2 Kingschapter 19
37 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD: “O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.
Introduction
Jeremiah, by tradition, History, 2 Kings Overview.
This chapter was written for exiles who remembered the one night Jerusalem did not fall. It answers the threat of the chapter before, and it gives much of its space to two kinds of speech, a king's prayer and a prophet's oracle. Isaiah son of Amoz stands at its centre, and the same account is found in his own book. Listen for what the king does with the enemy's letter, and for the poem that answers an empire's boasting. The chapter's last lines reach twenty years past the siege itself.
Context
- Who
- Judeans who lived through the night an empire's army broke
- What
- An account of Hezekiah's prayer, Isaiah's oracles against Sennacherib, and the night the Assyrian army was struck down outside Jerusalem.
- Where
- The temple in Jerusalem, the Assyrian camp outside the city, Libnah and Lachish, and at the last Nineveh.
- When
- The campaign of 701 BC, with Sennacherib's death at Nineveh about twenty years later, in 681 BC.
- Why
- To show that the LORD alone is God over all the kingdoms, and that He defends His city for His own sake and for the sake of David.
Historical context
Hezekiah's response is formal and public. Torn clothes, sackcloth, and a walk up to the house of the LORD, with a delegation sent to Isaiah. When the threatening letter arrives he spreads it open before the LORD, physically laying the document out in the temple. Presenting a written grievance before a god was a recognised act in the ancient world, and the picture has held ever since.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The Assyrian letter uses the standard royal boasting of the period, including cutting down the tallest cedars of Lebanon and drying up the streams of Egypt with the soles of his feet. Assyrian kings really did record these phrases, so the taunt is quoted accurately.
Tirhakah of Cush, who marched out against Sennacherib, was a Nubian prince of Egypt's twenty-fifth dynasty who later became pharaoh. The text calls him by the title he held when the account was written, which is ordinary ancient practice.
The sign given is agricultural and precise. This year and next they will eat what grows of itself, and in the third year they will sow and reap. That describes two lost planting seasons in a country whose fields had been trampled by an invading army, and it assumes the land will still be theirs to sow.
Then a hundred and eighty-five thousand die in the camp in one night. Herodotus preserves an Egyptian tradition that field mice ruined the Assyrians' bowstrings and shield straps before a battle at Pelusium, which many read as a garbled memory of a plague, since rodents carry it. The text itself names the angel of the LORD and gives no natural mechanism, so the plague reading stands as a proposed mediating cause. Sennacherib went home to Nineveh and was murdered twenty years later by his own sons at worship, an event Babylonian sources also record.
Significance
The prayer is the heart of it. Hezekiah asks for deliverance so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that the LORD alone is God, and he puts that reason ahead of his own safety.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
For the first hearers, and especially for those reading in exile a century later, this chapter answered the question their own ruins raised. Their God had emptied a larger army in a single night when he chose to, so the fall of the city in 586 BC had some other cause than his weakness.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
The chapter is read as a campaign with a delay in it, and Rashi spends most of his comment working out the order of events the verses give out of sequence. The prophet's word that the Assyrian will hear a rumour and go home is not read as a prediction that the rumour sends him away. Rashi separates the two: the rumour was the news that the king of Cush had come out to fight him, so he left Jerusalem, went south, defeated Cush and Egypt, took their treasure, and only then came back to Jerusalem, where he fell. What the prophet promised, Rashi reads, is that "after a while he will return to his land in disgrace, and I will cause him to fall there by the sword" (Rashi on II Kings 19:7:1, the Metsudah Tanach series of Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY). The second embassy at the ninth verse is read inside that reconstruction, as a message sent to tell the king of Judah that the army was not going home but only going to fight elsewhere and would return (Rashi on II Kings 19:9:1). The officer's argument from the gods of the other nations is read as an argument from evidence, and Rashi gives the Old French word for it, aprover, the man showing proof for his claim that he had prospered wherever he went (Rashi on II Kings 19:4:1).
