2 Kingschapter 18
37 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He also demolished the bronze snake called Nehushtan that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had burned incense to it.
Introduction
Jeremiah, by tradition, History, 2 Kings Overview.
From this chapter on the book of Kings follows Judah alone, and it was written for exiles who remembered Hezekiah as the king who trusted the LORD. It is also one of the most fully recorded moments in the Old Testament, with Assyrian annals and carved reliefs that describe the same campaign. The chapter opens with a reform and turns to an invasion. Listen for the word trust, which runs through the king's praise and through the enemy's speech. Pay attention to the language the Assyrian envoy uses at the wall, and to whom he is really speaking.
Context
- Who
- Judeans who had watched the north disappear and expected to be next
- What
- An account of Hezekiah's reform, the fall of Samaria recalled, and the first stage of Sennacherib's invasion, with the Assyrian envoy's speech at Jerusalem's wall.
- Where
- The temple in Jerusalem, the fortified towns of Judah with Lachish in the lowlands, and the conduit of the upper pool outside the city wall.
- When
- Hezekiah reigned about 715 to 686 BC, and the Assyrian campaign came in 701 BC.
- Why
- To set a king who trusted the LORD against an empire that mocked that trust, and to show the reform that came before the test.
Historical context
The reform is described by what was destroyed, and one item is startling. The bronze serpent Moses made in the wilderness had become an object the people burned incense to. An authentic relic of the founding generation had turned into an idol, and Hezekiah broke it and called it a piece of bronze. Anything can be worshipped, including something God once used.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The invasion of 701 BC is the best-documented event in the Old Testament. Sennacherib's own account, preserved on clay prisms including the Taylor Prism in the British Museum, says he took forty-six walled cities of Judah and shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. It lists tribute including thirty talents of gold, which matches this chapter, with a different silver figure. The prism stops short of claiming Jerusalem, which is the one success a boasting record would record.
The main blow fell on Lachish in the lowlands, and the Assyrians carved the siege on the palace walls at Nineveh. The panels show the ramp of packed earth, the siege engines pushed up it, the archers, and the population going into exile. The reliefs and the excavated ramp at the site match each other closely.
Two water works stand behind this chapter. The Assyrian officer shouts from the conduit of the upper pool on the road to the Washer's Field. Hezekiah had cut a tunnel over five hundred yards through solid rock to bring the Gihon spring inside the walls. An inscription found in it describes the two crews of diggers hearing each other through the stone and meeting in the middle.
The officer speaks in Judean rather than the diplomatic Aramaic on purpose, so the men on the wall understand every word. It is a psychological attack aimed past the negotiators at the defenders.
Significance
The first hearers heard the Assyrian argument in full, and it was a strong one. Every other nation's god had failed, Egypt was a splintered reed that would pierce the hand leaning on it, and the officer even claimed the LORD had sent him.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
They also heard its one flaw. The officer counted the God of Israel among the gods of Hamath and Sepharvaim. The whole answer of the next chapter turns on that mistake.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
Two things in this chapter draw the classical comment: what the king broke, and what the Assyrian officer said at the wall.
On the first, Rashi reads the new name given to the bronze serpent as an insult built into the Hebrew. The added letter belittles the thing, and the sense he gives it is a shrug, that the object is nothing but a piece of copper (Rashi on II Kings 18:4:1, the Metsudah Tanach series of Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY). The Metsudah edition's note at that verse sets out the reason the serpent had been kept so long and not broken earlier. It was thought wrong to destroy a thing made at a divine command, and it may have been kept as a memorial of the deliverance in the wilderness in the way the jar of manna was kept. The same note carries the Targum reading the name as what the people who worshipped it called it rather than what the king called it. At the sixteenth verse, where the king strips the Temple to pay the tribute, Rashi says in four words what was taken, "The doors, which were gold plated" (Rashi on II Kings 18:16:1). At the opening he reads the third year as the third year of the last northern king's revolt, holding to the chronology he set out in the chapter before (Rashi on II Kings 18:1:1).
On the second, Rashi treats the speech at the wall as an argument to be answered point by point, and he identifies the speaker. From the officer's own words about the altars the king had removed he draws a conclusion about who the man was. He writes that "Ravshokei was an apostate Jew, for he admitted that the Holy One, Blessed Is He, is God, but his desire is to worship idols", with the Talmud at Sanhedrin 60a behind it (Rashi on II Kings 18:22:1). The officer's opening taunt is read as a change in the situation rather than an insult: until the army marched, refusing the tribute cost nothing but words, and now that it has marched the king needs counsel and strength (Rashi on II Kings 18:20:1). The broken reed of Egypt is explained from what a splintered cane does to the hand that leans on it, that the split edges come and pierce the palm (Rashi on II Kings 18:21:1).
