Lesson 12 - 2 Kings 19:7-20, 32-34 - ISAIAH ENCOURAGES HEZEKIAH
INTRODUCTION: Last week, in 2 Kings 17:7-20, we covered the tragic story of the last days of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its last king, Hoshea, when it was completely annihilated by the evil Empire of Assyria in 722 B.C, and the Israelites who survived were permanently deported to other lands, never to return. God used Assyria to judge Israel because they had "provoked His anger"(17:7-11)-His righteous wrath-by turning completely away from the LORD their God by worshipping the false, pagan gods of the Canaanites and adopting "customs"-their forbidden worship practices and lifestyles. By doing these things, the people of the Northern Kingdom had knowingly violated all the Commandments their LORD God had given them when He established His Covenant with them and had ignored the warnings of the prophets God had sent to them. Because of this, the LORD completely "removed them from His sight" (17:16-18). From this lesson we learned (1) that no nation-none-is exempt from God's oversight and that any nation that has turned away from God is facing certain judgment, even our own U.S.A., where 64% of the population claim to be Christians but only 43% actually believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. And after almost 2,000 years, the work of the church is still largely unfinished-with over 68% of the world still lost.
This week, 2 Kings 19:7-20, 32-34, we'll see another side of the LORD God's character at work: That He will be merciful when His people humble themselves, confess and repent of their sins, admit their helplessness, and call on His Almighty Name to help them in their time of distress.
Synopsis of vv. 1-6: The date is 701 B.C. and the setting is Jerusalem, the City of David, in the Southern kingdom of Judah, where Hezekiah, the 13th king of Judah, is facing the danger of imminent attack by Sennacherib, the ruler of Assyrian Empire, which at that moment of history was the most powerful nation in that region of the world. By this time, the Assyrian armies had already overrun most of the territory of Judah, except for a few fortified cities like Jerusalem. As we come into the story, King Hezekiah has in his hand a letter from Sennacherib, delivered to him by the Assyrian envoy, Rabshakeh, basically demanding the unconditional surrender of Jerusalem, or else. Totally out of options with his back literally against the wall, Hezekiah sends for the prophet Isaiah, who sent this reply: "Thus you shall say to your master, 'Thus says the Lord, "Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me" (19:6). This is where we come into today's lesson.
Note: This lesson parallels Isa. 37:14-35, which we covered two quarters ago.
Read 2 Kings 19:7-13 - SENNACHERIB DEFIES GOD
7 "Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land." 8 Then Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. 9 When he heard them say concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, "Behold, he has come out to fight against you," he sent messengers again to Hezekiah saying, 10 "Thus you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah, 'Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you saying, "Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria." 11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, destroying them completely. So will you be spared? 12 Did the gods of those nations which my fathers destroyed deliver them, even Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, and of Hena and Ivvah?'"
v. 7: "Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land." And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land." - Up to this point, Sennacherib had probably been confident that Jerusalem would be a relatively straightforward conquest. They would assault the walls with siege ramps, use archers to clear the defenders off the walls, and thus enable his soldiers would pour into the city. Scholars suggest that the "spirit" that God put in Sennacherib were feelings of insecurity or fear, or maybe disturbing news from his homeland. In any event, he would return home where he would ultimately meet his death "by the sword" (2 Chron. 32:21). Some scholars say this prophecy was intentionally vague as to the details of how Good would fulfill it, but the central message to Hezekiah was clear: That God, not Hezekiah and his people, would fight the Assyrians.
v. 8: "Then Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish." - When the Assyrian envoy Rabshakeh returned to catch up with Sennacherib, he found him leading an assault on the neighboring fort at "Libnah" (its exact location in Judah is uncertain but is thought to have been southeast of Jerusalem near the coast).
v. 9: "When he heard them say concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, "Behold, he has come out to fight against you," he sent messengers again to Hezekiah saying," -Here, Sennacherib hears a 'rumor' that Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king (a/k/a Cush) who led the Egyptian armies, was advancing from the south to attack him. Note, the same Tirhakah would later become a pharaoh of all Egypt.
v. 10: "Thus you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah, 'Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you saying," Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria." - In his second message to Hezekiah, to frighten Jerusalem into agreeing to a quick surrender, Sennacherib sent his envoy back to Jerusalem, strongly warning Hezekiah not to allow "God" (Elohim) to deceive him (i.e., think the city was safe), which represented a focused blasphemy against the LORD (YHWH).
v. 11: "Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, destroying them completely. So will you be spared?" -This is yet another scare tactic of Sennacherib: he's threatening Jerusalem with complete extermination if Hezekiah continues to resist.
v. 12: "Did the gods of those nations which my fathers destroyed deliver them, even Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?" - Again, Sennacherib uses the plural form, Elohim, for "gods." Since he had defeated the 'gods' of all the nations he had conquered in battle, why would Hezekiah think he could not also defeat the God of Israel? The city "Haran" was the home of Abraham's father, Terah (Gen. 11:ff); and "Rezeph" was fortress near Haran (Isa. 37:12), with "Telassar" being in the east near Babylon. This was consistent with pagan beliefs in many gods.
v. 13: "Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, and of Hena and Ivvah?" - Sennacherib now threatens Hezekiah with a personal intimidation tactic: He has thus far destroyed all the other the various kings of "Hamath, Arpad, Hena, and Ivvah," so how could Hezekiah expect to escape anything less? Further resistance by him was pointless, a death sentence.
