Isaiah 37: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Hezekiah hears the Assyrian threats against Jerusalem, tears his clothes, and sends officials to the prophet Isaiah, who answers that the king of Assyria will hear a report, go home, and be killed there. Sennacherib then sends a letter claiming that no nation's god has ever saved it from him, and Hezekiah spreads the letter before the LORD and prays. Isaiah delivers the LORD's answer against Sennacherib, along with a sign for Hezekiah and a promise to defend the city for the LORD's own sake and for David's. The angel of the LORD strikes 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp, Sennacherib returns to Nineveh, and his own sons kill him there.

Claim by Claim

1. 37:1
   • King Hezekiah heard the report.
   • Hezekiah tore his clothes.
   • Hezekiah covered himself with sackcloth.
   • Hezekiah went into the house of the LORD.
2. 37:2
   • Hezekiah sent Eliakim, who was over the household.
   • Hezekiah sent Shebna the scribe.
   • Hezekiah sent the elders of the priests.
   • The men sent were covered with sackcloth.
   • They were sent to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3. 37:3
   • They said to Isaiah that this was the message of Hezekiah.
   • Hezekiah said this day is a day of trouble.
   • Hezekiah said this day is a day of rebuke.
   • Hezekiah said this day is a day of contempt.
   • Hezekiah said the children have come to the point of birth.
   • Hezekiah said there is no strength to bring them forth.
4. 37:4
   • Hezekiah said perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh.
   • The king of Assyria, the Rabshakeh's master, sent him to reproach the living God.
   • Hezekiah said God will rebuke the words that the LORD your God has heard.
   • Hezekiah told Isaiah to lift up a prayer for the remnant that is left.
5. 37:5
   • The servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6. 37:6
   • Isaiah said to them to tell their master a message.
   • Isaiah said this is what the LORD says.
   • The LORD said not to be afraid of the words Hezekiah had heard.
   • The LORD said the servants of the king of Assyria had blasphemed him with those words.
7. 37:7
   • The LORD said he would put a spirit in the king of Assyria.
   • The LORD said the king of Assyria would hear a rumor.
   • The LORD said the king of Assyria would return to his own land.
   • The LORD said he would cause the king of Assyria to fall by the sword in his own land.
8. 37:8
   • The Rabshakeh returned.
   • The Rabshakeh found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah.
   • The Rabshakeh had heard that the king had departed from Lachish.
9. 37:9
   • The king of Assyria heard a report concerning Tirhakah king of Cush.
   • The report said Tirhakah had come out to fight against him.
   • When he heard it, the king of Assyria sent messengers to Hezekiah with a message.
10. 37:10
    • The message said to speak to Hezekiah king of Judah.
    • The message said not to let Hezekiah's God, in whom he trusts, deceive him.
    • The message said God was saying Jerusalem would not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.
11. 37:11
    • The message said Hezekiah had heard what the kings of Assyria did to all lands.
    • The kings of Assyria destroyed those lands utterly.
    • The message asked whether Hezekiah would be delivered.
12. 37:12
    • The message asked whether the gods of the nations delivered them.
    • The fathers of the king of Assyria destroyed those nations.
    • Gozan was among them.
    • Haran was among them.
    • Rezeph was among them.
    • The children of Eden who were in Telassar were among them.
13. 37:13
    • The message asked where the king of Hamath is.
    • The message asked where the king of Arpad is.
    • The message asked where the king of the city of Sepharvaim is.
    • The message asked where Hena is.
    • The message asked where Ivvah is.
14. 37:14
    • Hezekiah received the letters from the hand of the messengers.
    • Hezekiah read the letters.
    • Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD.
    • Hezekiah spread the letters before the LORD.
15. 37:15
    • Hezekiah prayed to the LORD.
16. 37:16
    • Hezekiah addressed the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim.
    • Hezekiah said the LORD alone is God over all the kingdoms of the earth.
    • Hezekiah said the LORD made the heavens and the earth.
17. 37:17
    • Hezekiah asked the LORD to incline his ear and hear.
    • Hezekiah asked the LORD to open his eyes and see.
    • Hezekiah asked the LORD to hear all the words of Sennacherib.
    • Hezekiah said Sennacherib had sent to reproach the living God.
18. 37:18
    • Hezekiah said truly the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their land.
19. 37:19
    • Hezekiah said the kings of Assyria cast the gods of those nations into the fire.
    • Hezekiah said those gods were not gods.
    • Hezekiah said those gods were the work of human hands, wood and stone.
    • Hezekiah said that is why they could be destroyed.
20. 37:20
    • Hezekiah asked the LORD their God to save them from Sennacherib's hand.
    • Hezekiah asked that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that the LORD alone is God.
21. 37:21
    • Isaiah the son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah.
    • The message said this is what the LORD God of Israel says.
    • The LORD said Hezekiah had prayed to him concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.
22. 37:22
    • This is the word the LORD has spoken concerning Sennacherib.
    • The virgin daughter of Zion despises Sennacherib.
    • The virgin daughter of Zion laughs him to scorn.
    • The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind him.
23. 37:23
    • The LORD asked Sennacherib whom he had reproached and blasphemed.
    • The LORD asked against whom he had raised his voice.
    • The LORD said Sennacherib had lifted his eyes on high.
    • It was against the Holy One of Israel.
24. 37:24
    • The LORD said Sennacherib reproached the Lord by his servants.
    • Sennacherib said that with the multitude of his chariots he came up to the height of the mountains.
    • Sennacherib said he came up to the far recesses of Lebanon.
    • Sennacherib said he would cut down its tall cedars.
    • Sennacherib said he would cut down its choice cypresses.
    • Sennacherib said he would enter its farthest height.
    • Sennacherib said he would enter its densest forest.
25. 37:25
    • Sennacherib said he dug and drank water.
    • Sennacherib said with the soles of his feet he dried up all the streams of Egypt.
26. 37:26
    • The LORD asked Sennacherib whether he had not heard long ago that the LORD had done it.
    • The LORD said he formed it in ancient times.
    • The LORD said he has now brought it to pass.
    • The LORD said the purpose was that Sennacherib should lay fortified cities waste into ruinous heaps.
27. 37:27
    • The inhabitants of those cities were of small power.
    • The inhabitants were dismayed and ashamed.
    • The inhabitants were like the grass of the field.
    • The inhabitants were like the green herb.
    • The inhabitants were like grass on the housetops.
    • The inhabitants were like grain blasted before it is grown.
28. 37:28
    • The LORD said he knows Sennacherib's sitting down.
    • The LORD said he knows Sennacherib's going out and coming in.
    • The LORD said he knows Sennacherib's rage against him.
29. 37:29
    • The LORD said Sennacherib's rage against him has come up into his ears.
    • The LORD said Sennacherib's arrogance has come up into his ears.
    • The LORD said he will put his hook in Sennacherib's nose.
    • The LORD said he will put his bridle in Sennacherib's lips.
    • The LORD said he will turn Sennacherib back by the way he came.
30. 37:30
    • The LORD said this shall be a sign to Hezekiah.
    • This year they will eat what grows of itself.
    • In the second year they will eat what springs from that.
    • In the third year they are to sow and reap.
    • In the third year they are to plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
31. 37:31
    • The escaped remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward.
    • The escaped remnant will bear fruit upward.
32. 37:32
    • A remnant will go forth out of Jerusalem.
    • Those who escape will go forth out of mount Zion.
    • The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
33. 37:33
    • This is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria.
    • The king of Assyria will not come into this city.
    • He will not shoot an arrow there.
    • He will not come before it with a shield.
    • He will not cast up a siege ramp against it.
34. 37:34
    • He will return by the way that he came.
    • He will not come into this city.
    • The LORD declares this.
35. 37:35
    • The LORD said he will defend this city to save it.
    • The LORD said he will do so for his own sake.
    • The LORD said he will do so for the sake of his servant David.
36. 37:36
    • The angel of the LORD went forth.
    • The angel struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians.
    • When they arose early in the morning, all of them were dead corpses.
37. 37:37
    • Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away.
    • Sennacherib returned.
    • Sennacherib dwelt at Nineveh.
38. 37:38
    • Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god.
    • Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him with the sword.
    • They escaped into the land of Ararat.
    • Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