Two of the officer's arguments are read as arithmetic. The wager over two thousand horses is read as a boast built on the certainty that Judah could not find two thousand riders, and the Metsudah note gives Ralbag drawing the conclusion, that a king who cannot mount that many cannot mount a rebellion (Rashi on II Kings 18:23:1). From the next verse Rashi works the other way, from the claim that the least of the Assyrian captains commands two thousand men. He applies it to the number that falls in the following chapter: the hundred and eighty-five thousand were the commanders, and the smallest of them had two thousand men under him (Rashi on II Kings 18:24:1). The officer's claim to have come by the LORD's own word is traced to a prophecy already spoken in the previous reign, and the note adds a second verse that Radak cites. The Assyrian is read there as a man who believed he had divine warrant (Rashi on II Kings 18:25:1).
The exchange over the language is read as a matter of morale. The officials ask for Aramaic because they are men of the palace who know it, and they do not want the people on the wall to follow what is being said (Rashi on II Kings 18:26:1). The Metsudah note gives Metzudat David's reason, that the business of a war is not laid before the general public. The officer's coarse answer about what the men on the wall will be reduced to eating is read plainly as the hunger of a long siege, with Ralbag in the note drawing out the threat (Rashi on II Kings 18:27:1).
One historical difference is preserved in the corpus rather than settled. At the seventeenth verse Rashi cites Seder Olam that the three Assyrian officers did not come together. One came alone on the first embassy, as the parallel account in Isaiah has it, and the other two came on a second mission after word arrived about the king of Cush. The Metsudah note at the same verse carries two readings of why the attack came at all after the tribute had been paid. Metzudat David reads it as the Assyrian dealing falsely, sending his officers although the tribute had been paid. Radak reads it as a later campaign, the tribute taken and the army withdrawn, and the demands unmet in the years that followed (Rashi on II Kings 18:17:1). Both stand in the corpus and neither is put above the other here. The success the text credits to the king at the seventh verse is read through the Hebrew root for understanding, and the note carries Metzudat David's gloss, that a man who prospers is taken by others for a man who acts with intelligence (Rashi on II Kings 18:7:1).
Metzudat David and Radak comment across this chapter at further verses, and the corpus carries those refs with the reason that Sefaria holds no English version of them, so they stand here cited and unquoted: Metzudat David on II Kings 18:2:1, 18:9:1, 18:12:1 and 18:19:1, and Radak on II Kings 18:5:1, 18:8:1, 18:10:1, 18:11:1, 18:13:1 and 18:14:1. Radak stands on the fifth verse, where the text says there was none like this king among all the kings of Judah, and on the thirteenth and fourteenth, where the campaign and the tribute are recorded, and what he makes of either waits on a fetch that carries the text.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators for this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. Five stand on the fourth verse, where the high places are broken and the bronze serpent with them, and they are spread across the Talmud and the Midrash alike: Aggadat Bereshit 11:2, the Babylonian Talmud at Avodah Zarah 44a:6, Berakhot 10b:7 and Chullin 6b:7, and Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:4. Aggadat Bereshit 37:2 stands on the verse before, where the king does what is right in the sight of the LORD. Four stand on the sixteenth verse, where the doors of the Temple are stripped: Berakhot 10b:8, Introductions to Tanaitic Literature, Introductions to Tractates of the Mishnah, Kelim 204, Jerusalem Talmud Nedarim 6:8:8 and Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 9:1:6.
Five stand on the fall of Samaria and the deportation recorded at the tenth to the twelfth verses: Seder Olam Rabbah 22:2, Bamidbar Rabbah 9:7, Ein Yaakov, Kiddushin 4:11, Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 1:9, and Kiddushin 72a:6, with Seder Olam Rabbah 23:2 on the thirteenth, where the Assyrian comes up against the fortified cities of Judah.
The speech at the wall carries the rest. On the twentieth verse, Midrash Tanchuma, Vayikra 8:1. On the twenty-first, the broken reed of Egypt, Berakhot 56b:13, Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 10:3 and Yevamot 93b:1. On the twenty-third, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 38:17:2. On the twenty-fourth, Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 2:15 and Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 12:12. On the twenty-fifth, where the officer claims the LORD sent him, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:27, Pesikta DeRav Kahana 2:5 and Sanhedrin 94b:4. On the twenty-seventh, Megillah 25b:15 and Tractate Soferim 9:8, both of which are places where the rabbis treat how a coarse verse is read aloud. On the thirty-second, where the officer offers a land like their own, Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 20:2, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:25, Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 11:24 and Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 6:1:13. On the thirty-fifth, where he asks which of the gods of the nations delivered his land, Chullin 89a:7, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Chullin 6:4, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Megillah 1:17 and Ein Yaakov, Khullin 6:8. On the thirty-seventh, where the officials come to the king with their clothes torn, Ein Yaakov, Moed Katan 3:27, Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 7:12, Moed Katan 26a:11 and Sanhedrin 60a:13, the last of which is the passage Rashi cites above. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 18:1:1, 18:4:1, 18:7:1, 18:16:1, 18:17:1, 18:18:1, 18:20:1, 18:21:1, 18:22:1, 18:23:1, 18:24:1, 18:25:1, 18:26:1 and 18:27:1, The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY; Radak, Radak, the reading the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 18:17:1, and his own refs at 18:5:1, 18:8:1, 18:10:1, 18:11:1, 18:13:1 and 18:14:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David, the readings the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 18:1:1, 18:7:1, 18:17:1 and 18:26:1, and his own refs at 18:2:1, 18:9:1, 18:12:1 and 18:19:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Ralbag, Ralbag, the readings the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 18:23:1 and 18:27:1; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-kings/18.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Nehushtan: the bronze serpent broken in pieces
2 Kings 18:1-3
the reign of Hoshea son of Elah: Hezekiah's reign is dated against Hoshea, the last king Israel will have, so Judah's reformer and Israel's collapse stand side by side in one sentence. The verdict that he "did what was right in the eyes of the LORD" is the standard the book of Kings measures every king by.
