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37. Jerusalem's Deliverance Foretold

¹ When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the LORD. ² He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. ³ They told him, “This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the moment of birth and there is no strength to deliver them. ⁴ It may be that the LORD your God will hear the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to ridicule the living God, and that he will rebuke him for the words the LORD your God has heard. Therefore pray for the remnant that still survives.”

⁵ When King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah, ⁶ Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master, ‘This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard—those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. ⁷ Listen! When he hears a certain report, I will make him want to return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down with the sword.’”

⁸ When the field commander heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libnah.

⁹ Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, That is, the upper Nile region was marching out to fight against him. When he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word: ¹⁰ “Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ ¹¹ Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? ¹² Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my predecessors deliver them—the gods of Gozan, Harran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar? ¹³ Where is the king of Hamath or the king of Arpad? Where are the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah?”

Hezekiah’s Prayer

¹⁴ Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. ¹⁵ And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: ¹⁶ “LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. ¹⁷ Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God.

¹⁸ “It is true, LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands. ¹⁹ They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. ²⁰ Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, LORD, are the only God. Dead Sea Scrolls (see also 2 Kings 19:19); Masoretic Text you alone are the LORD”

Sennacherib’s Fall

²¹ Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²² this is the word the LORD has spoken against him:

   “Virgin Daughter Zion
   despises and mocks you.
Daughter Jerusalem
   tosses her head as you flee.
²³ Who is it you have ridiculed and blasphemed?
   Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes in pride?
   Against the Holy One of Israel!
²⁴ By your messengers
   you have ridiculed the Lord.
And you have said,
   ‘With my many chariots
I have ascended the heights of the mountains,
   the utmost heights of Lebanon.
I have cut down its tallest cedars,
   the choicest of its junipers.
I have reached its remotest heights,
   the finest of its forests.
²⁵ I have dug wells in foreign lands Dead Sea Scrolls (see also 2 Kings 19:24); Masoretic Text does not have in foreign lands.
   and drunk the water there.
With the soles of my feet
   I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.’

    ²⁶ “Have you not heard?
   Long ago I ordained it.
In days of old I planned it;
   now I have brought it to pass,
that you have turned fortified cities
   into piles of stone.
²⁷ Their people, drained of power,
   are dismayed and put to shame.
They are like plants in the field,
   like tender green shoots,
like grass sprouting on the roof,
   scorched Some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls and some Septuagint manuscripts (see also 2 Kings 19:26); most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text roof / and terraced fields before it grows up.

    ²⁸ “But I know where you are
   and when you come and go
   and how you rage against me.
²⁹ Because you rage against me
   and because your insolence has reached my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
   and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you return
   by the way you came.

³⁰ “This will be the sign for you, Hezekiah:

   “This year you will eat what grows by itself,
   and the second year what springs from that.
But in the third year sow and reap,
   plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
³¹ Once more a remnant of the kingdom of Judah
   will take root below and bear fruit above.
³² For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant,
   and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
   will accomplish this.

³³ “Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria:

   “He will not enter this city
   or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before it with shield
   or build a siege ramp against it.
³⁴ By the way that he came he will return;
   he will not enter this city,” declares the LORD.
³⁵ “I will defend this city and save it,
   for my sake and for the sake of David my servant!”

³⁶ Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! ³⁷ So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.

³⁸ One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.

7. Behold, I will bring a wind upon him. Others translate it, “I will put my Spirit in him,” as if the Prophet were speaking of a secret influence of the heart; but that is a forced interpretation. It is a highly appropriate metaphor that there is in the hand of God a wind or whirlwind to drive Sennacherib in another direction. To compare wicked men to “straw or chaff,’ (Psalm 1:4) is a mode of expression frequently employed in Scripture, because God easily drives them wherever he thinks proper, when they think that they are standing very firm. The commotion that arose in the kingdom of Sennacherib is compared by the Prophet to a “wind” or “storm” which drove him out of Judea, and then he shews that the Lord will find no more difficulty in repelling that enemy than if he wished to move straw or chaff; and the very same thing might be said of all tyrants, however powerful.

For he shall hear a report. The words “and he shall hear” are evidently added for the sake of explanation, and therefore I have chosen to interpret them as assigning a reason, “For he shall hear.” ⁵⁰⁵⁰ ἀκούσας ἀγγελίαν, “having heard a message.” “Havendo inteso un certo grido,” “having heard a certain noise.” — Ital. “Uno foll etmas heren,” “and shall hear something.” — Luth. Germ. This is the wind by the raising of which Sennacherib was suddenly driven away; for a report which he heard about the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia constrained him to return to his own country.

And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. This means as if he had said, “He now annoys and harasses others, and endeavors to extend widely the limits of his empire; but I will raise up enemies to him, in the very bosom of his own land, who shall discomfit him.” Some expound it to mean the land of Israel, but that is an excessively forced interpretation; for he speaks of the land of the king of Assyria himself, and there is an implied contrast, “He who subdued other men’s cities and kingdoms shall not be able to defend his own country, but shall be destroyed and perish in it.”