by
Damien F. Mackey
But before [Tobias]
died, he heard of the destruction of Nineveh, which was taken by Nebuchadnezzar
and Ahasuerus; and before his death he rejoiced over Nineveh.
(Tobit
14:15)
Introduction
Tobias, often confused with his
similarly-named father, Tobit, identifies extremely well with the prophet Job.
See my:
And Job-Tobias, in his expectation from his
prophetic father, Tobit, of the Fall of Nineveh (Tobit 14:4):
‘My son … I believe that God's judgment which his
prophet Jonah announced against Nineveh is about to take place. Everything that
God's prophets told Israel about Nineveh and Assyria will happen. It will all
come true, every word of it, when the right time comes. I am absolutely convinced
that everything God has said is sure to come true’.
and 14:10: ‘Tobias,
my son, leave Nineveh now. Do not stay here. As soon as you bury your mother
beside me, leave; do not stay another night within the city limits. It is a
wicked city and full of immorality; the people here have no sense of shame’, may quite plausibly be:
- Nahum being, of course, the prophet who
would exult over the Fall of Nineveh.
Conventionally, this latter incident is said
to have occurred in 612 BC. Now, the Book of Tobit also variously names the
victors over Nineveh, including the name “Ahasuerus”. Thus we read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahasuerus#Book_of_Tobit):
In some
versions of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, Ahasuerus
is given as the name of an associate of Nebuchadnezzar, who together with him,
destroyed Nineveh just before Tobit's
death.[12] A traditional Catholic view is that he is identical to
the Ahasuerus of Daniel 9:1[13] In the Codex Sinaiticus Greek (LXX) edition, the two names in this
verse appear instead as one name, Ahikar (also the name of another
character in the story of Tobit). Other Septuagint texts have the name Achiachar.
Western scholars have proposed that Achiachar is a variant form of the
name "Cyaxares
I of Media", who historically
did destroy Nineveh, in 612 BC.
[End of quote]
Probably the last view at least is correct,
that Cyaxares is meant. And this king may also be the one intended by “the Ahasuerus of Daniel
9:1”.
But more work needs to be done to clarify the
Medo-Persian succession.
So far I have advanced these considerations:
“Darius the Mede” is King Cyrus:
and is, as well, the “Ahasuerus” of both Ezra
and Esther:
Part Two:
The Name “Ahasuerus”
The name, “Ahasuerus”,
is thought to equate very well with the name, “Xerxes”.
Herb Storck has this to say about these
Medo-Persian names in his valiant attempt to sort out History and Prophecy: A Study in the Post-Exilic
Period (House of Nabu,
1989), pp. 65-66:
It
is the overwhelming consensus that Ahasuerus is linguistically identical with
Xerxes. ….
The
best that one could say [sic] is that this [Daniel 1:9’s father of “Darius the
Mede”] Ahasuerus was the name or title of some Median king of whom the author
of Daniel had heard. That name or title may have been Cyaxares. The Ahasuerus
of Tobit 14:15 was almost certainly Cyaxares.
Cyaxares
is a Greek form of the old Iranian Hu ʼwakhshtra,
“having good growth”, or Hu w ʼakhshtra,
“having good oversight” ….
This
same name appears in Akkadian as u-wa6
-kish-tar or u-wa6-ku-ish-tar.
….
However,
in later Greek forms we have the Cyaxares as noted but also Oxyartes which
Nagel also explains as going back to ʼHwakhshtra
…. This points to a bifurcation in the later pronunciation of the original.
The name Cyaxares appears at least once as Cyares, an apparent contraction of Cyaxares
or perhaps Cyrus. …. Finally, the form Asyeros
is attested in the Book of Tobit, in a connection that requires its
identification with Cyaxares.
…
Ahasuerus may have been a title at least among the Jews and Greeks, and may
have referred to more than one Medo-Persian monarch.
[End of quote]