2 Kings 18:1
In the third year - If Hoshea ascended the throne toward the close of the 12th year of Ahaz 2Ki 17:1, and if Ahaz reigned not much more than 15 years 2Ki 16:2, the first of Hezekiah might synchronise in part with Hoshea’s third year. Hezekiah - The name given by our translators follows the Greek form, Ἐζεκίας Ezekias, rather than the Hebrew, which is Hizkiah. Its meaning is “strength of Yahweh.”
He was twenty-five years old: Hezekiah came to the throne at twenty-five, and 2 Kings 16:2 gives his father Ahaz a reign of sixteen years that began at twenty. Barnes reckoned that these figures make Ahaz a father at about eleven. He reported that most commentators suggest a corruption in one of the numbers.
2 Kings 18:2
“Twenty and five years old was he - This statement, combined with that of 2Ki 16:2, would make it necessary that his father Ahaz should have married at the age of 10, and have had a child born to him when he was 11 years of age. This is not impossible; but its improbability is so great, that most commentators suggest a corruption in some of the numbers. The Zachariah here mentioned was perhaps one of the “faithful witnesses” of Isaiah Isa 8:2.”
his father David had done: Barnes counts three kings of Judah who receive this verdict without qualification: Asa at 1 Kings 15:11, Hezekiah, and Josiah at 2 Kings 22:2. Clarke points to 2 Chronicles 29, where Hezekiah has the priests and Levites cleanse the temple Ahaz had shut. That work began in his first month.
2 Kings 18:3
“He did that which was right ... - This is said without qualification of only three kings of Judah, Asa 1Ki 15:11, Hezekiah, and Josiah 2Ki 22:2. See some details of Hezekiah’s acts at the commencement of his reign in 2 Chr. 29, etc. It is thought that his reformation was preceded, and perhaps caused, by the prophecy of Micah recorded in Jer 26:18; Mic 3:12.”
Connections1 Kings 15:11
the bronze snake called Nehushtan: Hezekiah "demolished the bronze snake called Nehushtan that Moses had made," the figure of Numbers 21:9. The name, a mere piece of bronze, is given only at its destruction. John 3:14 takes up the serpent itself as a picture of the Son of Man lifted up.
2 Kings 18:4
“But in process of time, when they began to worship the creature more than the Creator, those that would not worship images borrowed from the heathen, as some of their neighbours did, were drawn in by the tempter to burn incense to the brazen serpent, because that was made by order from God himself and had been an instrument of good to them.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 18:4
“Brake in pieces the brazen serpent - The history of this may be seen in Num 21:8 (note), Num 21:9 (note). We find that this brazen serpent had become an object of idolatry, and no doubt was supposed to possess, as a telesm or amulet, extraordinary virtues, and that incense was burnt before it which should have been burnt before the true God. And he called it Nehushtan - נהשתן. Not one of the versions has attempted to translate this word.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 18:4
“We must never dishonour God, in honour to our earthly parents. Brazen serpent - Which had been hitherto kept as a memorial of God's mercy; but being now commonly abused to superstition, was destroyed. To it - Not doubtless as to a God, but only as to an instrument of God's mercy, by and through which, their adoration was directed to God, and given to that only for God's sake.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
ConnectionsNumbers 21:9
2 Kings 18:5-6
Hezekiah trusted in the LORD: Trust is the text's word for Hezekiah, and "No king of Judah was like him, either before him or after him". Chapter 23:25 says almost the same of Josiah. Verse 5 praises Hezekiah's trust under the Assyrian threat, and 23:25 praises Josiah's return to the book of the law.
2 Kings 18:5
“After him was none like him - The same is said of Josiah (marginal reference). The phrase was probably proverbial, and was not taken to mean more than we mean when we say that such and such a king was one of singular piety.”
He remained faithful to the LORD: Barnes names Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Joash and Amaziah as good kings who fell away, and he holds that Hezekiah stayed firm to the end. Gill, following the Targum, reads the commandments given to Moses as the moral, ceremonial and judicial law together. Barnes finds this cleaving language chiefly in Deuteronomy.