37:1

The report is the Assyrian demand for surrender delivered outside Jerusalem's wall in the previous chapter. Assyria was the dominant empire of the age; its king Sennacherib had already overrun most of Judah's fortified towns, and Jerusalem was cut off. Tearing one's clothes was the standard public sign of grief, horror or mourning in this culture, not a loss of temper. "The LORD's house" is the temple in Jerusalem. Where the text prints LORD in this form it stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, which the Hebrew writes with four consonants (roughly YHWH); ordinary "Lord" translates a different word meaning master.

37:2

"Scribe" here is a high office of state, something like secretary or chancellor, not a copyist. Eliakim and Shebna are the two senior officials of Hezekiah's government, and both appear earlier in Isaiah. Sending them, rather than a servant, marks the seriousness of the errand.

37:3

A proverb for a crisis that has reached its decisive moment with no strength left to carry it through: the labor has gone as far as it can go and the child cannot be born.

37:4

"Rabshakeh" is an Assyrian title, not a personal name, a senior court official (the term is connected with chief cupbearer), here acting as the king's spokesman and negotiator. "Remnant" is a key word in Isaiah: the fraction of a people left alive after a disaster. With most of Judah's towns taken, Jerusalem's population was literally what was left.

37:7

"A spirit" translates a word that also means wind or breath; the sense is an impulse or disposition put into him from outside. The prediction has two parts (a rumor that pulls him home, and a violent death there) and verse 38 reports the second.

37:8

Lachish was Judah's second city, a heavily fortified place about thirty miles south-west of Jerusalem; Sennacherib's own palace reliefs, now in the British Museum, show its capture in detail. Libnah was another town in the same region. The king has moved his siege on to the next target.