Three short glosses place the names and the claims. The children at the point of birth in the king's message are read as Israel (Rashi on II Kings 19:3:2). Eden in the Assyrian's list of conquests is read as the name of a province (Rashi on II Kings 19:12:1). At the thirteenth verse the boast is read as the Assyrian exiling and wrecking those peoples, with the Metsudah edition's note carrying Radak reading the same words of the land of Israel instead (Rashi on II Kings 19:13:1). The king's own concession in his prayer is read as a concession and not as sarcasm: it is true that the kings of Assyria destroyed those nations and burned their gods (Rashi on II Kings 19:17:1). Metzudat David glosses the words the king spreads before the LORD as "The messages that were brought by the messenger" (Metzudat David on II Kings 19:16:1, Sefaria Community Translation, CC0).
The prophet's answer is where the reading turns. Rashi takes the Assyrian's boast of climbing to the height of the mountains as a boast about one mountain, "This refers to the Temple Mount", with the note tying it to the passage at Gittin 56b (Rashi on II Kings 19:23:1). The boast of digging and drinking strange waters he reads as a boast of self-sufficiency, a man who begins and finishes everything himself, the waters called strange because no one had known of them before (Rashi on II Kings 19:24:1). Then he reads the answer the prophet gives as a stripping of credit. The verse about what was determined long ago is turned into a question put to the conqueror: why do you glorify yourself, when this is not yours, and you heard long ago from the prophets that I decreed to bring you upon the nations (Rashi on II Kings 19:25:1). The next verse is read the same way, that the inhabitants were weak because God had weakened them, so "the might is not yours" (Rashi on II Kings 19:26:1). The sitting and going out and coming in are read through the Targum, which renders them as sitting in counsel, going out to war and coming to the land of Israel, all of it open before God and all of it coming from him (Rashi on II Kings 19:27:1).
The corpus records two differences of reading inside this chapter, both of them from Radak and both of them carried in the notes of Rashi's own edition. At the twenty-eighth verse Rashi glosses the Assyrian's tumult as tumult, and the note gives Radak reading the word instead as tranquillity, so that the rage came out of the ease (Rashi on II Kings 19:28:1). At the twenty-ninth, Rashi reads the sign given to the king as the prophecy itself, that the Assyrian will fall here. It is given as a sign for the years ahead because the king feared famine after the land had been stripped and the trees cut down. The note gives Radak reading the sign as the return of the Assyrian to his own land promised earlier in the chapter, the fulfilment of the first part standing as the sign that the rest will follow (Rashi on II Kings 19:29:1). Neither is put above the other here.
Radak and Metzudat David 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: Radak on II Kings 19:1:1, 19:6:1, 19:14:1, 19:20:1, 19:21:1 and 19:22:1, and Metzudat David on II Kings 19:11:1, 19:15:1 and 19:18:1. Four of Radak's stand on the prophet's oracle from the twentieth verse to the twenty-second, which is the answer the chapter turns on, and what he makes of it 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. Eight stand on the first three verses, where the king tears his clothes, covers himself with sackcloth and sends to the prophet: Jerusalem Talmud Moed Katan 3:7:8, Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 7:8:7 and Moed Katan 26a:13 on the first; Tractate Soferim 8:2 and Vayikra Rabbah 6:6 on the second; and Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 2:6:5, Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:18:4 and Ruth Rabbah (Lerner) 5:6:6 on the third.
The king's prayer carries six. On the fifteenth verse, where he prays before the LORD enthroned above the cherubim, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 25:3, Midrash Tehillim 102:4 and Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Rabbah 8:1. On the sixteenth, Midrash Tanchuma, Vayikra 8:1 and Midrash Tehillim 71:2. Seder Olam Rabbah 23:2, the chronological midrash, stands on the ninth.