2 Kings 18:6
“For he clave to the Lord,.... To his worship and service; to the fear of the Lord, as the Targum: and departed not from following him; from his worship, as the same paraphrase: but kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses; both moral, ceremonial, and judicial.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:6
“Other good kings, as Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Joash, and Amaziah, had fallen away in their later years. Hezekiah remained firm to the last. The phrase “cleaving to God” is frequent in Deuteronomy, but rare elsewhere.”
2 Kings 18:7-8
the LORD was with Hezekiah: The text says "the LORD was with Hezekiah" before a battle is named, and the rebellion against Assyria follows as the fruit of that nearness. Tribute to Assyria had been policy since Ahaz invited Tiglath-pileser in at 2 Kings 16:7, so Hezekiah's refusal breaks with his own father's course.
He defeated the Philistines: Sargon had brought the Philistine cities under Assyria, and Barnes reads this campaign as a blow at Assyrian power in the west. Clarke takes from watchtower to fortified city as a proverb for every kind of stronghold. The same phrase describes Israel's high places at 2 Kings 17:9.
2 Kings 18:8
“He smote the Philistines even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof,.... Who in his father's time had invaded Judah, and taken many cities and towns in it, which Hezekiah now recovered, and drove them to their own territories, of which Gaza was one; see 2Ch 28:18. from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city; that is, places both great and small, cities, towns, and villages; of this phrase, see 2Ki 17:9.”
Samaria's fall recalled: because they obeyed not
2 Kings 18:9-10
Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria: The narrator dates the fall of Samaria by Hezekiah's reign, the fourth to the sixth, tying Judah's king to the disaster chapter 17 has recounted. The text gives the span, "at the end of three years," here and at 17:5, and the repetition fixes the number.
2 Kings 18:9
“These verses repeat the account given in the marginal reference. The extreme importance of the event may account for the double insertion.”
at the end of three years: The siege ran from Hezekiah's fourth year into his sixth. Gill takes the end of three years to mean the opening of the third, the sense he gives the same phrase at Deuteronomy 15:1. Omri had built Samaria as Israel's capital at 1 Kings 16:24.
2 Kings 18:10
“And at the end of three years they took it,.... That is, at the first end of them, at the beginning, in which sense the phrase is taken in Deu 15:1, even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is, the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken: see 2Ki 17:6.”
2 Kings 18:11-12
The king of Assyria exiled the Israelites: The exile formula matches the wording chapter 17 gave in full. Verse 12 states the covenant charge in plain legal terms: they "violated His covenant," and "would neither listen nor obey". Deuteronomy 28 named exile as the covenant's own penalty long before either king in this chapter was born.
2 Kings 18:11
“And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria,.... Of the places he disposed of them in, after mentioned; see Gill on 2Ki 17:6.”
Henry reads the repetition as the spur behind Hezekiah's reform: Judah had watched Israel's idolatry end in exile. His picture is a neighbour's house on fire. Gill hears the voice of the LORD in both the covenant Moses commanded and the prophets sent after it, as chapter 17 sets out.
2 Kings 18:12
“Because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord,.... In his law, and by his prophets: but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded; which evils are at large insisted on in the preceding chapter as the cause of their captivity: and would not hear them, nor do them; contrary to the agreement of their fathers at Sinai, who promised to do both, Exo 24:3.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:12
“This was related more largely in the foregoing chapter, but it is here repeated, 1. As that which stirred up Hezekiah and his people to purge out idolatry with so much zeal, because they saw the ruin which it brought upon Israel. When their neighbour's house was on fire, and their own in danger, it was time to cast away the accursed thing.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Three hundred talents stripped from the temple doors
2 Kings 18:13-14
Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured: Lachish, where Hezekiah sends his message, is the city Sennacherib's own palace reliefs at Nineveh show under siege. "I have done wrong" is a plain surrender. The submission sits in the chapter that has said he trusted in the LORD, and the text lets both stand without resolving the tension.
2 Kings 18:13
“The king of Assyria took all or most of the fenced cities of Judah, the frontier-towns and the garrisons, and then all the rest fell into his hands of course. The confusion which the country was put into by this invasion is described by the prophet, Isa. x.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 18:13
“In the fourteenth year - This note of time, which places the invasion of Sennacherib eight years only after the capture of Samaria, is hopelessly at variance with the Assyrian dates for the two events, the first of which falls into the first of Sargon, and the second into the fourth of Sennacherib, twenty-one years later. We have therefore to choose between an entire rejection of the Assyrian chronological data, and an emendation of the present passage. Of the emendations proposed the simplest is to remove the note of time altogether, regarding it as having crept in from the margin.”