37:9

Cush is the kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan; at this period its rulers also held the Egyptian throne. Tirhakah is Taharqa, a real Nubian-Egyptian king. An Egyptian army marching north is exactly the threat that would force Sennacherib to break off and settle matters at Jerusalem quickly.

37:12

A list of places Assyria had already swallowed, running across northern Mesopotamia and Syria: Gozan on the Habur river, Haran an ancient caravan city, Rezeph on the desert road, and Beth-Eden (Bit-Adini) with its town Telassar on the upper Euphrates. The point of the list is that these were substantial states with their own gods, and none of them survived.

37:13

Hamath and Arpad were major city-states in Syria; Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivah were other conquered towns. "Where is the king of..." means the throne is empty, the dynasty was wiped out or deported. Assyria routinely deported defeated populations and destroyed or carried off their gods' images.

37:14

Laying a document out in the sanctuary was a recognized act in the ancient Near East: the matter is physically placed before the god so that he becomes a party to it. Hezekiah is submitting the letter as evidence rather than simply praying about it.

37:16

"LORD of hosts" is a title meaning commander of armies, the heavenly ones, and by extension all the powers of the world. The cherubim are not infants but composite winged creatures; two gold figures stood over the chest in the temple's inner room, and the space above them was spoken of as God's throne. Calling him God of all the kingdoms of the earth directly answers the Assyrian claim that each nation has its own local god.

37:17

Sennacherib is the name of the king of Assyria who had been sending the threats.

37:19

The Assyrians burned the wooden images and carried off the stone and metal ones. Hezekiah's argument turns the Rabshakeh's evidence around: those gods fell because they were manufactured objects.

37:22

Zion is the hill Jerusalem stands on, and "daughter of Zion" personifies the city as a young woman. "Virgin" here means untaken, no enemy has ever forced his way in. Shaking the head at someone was a gesture of contempt, the ancient equivalent of jeering as a beaten opponent walks away.

37:23

"The Holy One of Israel" is Isaiah's characteristic title for God, used some twenty-five times in this book and rarely elsewhere. Lifting the eyes high is a standard Hebrew image for arrogance.

37:24

This is a parody of the boasting inscriptions Assyrian kings actually carved. The cedar and cypress forests of the Lebanon range were the most prized timber in the region, felled and hauled away by conquering kings as proof of reach. The last phrase, literally "the forest of his Carmel", uses a word for garden land or orchard: the deepest, most fertile interior. Whether these mountains stand for Lebanon itself or, symbolically, for Judah and its temple hill is left open.

37:25

The boast of a besieger: he can dig for water anywhere, and his troops are so numerous that they can wade a river dry. The streams are the branches and canals of the Nile, so the claim is to have overrun Egypt itself.

37:26

The answer to the boast: the conqueror was an instrument in a plan laid long before him, so the destruction he takes credit for was not his own achievement.

37:27

Roofs were flat and made of packed earth, so windblown seed sprouted on them and died within days for lack of soil. A field scorched by the hot east wind before the grain heads out is the same picture, growth that never reaches harvest.

37:29

Not a metaphor invented for the occasion. Assyrian reliefs and texts show prisoners led by a cord attached to a ring through the lip or nose, and the bit is the mouthpiece by which a horse is controlled. The conqueror is to be handled the way he handled others.

37:30

The sign concerns farming under invasion. The year's sowing has been lost, so for two seasons people live on volunteer growth, grain that comes up from spilled seed and from the stubble of that crop. The third year they sow and plant vines again, and planting vineyards means expecting to still be there years later, since vines take several seasons to bear.

37:32

"Zeal" translates a word meaning fierce, jealous passion, the same energy a person feels over something that is exclusively theirs. It is the guarantee attached to the promise, not a description of the survivors.

37:33

The standard siege procedure: archers to clear the wall, large body-shields to cover men working at its base, and an earth ramp piled against the wall so troops and battering rams could reach the top. The promise is that none of it will happen.

37:35

Jerusalem was David's capital, and a promise to David's line was attached to it. "For my own sake" makes the reason the defender's own reputation, which the Assyrian messages had challenged, rather than any merit in the city.

37:36

"Angel" means messenger; the text names the agent but not the method, and the reader is told only the result found at daybreak. The Greek historian Herodotus preserved a separate story of Sennacherib's army being crippled overnight in this campaign. Assyrian records, which never admit defeat, say only that Hezekiah was shut up in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage", and notably do not claim the city was taken.

37:37

Nineveh, on the Tigris near modern Mosul, was Sennacherib's capital and the largest city of the empire.

37:38

The murder is historical: Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons in 681 BC, about twenty years after this campaign, and Esarhaddon fought his way to the throne. Nisroch is not otherwise known and the name may be a corruption of an Assyrian god's name. Ararat, which the King James Version calls Armenia, is the mountainous kingdom of Urartu north of Assyria, outside Esarhaddon's reach.