The oracle against the Assyrian carries the largest group. On the twenty-first and twenty-second verses, where the virgin daughter of Zion shakes her head at him, Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 2:15, Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 12:12 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 14:2:4. On the twenty-third, the boast about the height of the mountains, Bamidbar Rabbah 8:3, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:27 and Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 11:26. On the twenty-fourth, the strange waters, Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 16:6, Midrash Tanchuma, Tazria 8:1 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Tazria 10:3. On the twenty-sixth, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Bereshit 17, Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 34:15 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Re'eh 16:1. On the twenty-seventh, Midrash Tehillim 139:3. On the twenty-eighth, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 15:14:1. On the thirty-first, where a remnant goes out of Jerusalem, two locators that are both about how the text is written and read, Otzar Midrashim, Keri & K'tiv, Midrash Keri V'lo Ketiv 8 and Tractate Soferim 6:8.
The night itself carries the last eleven. Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 23 is anchored across the whole close from the thirty-second verse to the thirty-seventh. On the thirty-fourth, where the LORD says he will defend the city for his own sake and for David's, Berakhot 10b:13, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 1:53 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Ketubot 13:17. On the thirty-fifth, where the angel of the LORD goes out, Aggadat Bereshit 1:1, Aggadat Bereshit 8:2 and Bamidbar Rabbah 11:7. On the thirty-seventh, where the Assyrian is killed by his own sons in the house of his god, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:35, Kohelet Rabbah 9:18:3 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 15:11. 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 19:3:2, 19:4:1, 19:7:1, 19:9:1, 19:12:1, 19:13:1, 19:17:1, 19:23:1, 19:24:1, 19:25:1, 19:26:1, 19:27:1, 19:28:1 and 19:29:1, The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Kings 19:16:1, Sefaria Community Translation, CC0; and on 19:11:1, 19:15:1 and 19:18:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Radak, Radak, the readings the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 19:13:1, 19:28:1 and 19:29:1, and his own refs at 19:1:1, 19:6:1, 19:14:1, 19:20:1, 19:21:1 and 19:22:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-kings/19.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.
Sackcloth in the house of Jehovah; Isaiah's answer
2 Kings 19:1-3
tore his clothes, put on sackcloth: Hezekiah's answer to the Rabshakeh's blasphemy is torn clothes, sackcloth, and the house of the LORD. His message pictures a birth with no strength: "children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to deliver them". The king admits that the nation cannot deliver itself.
2 Kings 19:1
“Hezekiah, like his officers, probably rent his clothes on account of Rab-shakeh’s blasphemies: and he put on sackcloth in self-humiliation and in grief. The only hope left was in Yahweh, for Egypt could not be trusted to effect anything of importance. Rab-shakeh’s boldness had told upon Hezekiah. He was dispirited and dejected. He perhaps began to doubt whether he had done right in yielding to the bolder counsels of Eliakim and Isaiah. He had not lost his faith in God; but his faith was being severely tried. He wisely went and strove by prayer to strengthen it.”
the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz: Isaiah enters the history of Kings here for the first time. Barnes notes that this was the fourth reign of his ministry, which Isaiah 1:1 dates to Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Clarke adds that the whole nation knew the word of the LORD was with him.
2 Kings 19:2
“To Isaiah the prophet - His fame and influence were at this time great in Israel; and it was well known that the word of the Lord was with him. Here both the Church and the state unite in fervent application to, and strong dependence upon, God; and behold how they succeed!”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
a day of distress: Barnes reads rebuke as chastisement from God for Judah's sins and disgrace as the reproach Assyria heaps on Judah. Clarke compares the nation to a woman in labour whose strength is spent, past help without a miracle. Hosea 13:13 uses the same picture of a stalled birth.
2 Kings 19:3
The “trouble” consisted in rebuke” (rather, “chastisement,”) for sins at the hand of God, and “blasphemy” (rather, “reproach,”) at the hands of man. The children ... - i. e., “we are in a fearful extremity - at the last gasp - and lack the strength that might carry us through the danger.”
2 Kings 19:4-7
to defy the living God: Hezekiah's plea leans on one title, "the living God", set against gods of wood and stone. Isaiah's answer is short: "Do not be afraid", for God has heard the blasphemy Himself. The oracle promises a rumor that sends Sennacherib home and a sword that finds him there.