2 Kings 18:13
“Among the interesting illustrations of sacred history furnished by the recent Assyrian excavations, is a series of bas-reliefs, representing the siege of a town, which the inscription on the sculpture shows to be Lachish, and the figure of a king, whose name is given, on the same inscription, as Sennacherib.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
ConnectionsIsaiah 36:1
Matthew Henry asks why Hezekiah sent word to Lachish without first consulting Isaiah. JFB trace the submission to failed help from Egypt. Barnes adds that the king of Assyria's own account demanded more silver, the surrender of the king of Ekron, and land from Judah.
2 Kings 18:14
“Return from me - Or “retire from me,” i. e., “withdraw thy troops.” Three hundred talents ... - According to Sennacherib’s own account, the terms of peace were as follows: (1) A money payment to the amount of 800 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. (2) the surrender of the Ekronite king. (3) a cession of territory toward the west and the southwest, which was apportioned between the kings of Ekron, Ashdod, and Gaza.”
2 Kings 18:15-16
all the silver that was found: Hezekiah strips the house of the LORD. The act recalls Asa at 1 Kings 15:18 and Ahaz at 2 Kings 16:8. Sennacherib's Taylor Prism lists thirty talents of gold, though it gives eight hundred talents of silver against the text's three hundred, a difference left open.
2 Kings 18:15
“And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house. To make up the three hundred talents of silver, for which purpose he exhausted both, which had been done more than once before by the kings of Judah; these were their resources in times of distress; see 2Ki 12:18.”
stripped the gold: Hezekiah had opened and repaired these temple doors for the LORD in the first month of his reign, as 2 Chronicles 29:3 records. Barnes says he was compelled to undo his own work. The gold bought Jerusalem no safety from the king of Assyria, as verse 17 shows.
2 Kings 18:16
“Ahaz had already exhausted the treasuries 2Ki 16:8; Hezekiah was therefore compelled to undo his own work.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:16
“34 Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand? 35 Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the L ORD should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand?”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Rabshakeh at the conduit: on whom dost thou trust?
2 Kings 18:17-18
the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh: Three Assyrian officers arrive, "the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh," the commander, a chief officer, and one whose title means chief cupbearer. They stop "by the aqueduct of the upper pool," the spot where Isaiah once met Ahaz with a word of trust that king refused.
2 Kings 18:17
“An interval of time must be placed between this verse and the last. Sennacherib, content with his successes, had returned to Nineveh with his spoil and his numerous captives. Hezekiah, left to himself, repented of his submission, and commenced negotiations with Egypt 2Ki 18:21, 2Ki 18:24; Isa 30:2-6; Isa 31:1, which implied treason against his Assyrian suzerain. It was under these circumstances that Sennacherib appears to have made his second expedition into Palestine very soon after the first.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:17
“On the walls of the palace of Sennacherib, at Khorsabad, certain figures have been identified with the officers of that sovereign mentioned in Scripture. In particular, the figures, Rab-shakeh, Rab-saris, and Tartan, appear as full-length portraits of the persons holding those offices in the reign of Sennacherib.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Then they called for the king: Barnes reads the summons as a claim of equal rank, and Hezekiah answers it by sending three officers in his place. Isaiah 22:15 to 22 foretells Shebna's removal and Eliakim's promotion, and JFB note that Shebna still serves here as scribe. Clarke calls Joah the writer of the public annals.
2 Kings 18:18
“Eliakim--lately promoted to be master of the royal household (Isa 22:20). Shebna--removed for his pride and presumption (Isa 22:15) from that office, though still royal secretary. Joah . . . the recorder--that is, the keeper of the chronicles, an important office in Eastern countries.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Kings 18:19-21
What is the basis of this confidence: The Rabshakeh opens with one word, "confidence," the ground Hezekiah's trust in the LORD claims. The speech is built to attack that word from every side. The taunt fits a real weakness: Egypt in this period could not reliably help the small states that counted on it against Assyria.
2 Kings 18:19
“The Rab-shakeh, the third in rank of the three Assyrian ambassadors, probably took the prominent part in the conference because he could speak Hebrew 2Ki 18:26, whereas the Tartan and the Rabsaris could not do so. The great king - This title of the monarchs of Assyria is found in use as early as 1120 B.C. Like the title, “king of kings,” the distinctive epithet “great” served to mark emphatically the vast difference between the numerous vassal monarchs and the suzerain of whom they held their crowns.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:19
“What an idol did he make of that prince whose creature he was! God is the great King, but Sennacherib was in his eye a little god, and he would possess them with the same veneration for him that he had, and thereby frighten them into a submission to him. But to those who by faith see the King of kings in his power and glory even the king of Assyria looks mean and little.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
these are empty words: Barnes gives empty words its literal sense, a mere word with no facts behind it. He held that Hezekiah counted on counsel from Eliakim and Isaiah and on strength promised by Egypt when he rebelled at verse 7. Ephrem the Syrian read Sennacherib as a type of the devil.
