2 Kings 19

When King Hezekiah heard the report, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth (rough cloth worn to show deep grief), and went into the LORD's temple.

1And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.

NoteTearing your own clothes and putting on sackcloth (a coarse, dark cloth of goat hair, the cheapest fabric there was) were the standard public signs of grief, dread or mourning. They were meant to be seen; a king doing this in public announced a national emergency.

2He sent Eliakim, the man in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priests, all of them wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.

2And he sent Eliakim, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

Note"The man in charge of the palace" was the chief officer of the royal household, roughly a prime minister. The "scribe" was likewise a senior minister of state (the king's secretary, who handled correspondence and records), not a copyist.

3They said to him, "Hezekiah says this: Today is a day of trouble, of rebuke, and of disgrace. It is like children ready to be born when the mother has no strength left to give birth.

3And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy; for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.

NoteThe image is of labor that has stalled: the child has reached the birth canal but the mother has no strength left to push. It was a common way of describing a crisis that has reached the point of decision with no strength left to see it through.

4Perhaps the LORD your God will hear everything the Rabshakeh said. He is the chief officer whom his master, the king of Assyria, sent to insult the living God. Perhaps the LORD your God will punish him for the words he has heard. So pray for the few of us who are left."

4It may be the LORD thy God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God; and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.

Note"Rabshakeh" is an Assyrian title, not a personal name, one of the top ranks at the Assyrian court, here acting as the king's spokesman. "The few of us who are left" (traditionally "the remnant") reflects the situation: Sennacherib had already taken dozens of Judah's fortified towns, and Jerusalem with its refugees was nearly all that remained.

5So King Hezekiah's servants came to Isaiah.

5So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

6Isaiah said to them, "Tell your master that the LORD says this: 'Do not be afraid of the words you heard, the words the servants of the king of Assyria used to insult me.

6And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

7Listen: I will put a spirit in him, so that he will hear a report and go back to his own country. And in his own country I will have him killed by the sword.'"

7Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

Note"A spirit" translates a Hebrew word that can mean wind, breath, or an impulse of mind. The sense is that something will be put into the king's thinking that turns him homeward, spelled out in the next words as a report he hears.

8The Rabshakeh went back and found the king of Assyria fighting against the town of Libnah, because he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

8So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish.

NoteLachish and Libnah were fortified towns in the lowlands southwest of Jerusalem. Lachish was Judah's second city; Sennacherib's capture of it was carved in detail on the walls of his palace at Nineveh, and those carvings survive.

9Then the king of Assyria heard this about Tirhakah king of Ethiopia: "Look, he has marched out to fight against you." So he sent messengers to Hezekiah again with this message:

9And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah, saying,

Note"Ethiopia" here is Cush, the kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt (modern Sudan). At this time Cushite kings ruled Egypt itself, so Tirhakah's advance meant an Egyptian army moving against Assyria from the south.

10"Say this to Hezekiah king of Judah: 'Do not let your God, the one you trust, fool you by promising that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.

10Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

11You have surely heard what the kings of Assyria have done to every land, wiping them out completely. So will you be the one who is rescued?

11Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly: and shalt thou be delivered?

NoteAssyrian policy after a conquest was mass killing, the burning of towns, and the deportation of survivors to distant parts of the empire. The threat was not exaggeration; the kingdom of Israel to the north had been erased this way about twenty years earlier.

12Did the gods of those nations rescue them when my ancestors destroyed them? Think of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who lived in Telassar.

12Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed; as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Thelasar?

NoteA list of places already swallowed by Assyria, scattered across northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The point of naming them is that each had its own god and none of them saved it.

13Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?'"

13Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivah?

NoteMore conquered city-states of Syria and the Euphrates region. "Where is the king of..." means these kings no longer exist, their thrones were wiped out.

14Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the LORD's temple and spread it open before the LORD.

14And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.

NoteLaying a document open before the LORD in the temple was a recognized act: you placed the physical letter in front of the god you were appealing to, so that the case was formally put before him.

15Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said, "LORD, God of Israel, you sit as king above the cherubim, the winged figures over the ark. You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.

15And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth.

NoteThe cherubim were not infants but composite winged creatures. Two of them, carved in gold, stood over the lid of the ark in the temple's innermost room; the space above them was spoken of as the LORD's throne, with the ark as his footstool.

16LORD, bend down and listen. LORD, open your eyes and look. Hear the words that Sennacherib sent to insult the living God.

16LORD, bow down thine ear, and hear: open, LORD, thine eyes, and see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God.

NoteSennacherib ruled Assyria from 705 to 681 BC. Assyria was then the dominant military power of the Near East, and Judah a small tributary kingdom on its edge.

17It is true, LORD, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed those nations and their lands,

17Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands,

18and have thrown their gods into the fire. But those were not gods at all. They were only wood and stone, made by human hands. That is why the Assyrians could destroy them.

18And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them.

NoteWhen Assyria took a city it carried off or burned the statues of its gods, and this was understood by everyone as the defeat of those gods themselves. Hezekiah's answer turns on the difference between a manufactured image and a god.

19So now, LORD our God, I beg you, save us from his power. Then every kingdom on earth will know that you alone, LORD, are God."

19Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.

20Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: "The LORD, the God of Israel, says this: I have heard your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria.

20Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.

21This is the word the LORD has spoken against him: 'The virgin daughter of Zion looks down on you and laughs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you in scorn.

21This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.

NoteCities were spoken of as women. "Virgin daughter of Zion" means Jerusalem as a young woman never yet forced by an invader, never captured. Zion was the ridge Jerusalem stood on, and the name came to stand for the city itself. Shaking the head at someone was a gesture of mockery, not sympathy.

22Who is it you have insulted and spoken against? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your proud eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!

22Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.

Note"The Holy One of Israel" is a fixed title for the God of Israel, used constantly in the book of Isaiah. "Holy" here carries the sense of set apart, wholly other.

23Through your messengers you have insulted the Lord. You said: With my many chariots I have climbed to the tops of the mountains, to the far heights of Lebanon. I will cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest cypress trees. I will enter its farthest lodging place, the forest of its fruitful land.

23By thy messengers thou hast reproached the LORD, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel.

NoteThe forests of Lebanon produced the cedar and cypress timber prized for palaces and temples throughout the Near East, and Assyrian kings boasted in their own inscriptions of reaching them and felling them. Claiming to have driven chariots up mountains was a boast that no terrain could stop him.

24I have dug wells and drunk water in foreign lands. With the soles of my feet I dried up all the streams of Egypt.

24I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places.

NoteDigging wells in foreign country and drinking its water was a way of saying he had taken possession of the land. Drying up rivers by walking through them was a stock boast: his army was so vast that a river vanished under its feet.

25Have you not heard? Long ago I decided this; in days long past I planned it. Now I have made it happen, so that you turn walled cities into piles of rubble.

25Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps.

NoteFrom here to verse 28 the speaker is God, answering the Assyrian's boast directly. The claim is that the conquests the king credits to himself were long since planned, and that he was the instrument.

26That is why the people living in them had no power left. They were shocked and ashamed. They were like plants in a field, like tender green shoots, like grass on a rooftop, scorched before it can grow.

26Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the house tops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.

NoteHouses had flat roofs of packed earth over beams. Seed blown up there sprouted quickly in the thin soil and shrivelled just as quickly in the sun, a byword for something that grows fast and comes to nothing.

27But I know when you sit down, when you go out and when you come in, and how you rage against me.

27But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me.

Note"When you sit down, when you go out and when you come in" is an idiom covering the whole of a person's activity, at rest and in motion. The sense is: everything you do.

28Because your rage against me and your loud pride have reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will send you back the way you came.'

28Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

NoteAssyrian reliefs show prisoners of war led on a cord attached to a ring through the lip or nose, and the same method controlled draft animals. The image turns the great king into a beast on a lead, driven home.

29"And this will be the sign for you, Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows by itself, and in the second year what grows from that. But in the third year, sow your seed and harvest it, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

29And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

NoteTwo years' harvests had been lost: an invading army eats or burns the standing crop, and no one sows a field they may not live to reap. "What grows by itself" is the volunteer grain that comes up from spilled seed. The third year, with normal sowing and planting resumed, marks the end of the emergency. Vines take years to bear, so planting them signals confidence in a long peace.

30The people of Judah who are left and have escaped will once again send roots down and grow fruit above.

30And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.

31For a group of survivors will come out of Jerusalem, and people who escape will come from Mount Zion. The burning determination of the LORD of Armies will make this happen.

31For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

Note"The LORD of Armies" (older versions: "LORD of hosts") is a title picturing God at the head of massed forces, heavenly ones, and in some passages Israel's own. "Zeal" here means burning, jealous intensity of purpose, not enthusiasm.

32"So this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: 'He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow into it. He will not come up to it with a shield or pile up a ramp of dirt against its wall.

32Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.

NoteA siege ramp was an earth and rubble embankment piled against a city wall so battering rams and troops could be pushed up to the top. Building one was the standard Assyrian method, and one survives at Lachish. The promise is that none of the ordinary stages of a siege will even begin.

33He will go back the way he came. He will not enter this city, says the LORD.

33By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD.

34I will defend this city and save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.'"

34For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.

NoteDavid had ruled about three hundred years earlier, had made Jerusalem his capital, and had been promised a lasting royal line. Hezekiah was his descendant, so an appeal to "my servant David" is an appeal to that standing commitment rather than to Hezekiah's own merit.

35That night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When people got up early the next morning, there were all the dead bodies.

35And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

NoteThe Hebrew word behind "angel" simply means messenger, an agent sent to carry out an errand. The text does not describe how the army died. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing much later, preserved an Egyptian version in which Sennacherib's army was disabled overnight by a plague of mice gnawing their equipment, which some take as a memory of disease in the camp.

36So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp, went back home, and stayed at Nineveh.

36So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.

NoteNineveh, on the Tigris opposite modern Mosul in Iraq, was Sennacherib's capital and the largest city in the world at the time.

37One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon became king in his place.

37And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.

NoteNisroch is not a god known from Assyrian records; the name is probably a corruption of one that is. Sennacherib was in fact murdered by one or more of his sons in 681 BC, twenty years after this campaign, and Esarhaddon then fought his way to the throne. "Ararat" (older versions: "Armenia") is Urartu, the mountainous kingdom north of Assyria around Lake Van in modern eastern Turkey.