Sennacherib's general has landed outside the city of Jerusalem, traveling up from nearby Lachish, and has taunted the people of Jerusalem -- and their God. The field commander promises to starve the people if they do not surrender. They will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine, he shouts at the people on the walls. King Hezekiah's leaders are distraught and tear their clothes.
Isaiah 37:1-4, Pray!
When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the LORD. He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 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. 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.”
Distraught, Hezekiah rushes into the temple and begins to pray. He send his leaders to talk to Isaiah. In his message to Isaiah, Hezekiah hopes that YHWH heard the taunts of the field commander and that He, YHWH, will respond. Meanwhile, Hezekiah also asks for prayers for the surviving remnant.
Hezekiah repeatedly identified YHWH as "your God", as if he hopes that Isaiah has a special relationship with YHWH
Isaiah 37:5-7, Isaiah responds
“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. 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.’”
Isaiah makes a bold and very dangerous statement. This Sennacherib will be cut down and defeated, brought down by YHWH himself.
In his response, Isaiah calls the party from Sennacherib "underlings", implying naivete and youthful immaturity. This may be a deliberate insult by Isaiah.
Isaiah 37: 8-13, Distraction
Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, was marching out to fight against him. When he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word: “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.’ Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? 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? Where is the king of Hamath or the king of Arpad? Where are the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah?”
Pulled away by another fight, Sennacherib adds to his past taunts, listing nations that have fallen before him. None of those nations had a god who could protect them. Grogan points out that in these taunts Sennacherib accuses the Jewish god of deceit. Once again, Sennacherib lists a number of nations whose gods have been ineffective against him.
Libnah was probably a small town north of Lachish. Commentators struggle with the identification of Tirhakah, king of Cush. Is this the pharaoh Taharqa, who reined in Egypt from 690 to 664 BC. If so, how does he appear here around 701 BC? There are variety of solutions to this question; if this is the same individual, he has an active army prior to taking the role of pharaoh.
Isaiah 37:14-20, Hezekiah prays
“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. Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God.
“It is true, LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands. 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. 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.”
Hezekiah's prayer identifies YHWH as the God of all Creation. He is the one "enthroned between the cherubim" of the altar. In his prayer, Hezekiah physically lays out the demanding letter before the altar, as if begging YHWH to read it. He notes that the Assyrian kings had been victorious so far, defeating other lands and other gods. But those other gods are just pieces of wood, sometimes overlaid with gold or silver. This God is different, says Hezekiah, and asks Him to act.
This is the first time in this passage in which Hezekiah, not Isaiah, is doing the praying.
Isaiah 37:21-25, Tossing her head
“Virgin Daughter Zion
despises and mocks you.
Daughter Jerusalem
tosses her head as you flee.
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!
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.
I have dug wells in foreign lands
and drunk the water there.
With the soles of my feet
I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.’
Sennacherib has taunted Jerusalem and YHWH. In this way, that king represents the arrogance and pride of all who believe they can defeat YHWH. (See Psalm 2:1-4.) Isaiah throws Sennacherib's taunts back at him. The "Virgin Daughter Zion" tosses her head as Sennacherib's army retreats. The head-tossing is a very typical response of a haughty teenage girl to a scolding; here it is Jerusalem who laughs at the old man retreating from her.
Isaiah 37:26-28, Have you not heard?
“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.
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 before it grows up.
“But I know where you are
and when you come and go
and how you rage against me.
Isaiah quotes YHWH as saying, "I planned this long ago." Sennacherib has turned cities into rubble, their citizens killed or fleeing. But YHWH is still in charge and watches Sennacherib's rage.
Isaiah 37:29, A hook in the nose
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.
By insulting YHWH, the Assyrians have assured themselves of future captivity. The hook in the nose, the bit in the mouth, describe treatments for captives and horses.
Isaiah 37:30-32, Prosperity for the remnant
“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.
Once more a remnant of the kingdom of Judah
will take root below and bear fruit above.
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.
Hezekiah will see prosperity; vineyards that take time to ripen will be given that time. And, as always in Isaiah, there are statements about a remnant.
Isaiah 37:33-35, Not even an arrow
“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.
By the way that he came he will return;
he will not enter this city,”
declares the LORD.“I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant!”
YHWH will not allow the Assyrians to enter Jerusalem or even shoot an arrow there or build a seige ramp. The city is safe.
Isaiah 37:36-38, Disaster for Assyria
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.
Not only is the Assyrian army destroyed, but forced back to Nineveh, Sennacherib is later assassinated by two of his sons.
The Greek historian, Herodotus, writing several centuries later, reports that Sennacherib's army was infested by mire or rats. Of course rats were often linked to plagues (eg. In 1 Samuel 6:4.) As occurs throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew word translated "thousand" in verse 36 is eleph. I summarized some of the questions surrounding that word in a blogpost here.
The god Nisrok is unknown, says Grogan, and cites another commentator (Young) who suggests that the name is "a possible intentional corruption of Marduk". Surely Isaiah enjoys reporting that Sennacherib, who boasted of his power over the gods of the ANE, and taunted YHWH outside Jerusalem, is killed while worshiping in the temple of his own god!
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