2 Kings 18:20
“Hezekiah no doubt believed that in the “counsel” of Eliakim and Isaiah, and in the “strength” promised him by Egypt, he had resources which justified him in provoking a war. Vain words - literally, as in margin, i. e., a mere word, to which the facts do not correspond.”
that splintered reed of a staff: Barnes sees the Nile reed as a fit picture of Egypt, tall and firm to look at and rotten under weight. Clarke adds that Assyrian wars had already broken Egypt. Henry notes that Assyria had been such a reed to Ahaz, who leaned on Tiglath-pileser and was afflicted by him.
2 Kings 18:21
“This bruised reed - The “tall reed of the Nile bulrush” fitly symbolized the land where it grew. Apparently strong and firm, it was quite unworthy of trust. Let a man lean upon it, and the rotten support instantly gave way, wounding the hand that stayed itself so insecurely. So it was with Egypt throughout the whole period of Jewish history (compare 2Ki 17:4-6). Her actual practice was to pretend friendship, to hold out hopes of support, and then to fail in time of need.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 18:21
“So is the king of Egypt, says he; and truly so had the king of Assyria been to Ahaz, who trusted in him, but he distressed him, and strengthened him not, 2 Chron. xxviii. Those that trust to any arm of flesh will find it no better than a broken reed; but God is the rock of ages.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
whose high places and altars Hezekiah: The Rabshakeh anticipates the answer "We trust in the LORD our God" and turns Hezekiah's own reform against him. A pagan officer states the facts correctly and reads them backward, as if removing shrines had offended the God those shrines dishonored. The verse delivers true information toward a false conclusion.
2 Kings 18:22
“Whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away - This was artfully malicious. Many of the people sacrificed to Jehovah on the high places; Hezekiah had removed them, (2Ki 18:4), because they were incentives to idolatry: Rab-shakeh insinuates that by so doing he had offended Jehovah, deprived the people of their religious rights, and he could neither expect the blessing of God nor the cooperation of the people.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 18:23-24
make a bargain with my master: The offer to "make a bargain" is a wager, "two thousand horses", a boast built to expose how small and poorly mounted Hezekiah's forces are. Verse 24 presses the point, "a single officer among the least of my master’s servants," ranking the army of Judah beneath one Assyrian officer.
2 Kings 18:23
“The phrase translated “give pledges,” or “hostages” (margin) may perhaps be best understood as meaning “make an agreement.” If you will “bind yourself to find the riders” (i. e., trained horsemen), we will “bind ourselves to furnish the horses.” The suggestion implied that in all Judaea there were not 2000 men accustomed to serve as cavalry.”
repel a single officer: Isaiah 31:1 pronounces woe on those who go down to Egypt for help and trust in its chariots and horsemen. Rabshakeh's taunt and Isaiah's oracle name the same misplaced trust. Matthew Henry notes that Sennacherib stood as a little god in his officer's eyes.
was it apart from the LORD that: The Rabshakeh claims his king marches on the commission of Israel's own God: "The LORD Himself said to me". Isaiah 10:5 gives the same claim from the other side of the war, so the boast and Isaiah's oracle agree that Assyria is an instrument.
2 Kings 18:25
“Am I now come up without the Lord - As Rab-shakeh saw that the Jews placed the utmost confidence in God, he wished to persuade them that by Hezekiah’s conduct Jehovah had departed from them, and was become ally to the king of Assyria, and therefore they could not expect any help from that quarter.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Speak not in the Jews' language: and the people held their peace
2 Kings 18:26-27
speak to your servants in Aramaic: Eliakim asks the Rabshakeh to speak "in Aramaic", the diplomatic language the officials share, so the people on the wall will not hear the threat. The request concedes how much the speech has landed. The threat aims at the common soldiers and turns the speech into public psychological warfare.
2 Kings 18:26
“Talk not with us in the Jews’ language - The object of this blasphemous caitiff was to stir up the people to sedition, that the city and the king might be delivered into his hand.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
to eat their own dung: JFB read the threat as the famine a siege would bring on the men on the wall. Henry held that the Rabshakeh broke every rule of decency between envoys when he spoke past his master's hearers to the soldiers. That famine came at the Babylonian siege of 2 Kings 25:3.
2 Kings 18:27
“That they may eat ... - “My master hath sent me,” the Rab-shakeh seems to say, “to these men, whom I see stationed on the wall to defend the place and bear the last extremities of a prolonged siege - these men on whom its worst evils will fall, and who have therefore the greatest interest in avoiding it by a timely surrender.” He expresses the evils by a strong coarse phrase, suited to the rude soldiery, and well calculated to rouse their feelings. The author of Chronicles has softened down the words 2Ch 32:11.”
2 Kings 18:28-32
called out loudly in Hebrew: The Rabshakeh "called out loudly in Hebrew". Verse 32 admits the plan is deportation, "a land like your own", the Assyrian resettlement carried out on Israel in verse 11. "Do not let Hezekiah deceive you" and "Do not listen to Hezekiah" make the appeal a contest for the people's loyalty.