Read 2 Kings 19:14-19 - HEZEKIAH'S PRAYER
14 Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. 15 Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, "O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. 16 Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. 19 Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God."
v. 14: "Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord." - This is Sennacherib's most recent king-to-king letter in written form, which Hezekiah takes to "the house of the LORD" (most likely the Outer Court of the Temple), which he unfolded "before the LORD." He had sent for Isaiah upon receipt of the first letter, but now he goes to God's house alone, prostrates himself, and lays his request directly before the LORD. Out of options, Hezekiah now realizes what he must do.
v. 15: Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, "O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God," - Notice that Hezekiah begins his prayer by confessing God's one-if-a-kind uniqueness. He describes God as dwelling between the cherubim in the holy of holies on the mercy seat above the Ark of the Covenant. Naming Him the "Lord of armies," Hezekiah is declaring faith that that the LORD God is the one and only living God, that He alone is God over all the kingdoms of the world, and that He is the Creator and maker of all things.
v. 16: "Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God." - Hezekiah's words "Incline your ear and hear" and "open Your eyes and see" weren't impolite expressions but were Hebrew terms that called for emphasis on the importance of something being said or written. We don't have the letter itself, but we know from v. 10 that Sennacherib's letter contained substantially the same words as those used by his messenger, which had blasphemed God by name, claiming that He didn't have the power to save Jerusalem from conquest and implying that Judah's so-called God was just as weak as the imaginary pagan gods of all the other nations that had already been vanquished by Assyria.
v. 17: Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands." - Hezekiah is forced to admit Assyria's obvious military supremacy over all the other nations in the region. The Assyrian Empire had waged successful campaigns from the area near the Persian Gulf all the way west to the Mediterranean Sea. To all appearances, its power was unstoppable. In more recent history, this might remind us of the German's Nazi war machine whose Blitzkrieg (lightning war) swept across Europe in 1939 and 1940, leaving the small island of Great Britain to stand alone.
v. 18: "and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them." - Here, Hezekiah refers to the standard Assyrian practice after they had conquered a particular nation: They would gather-up all the pagan idols worshipped by such nations and burn them up in a fire. In the various pagan belief systems of the nations that surrounded Judah, they thought that their various gods were local and limited in terms of the geography over which they had authority, and the people of Judah (including their kings) had been tempted to carelessly put YHWH, the one true God and sovereign Creator, in the same category with these false deities. In his prayer, however, Hezekiah's confesses that these puny idols were not gods in any sense of the word but were in fact lifeless, man-made objects that could be destroyed by simply throwing them into a fire, like burning so much trash.
v. 19: "Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God." - Many commentators regard Hezekiah's confession in this verse to be one of the best models of how we should approach Almighty God, our Sovereign Creator, in our prayers, and it should merit our close attention. Like all true prayer, we should notice that Hezekiah's prayer here is totally preoccupied with the person of God: (1) who He is; (2) His perfection; (3) His honor: (4) His uniqueness-He is the one true and living God; (5) His sovereign power and authority over all of creation; and (6) and the revelation of His glory to the world, "so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God." Are your prayers focused on God's glory? As one commentator put it: "The heart of prayer isn't the content of our petitions but the acknowledgement of who God is" (Motyer, p. 281).
Read 2 Kings 19:32-34 - FOR I WILL DEFEND THIS CITY
32 'Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, "He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield or throw up a siege ramp against it. 33 By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he shall not come to this city,"' declares the Lord. 34 'For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake.'"
v. 32: 'Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, "He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield or throw up a siege ramp against it." The prefix, "thus says the LORD," always means that what follows it is a word-for-word pronouncement from God Himself. Up to this point in time, the inhabitants of Jerusalem were probably living in mortal fear of their lives that Sennacherib would show up in person any day now to oversee the final taking of the city, and like conquering kings often do, commence the attack by shooting a ceremonial flaming arrow into the city. The LORD promises that Sennacherib would not even come to besiege Jerusalem, let alone attack it, either from close range (i.e., "with a shield") or over the walls (i.e., "throw up an assault ramp"). It simply would not happen.
v. 33: "By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he shall not come to this city," declares the Lord." - According to historical records, Sennacherib was actually 30 to 40 miles west of Jerusalem, nearer the coast, and took the coastal road back to Nineveh, his capitol, thereby skirting Jerusalem and returning "By the way he came."
v. 34: "For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake." - This is an insightful declaration that points to the New Covenant: The LORD GOD would defend Jerusalem and preserve it, not so much as a reward to Hezekiah for his faith, but for the LORD's own reputation and for David's sake, to whom He had promised an everlasting kingdom (2 Sam. 7:16), ultimately culminating in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as Messiah (Luke 1:32-33).
POSTSCRIPT-vv. 35-37: As the Assyrian army was massed around the city of Jerusalem with all their weapons and equipment, awaiting Sennacherib's order to commence the siege, God sent an angel that "struck down" (i.e., killed) 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, removing the threat in one stroke. When the people of Jerusalem awoke the next day, they discovered 185,000 Assyrians laying dead around their walls. As to the fate of Sennacherib, who had defamed God, v. 37 reports that later, while the king was worshipping his false god at a place in Nineveh, two of his sons came in and murdered him. Within 100 years, the once mighty Assyrian Empire would succumb to conquest by the Neo-Babylonians.
APPLICATION-When God Listens:
1. God is working through events in history in ways than can't be fathomed on a purely human level. In today's text, King Hezekiah had pursued every human solution and failed. He had literally stripped his treasury bare to pay tribute to Assyria. He had tried to shore up his defenses through a foreign alliance with Egypt. But the enemy-the vast army of Sennacherib-was at his gates, ready to attack. So, God waited until King Hezekiah's back was literally up against the walls of Jerusalem, when all of his human options had failed, before He was willing to listen to his plea for help.
2. Effective prayer, in general, is always preoccupied with God rather than self, and should include:
