2–5; 1 Kgs 11:7; 2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 32:35). Could the seal mean “belonging to Molech”? As with any court case, we must consider all the evidence in context and not one or two isolated facts. Is it reasonable to think that King Hezekiah along with the great prophet Isaiah would collect offerings for a pagan deity instead of the one true God? Of course not! So, as with the icons, these inscriptions may refer to our almighty God.
This should come as less of a shock than the icons, simply because the Hebrew OT records multiple names for God: Yahweh, Shaddai, El/Elohim, and Adonai. The Bible also makes dozens of references to God as King; mlk is usually translated as “King” when the context is to the God of the Hebrews (e.g., Ps 10:16; Is 6:5; Zec 14:9 and many others) and “Molech” when the context is to the pagan deity. Note also the Biblical names Melchizedek (Gn 14:18, “King of Righteousness,” a priest of God Most High during Abraham’s time per Heb 7:1), Elimelech (Ru 1:1, “my God is King,” just prior to David’s days), and Nathan-Melech (2 Kgs 23:11, “the King has given,” during Josiah’s reign).
One of the reasons early researchers dated the seals to reigns of three kings covering two centuries is because the lmlk letters and word spellings (e.g., zyf vs. zf) represent styles from early and late periods of the Judean monarchy. Since it has been confirmed now that they all date to Hezekiah’s reign, maybe these seals reflect the handwriting of literate scribes acquainted with older styles of penmanship due to their occupation of copying older manuscripts (Welch 2004). Furthermore, the cursory quality of one of the five lmlk seal sets (seen in the bottom-right corner of the figures on pages 19 and 21) indicates that someone unaccustomed to this tiny medium engraved it. Whoever it was consistently used the older style of letters. It is tempting to speculate on who this person was. Who better to scribe the first of these new devices at the beginning of Hezekiah’s worship reformation than the elderly prophet Isaiah?
Conclusion
Taking into consideration the correlation between the lmlk stamps and Hezekiah’s 29-year reign in spite of Sennacherib’s attack in the middle of it, and the religious symbolism of the lmlk icons proclaiming the glory of God and the promise of eternal life, the Biblical record of Hezekiah’s reign can withstand the attacks of atheists, just as the citizens of Jerusalem withstood the Assyrian threat when they turned their hearts to God! “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings” (Prv 25:2).
Bibliography
Albright, William F.
1943 The Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim Vol. III: The Iron Age. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Vols. 21–22 for 1941–1943. New Haven CT: The American Schools of Oriental Research.
Boyd, Bob
1988 Hezekiah’s Conduit and King Sennacherib. Bible and Spade 1.4: 4–6.
Diringer, David
1941 On Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions Discovered at Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish)—II. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 73: 89–106.
Fisher, Milton C.
1989 Who’s Who in Archaeology? Sir Charles Warren. Bible and Spade 2: 66–67.
Grena, George M.
2004 LMLK—A Mystery Belonging to the King 1. Redondo Beach CA: 4000 Years of Writing History.
Mazar, Amihai, and Panitz-Cohen, Nava, eds.
2001 Timnah (Tel Batash) II, The Finds from the First Millennium BCE, Text. Qedem 42. Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University.
Millard, A. R.
1973 The Practice of Writing in Ancient Israel. Bible and Spade 2: 73–82.
Rabinovich, Abraham
1983 Record of Defeat. Bible and Spade 12: 66–75.
Ussishkin, David
1976 Royal Judean Storage Jars and Private Seal Impressions. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 223: 1–13.
1979 Excavations at Lachish. Bible and Spade 8: 33–55.
1983 Excavations at Tel Lachish 1978–1983: Second Preliminary Report. Tel Aviv 10: 97–173.
Vaughn, Andrew G.
1999 Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler’s Account of Hezekiah. Atlanta GA: Scholars.
Welch, Michael
2004 Review of “LMLK—A Mystery Belonging to the King 1” at. com/research/lmlk_welch-lmlkv1.htm.
Wood, Bryant G.
1975a Sennacherib, Hezekiah, and a “Bible Problem.” Bible and Spade 4: 33–41.
1975b Water Systems of Ancient Jerusalem. Bible and Spade 4: 42–56.
1979 Assyrian Kings in the Bible. Bible and Spade 8: 81–96.
1982 Archaeology—Confirming the Truth. Bible and Spade 11: 15–29.
1991a Assyrian Kings in the Bible. Bible and Spade 4: 40–51.
1991b Jar Handles Tell a Story. Bible and Spade 4: 122–23.
Younger, K. Lawson, Jr.
2002 Recent Study on Sargon II, King of Assyria: Implications for Biblical Studies. Pp. 288–329 in Mesopotamia and the Bible, eds. Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger, Jr. Grand Rapids MI: Baker.
Zimhoni, Orna
1990 Two Ceramic Assemblages from Lachish Levels III and II. Tel Aviv 17: 3–52.
George M. Grena, B.S., is an electronics engineer, computer programmer, and technical writer. He built and manages the LMLK Research website as a hobby.
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