2 Kings 18:28
“Jews language - The tradition of the Jews is, that Rabshaketh was an apostate Jew. If so, his ignorance of the God of Israel was the less excusable, and his enmity the less strange: for apostates are usually the most bitter and spiteful enemies.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Do not let Hezekiah deceive you: Barnes finds two grounds for refusing to surrender: his army and allies, and Isaiah's promise of help from the LORD at Isaiah 31:4 to 9. Rabshakeh attacks the first in verses 23 and 24 and the second here. The verb deliver recurs through verses 29 to 35.
2 Kings 18:29
“There were two grounds, and two only, on which Hezekiah could rest his refusal to surrender, (1) ability to resist by his own natural military strength and that of his allies; and (2) expectation based upon the language of Isaiah Isa 30:31; Isa 31:4-9, of supernatural assistance from Yahweh. The Rab-shakeh argues that both grounds of confidence are equally fallacious.”
persuade you to trust: Rabshakeh turns Hezekiah's own assurance against the people. 2 Chronicles 32:8 records Hezekiah telling his commanders that the LORD was with them to fight their battles. Trust is the word verse 5 used of Hezekiah.
Make peace with me: The Hebrew word behind peace is berakah, a blessing, and Barnes notes it can mean a gift and more rarely peace. Each man under his own vine and fig tree is the picture of Solomon's reign at 1 Kings 4:25. Rabshakeh offers that peace under Assyria.
The olive trees and honey echo Deuteronomy 8:8. Clarke reads the promise as a stroke aimed at stirring the people against Hezekiah. Matthew Henry answers that exiles in such a land would own nothing in it.
2 Kings 18:32
“This Rabshakeh was sensible was their great stay, and therefore he was most large in his endeavours to shake this, as David's enemies, who used all the arts they had to drive him from his confidence in God ( Ps. iii. 1 ), and thus did Christ's enemies, Matt. xxvii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 18:33-35
Has the god of any nation ever delivered: d his land" is the speech's argument from history. Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah are each offered as proof that no god has stopped Assyria. The argument assumes the LORD is one more national god, the point chapters 18 and 19 answer.
2 Kings 18:33
“The boast is natural. The Assyrians had had an uninterrupted career of success, and might well believe that their gods were more powerful than those of the nations with whom they had warred. It is not surprising that they did not understand that their successes hitherto had been allowed by the very God, Yahweh, against whom they were now boasting themselves.”
Where are the gods of Hamath: Barnes cites a Sargon inscription that names Arpad joining Hamath in a revolt he crushed. He takes that shared defeat as the reason the two stand together here and at 19:13. Bede counts the question among the blasphemies against God.
2 Kings 18:34
“Where are the gods of Hamath - Sennacherib is greater than any of the gods of the nations. The Assyrians have already overthrown the gods of Hamath, Arpad, Hena, and Ivah; therefore, Jehovah shall be like one of them, and shall not be able to deliver Jerusalem out of the hand of my master. The impudent blasphemy of this speech is without parallel. Hezekiah treated it as he ought: it was not properly against him, but against the Lord; therefore he refers the matter to Jehovah himself, who punishes this blasphemy in the most signal manner.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How then can the LORD: Matthew Henry records a Jewish tradition that Rabshakeh was an apostate Jew, and he held that it accounts for his ready Hebrew at verse 28. The LORD's reply at 19:22 names the speech blasphemy against the Holy One of Israel. Hezekiah's prayer at 19:19 takes up the same question.
2 Kings 18:36-37
the people remained silent and did: The king's command, "Do not answer him", holds the people silent under a speech built to provoke an answer, and their silence is obedience. The chapter ends without Hezekiah's reply, and 2 Kings 19 opens with him spreading the matter before the LORD in the temple he had stripped.
2 Kings 18:36
“Answer him not - The blasphemy is too barefaced; Jehovah is insulted, not you; let him avenge his own quarrel. See the succeeding chapter, 2 Kings 19 (note).”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
with their clothes torn: Adam Clarke explains the torn clothes as the Hebrew custom on hearing blasphemy, the gravest crime against the majesty of God. The high priest tears his clothes for the same reason at Matthew 26:65. Hezekiah tears his own at 19:1.
