God Delivers Izates

Now when the king’s brother Monobazus and his kinsmen saw that Izates, because of his piety toward God, had come to be admired by everyone, they too wanted to leave their ancestral customs and live by the customs of the Jews. But what they had done became known to their subjects. The nobles were angry at this; they did not show their anger, but kept it in mind and looked for a suitable chance to make them pay. So they wrote to Abia, king of the Arabs, promising him a great deal of money if he would march against their king. They also promised that at the first engagement they would desert their king, for they wanted to punish him because he had come to hate their customs. Binding their good faith to one another with oaths, they urged Abia to make haste. The Arab agreed and came against Izates with a large army. At the first engagement, before they came to blows, the nobles all deserted Izates as they had agreed, as if seized with panic, turned their backs on the enemy and fled. Izates was not dismayed. Realizing that the nobles had betrayed him, he too withdrew into his camp and looked into the cause; and when he learned who had conspired with the Arab, he put the guilty to death. Joining battle again the next day, he killed most of the enemy and forced all the rest to flee. He pursued their king himself and drove him into a fortress called Arsamus, pressed the siege hard, and took the fortress. He plundered all the booty in it, which was great, and returned to Adiabene. But he did not take Abia alive, for when Abia found himself surrounded on every side, he killed himself. [a]

Though the nobles of Adiabene had failed in their first attempt, God having delivered them into their king’s hands, even so they would not keep quiet. They wrote again, this time to Vologases, who was then king of Parthia, asking him to kill Izates and set over them some other ruler who was a Parthian by birth; for they said they hated their own king, who had abolished their ancestral customs and fallen in love with foreign ones. When the Parthian heard this, he was eager for war. Having no just pretext for it, he sent to demand back the honors his father had given Izates, and threatened war if he refused. Izates was greatly troubled when he heard this. He thought it would disgrace him to be seen giving up the gifts out of fear. Yet he knew that even if the Parthian got the honors back, he would not keep quiet. So he decided to entrust the danger to his life to God, his protector. Holding God to be his greatest ally, he placed his children and his wives in the strongest of his fortresses, stored all his grain in the citadels, and burned the hay and the pastures. Having made these preparations as well as he could, he awaited the enemy. The Parthian came with a large army of infantry and cavalry sooner than expected, for he marched in great haste, and fortified a camp by the river that divides Adiabene from Media. Izates too pitched his camp not far off, with six thousand horsemen. A messenger sent by the Parthian came to Izates and told him how great the Parthian power was, setting its borders from the river Euphrates to Bactria and listing the kings who were subject to it. He threatened that Izates would be punished for being ungrateful to his masters, and said that not even the God he worshiped would be able to rescue him from the king’s hands. When the messenger had said this, Izates replied that he knew the Parthian power was far greater than his own, but that he knew still better that God was mightier than all men. Having given this answer, he turned to supplication. He threw himself on the ground, disgraced his head with ashes, and fasted together with his wife and children, calling on God and saying: “O Master and Lord, if I have not come under your goodness in vain, but have rightly held you alone and first to be Lord of all things, come as my ally: not only to defend me against my enemies, but because they have dared to defy your power.” So he pleaded, weeping and lamenting, and God heard him. That very night Vologases received letters saying that a great band of Dahae and Sacae, despising him because he was far from home, had invaded and were plundering Parthia. So he withdrew home with nothing accomplished. And so, by the providence of God, Izates escaped the threats of the Parthian. [b]

Not long afterward Izates died, having completed fifty-five years of life and having ruled for twenty-four. He left twenty-four sons and twenty-four daughters. But he ordered that his brother Monobazus should succeed to the throne, repaying him for having faithfully kept the kingdom for him during his absence after their father’s death. When his mother Helena heard of her son’s death, she took it hard, as a mother naturally would on losing a most pious son. Yet it comforted her to hear that the succession had passed to her elder son, and she hurried to him. But after she reached Adiabene she did not long outlive her son Izates. Monobazus sent her bones and his brother’s to Jerusalem and ordered them to be buried in the pyramids their mother had built. There were three of them, about three-eighths of a mile from the city of Jerusalem. As for the deeds of King Monobazus during the rest of his life, we will relate them later. [g]