2 Kings 18:37
“Then came Eliakim - and Shebna - and Joah - to Hezekiah with their clothes rent - It was the custom of the Hebrews, when they heard any blasphemy, to rend their clothes, because this was the greatest of crimes, as it immediately affected the majesty of God, and it was right that a religious people should have in the utmost abhorrence every insult offered to the object of their religious worship.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Regnal narrative opening into a recorded speech, the longest sustained taunt in the Old Testament, as Kings classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Confidence, the word the whole speech attacks | Rab-shakeh opens on the one word Hezekiah's own position rests on and returns to it from every side. He asks what confidence this is, names Egypt as the ground of it, then names the Lord as the ground of it, then offers his own king as a better one. The speech argues theology throughout rather than only threatening force. | 2 Kings 18:19, 2 Kings 18:20, 2 Kings 18:21, 2 Kings 18:22, 2 Kings 18:24, 2 Kings 18:30 |
| Nehushtan, a piece of brass | The bronze serpent Moses made at Numbers 21:9 is named in Scripture only at the moment Hezekiah destroys it, and the name given it reduces it to its material. The object that once carried healing had become a thing Israel burned incense to. The word is used nowhere else in Scripture. | 2 Kings 18:4 |
| Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land | The speech argues from a list of precedents, Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivah, each offered as proof that no god has ever stopped Assyria. The flaw is the category the list assumes, that the Lord is one more national god comparable to Hamath's. Chapters 18 and 19 exist to answer that assumption, and chapter 19 answers it. | 2 Kings 18:33, 2 Kings 18:34, 2 Kings 18:35 |
| Let not Hezekiah deceive you, hearken not unto Hezekiah | Once Rab-shakeh turns from the officials to the men on the wall, he frames the whole appeal as a contest for their loyalty. The warning against their own king repeats through the public section of the speech. The offer attached to it is a vine and a fig tree and a cistern apiece, and verse 32 admits the deportation it actually means. | 2 Kings 18:29, 2 Kings 18:31, 2 Kings 18:32 |
| That which thou puttest on me will I bear | Hezekiah's one recorded sentence to Assyria in this chapter is a plain surrender sent to Lachish. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read it as the act of a king disappointed of Egyptian aid and unable to resist a conqueror already menacing Jerusalem. The chapter sets the submission in the same frame as the trust it has just praised, and leaves both standing.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871, on 2 Kings 18:14. | 2 Kings 18:14 |
The historical value
12 more paragraphs on the patterns
This is the most heavily attested chapter in the book. The site's dossier carries four finds bearing on Hezekiah, and three of them touch this chapter directly.
Sennacherib's own account of the 701 BC campaign stands on the Taylor Prism and the related prisms. It names Hezekiah the Judahite, lists the tribute, and claims forty-six walled cities of Judah. It says of Hezekiah that he shut him up like a bird in a cage, in the translation of Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 1924. The dossier makes the point that the prism records the siege and never records the city falling.
The tribute figures can be compared directly. Albert Barnes sets out Sennacherib's own terms, a payment of eight hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, against the text's three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold. The gold agrees and the silver differs, and the evidence is left open rather than harmonised here.
Lachish, where Hezekiah sends his submission, is the city Sennacherib's palace reliefs at Nineveh depict under siege. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the bas-reliefs name both the town and the king in their own inscription. The dossier gives the panels as excavated by Layard between 1845 and 1847, showing the siege ramp, the archers, the battering rams and the deportation. It notes the burnt destruction layer and siege ramp excavated at the site itself.
The king of this chapter is attested by his own seal. The dossier carries a clay seal impression from the Ophel excavations, excavated in 2009 and published in 2015, reading that it belongs to Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah.
The debated concept
The date at verse 13 is the chapter's open question, and the commentators state it sharply. Albert Barnes writes that the note of time placing Sennacherib's invasion eight years after the capture of Samaria is at variance with the Assyrian dates for the two events, which fall about twenty-one years apart. John Gill reads the same verse straightforwardly as eight years after the captivity of Israel. The estate states both readings and settles neither, and the book's manuscript entry sends a reader who wants the textual history to the kaige recension.
The second question is how the tribute of verses 14 to 16 stands with the trust of verses 5 and 6. The chapter praises the king and then records him stripping the temple to buy off an invader. Albert Barnes observes on verse 16 that Ahaz had already exhausted the treasuries, so Hezekiah was compelled to undo his own work. The text lets the praise and the submission stand together without resolving the tension for the reader.
The New Testament's use
The bronze serpent of verse 4 is the chapter's link forward. John 3:14 sets the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness beside the lifting up of the Son of man. The relic Hezekiah destroys and the figure John uses are the same object read at two different moments. One is a mercy turned into an idol, and one is a picture the Lord fills with meaning.
The divine connection
The speech at verse 25 claims that Assyria marches by the commission of the God of Israel. Isaiah 10:5 states the same thing from the other side, naming Assyria the rod of the Lord's anger, and then judges the rod for its pride. The claim stands uncorrected on this page, and the correction comes from the prophet's own book. This row states the agreement and the limit of it rather than reading the officer's boast as revelation.
Keep studying
Studies8
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The context
C. H. Spurgeon, The Mysteries of the Brazen Serpent and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
The form and classifications
the compiler of Kings, the accession formula at 2 Kings 18:1 to 8 and the Rab-shakeh speech at 2 Kings 18:17 to 35; the compiler of Kings, read against the prophet, 2 Kings 18:13 to 37, read with Isaiah 36:1 to 22 and the site's own guide to this book, the book's own guide module, src/components/book/guides/2-kings/Book2KingsGuide.tsx.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; Bede, Questions on the Book of Kings #24; Berean Standard Bible; Ephrem the Syrian, ON THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS 18:19; F. W. Farrar, The Second Book of Kings (Expositor's Bible); Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.