2 Kings 19:4
“The remnant that are left - That is, the Jews; the ten tribes having been already carried away captive by the kings of Assyria.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:4
“We have begun an happy reformation, and are hindered by this insolent Assyrian, from bringing it to perfection. For the remnant - For Judah, which is but a remnant, now the ten tribes are gone: for Jerusalem, which is but a remnant, now the defensed cities of Judah are taken.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the servants of King Hezekiah: They are the delegation of verse 2 in sackcloth. Matthew Henry reads the rank of the messengers as a mark of the king's respect for the prophet. He notes that they came to ask for his prayers.
Hezekiah had ordered the people to stay silent before Rabshakeh at 18:36, and here the LORD answers the words Himself. Matthew Henry's comment is that words are but wind. The same words are the blasphemy the LORD takes up at verse 22.
2 Kings 19:6
“God interested himself in the cause: They have blasphemed me. He encouraged Hezekiah, who was much dismayed: Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard; they are but words (though swelling and fiery words), and words are but wind.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:6
“The blast, the rumor, the fall by the sword, contained a brief prediction that was soon fulfilled in all the three particulars--namely, the alarm that hastened his retreat, the destruction that overtook his army, and the violent death that suddenly ended his career.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
I will put a spirit: Barnes reads the spirit as a spirit of craven fear that the LORD puts in the king in place of his pride. Clarke took the rumour to be a report that Tirhakah had invaded Assyria. JFB trace all three promises to their fulfilment.
2 Kings 19:7
“Will send a blast upon him - Rather, “I will put a spirit in him “ - i. e., “I will take from him his present pride and will put in him a new spirit, a spirit of craven fear.” Men shall tell him of the destruction that has come upon his host 2Ki 19:35, and he shall straightway return, etc.”
A second letter: let not thy God deceive thee
2 Kings 19:8-9
found the king fighting against Libnah: The Rabshakeh returns to find the king has left Lachish and is "fighting against Libnah," the first half of Isaiah's rumor already moving. "Tirhakah king of Cush" is the second half, a Cushite-backed Egyptian force Sennacherib must answer, and Assyrian records name a campaign against Egypt at Eltekeh.
2 Kings 19:8
“Libnah - Lachish - These two places were not very distant from each other; they were in the mountains of Judah, southward of Jerusalem.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Tirhakah king of Cush: Barnes identifies Tirhakah with the Teharka of the hieroglyphs, the last king of Egypt's Ethiopian dynasty, and dates his rule from about 692 BC. Barnes adds that Assyrian records show him still ruling in 667 BC. Matthew Henry finds nothing new in the letter that follows.
2 Kings 19:9
“Tirhakah king of Ethiopia - The Tehrak or Teharka of the hieroglyphics. He was the last king of the 25th or Ethiopian dynasty, which commenced with Shebek or Sabaco, and he reigned upward of 26 years. The Assyrian inscriptions show that he still ruled in Egypt as late as 667 B.C., when Esarhaddon 2Ki 19:37 died, and his son Asshur-bani-pal succeeded him. He probably ascended the Egyptian throne about 692 B.C., having previously ruled over Ethiopia before he became king of Egypt (compare Isa 37:9).”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 19:9
“Sennacherib sent a letter to Hezekiah, a railing letter, a blaspheming letter, to persuade him to surrender Jerusalem, because it would be to no purpose for him to think of standing it out. His letter is to the same purport with Rabshakeh's speech; there is nothing new offered in it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 19:9
“He was a powerful monarch, another Sesostris, and both he and Sabaco have left many monuments of their greatness. The name and figure of Tirhakah receiving war captives, are still seen in the Egyptian temple of Medinet Abou. This was the expected succor which was sneered at by Rab-shakeh as "a bruised reed" (2Ki 18:21).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Kings 19:10-13
The second message repeats the Rabshakeh's argument in the king's own name. The list is the whole of Sennacherib's theology: every nation's god has failed, so this one will fail too. The letter assumes Israel's God is one more national god, and Hezekiah's prayer at verse 15 answers that assumption.
2 Kings 19:10
“Let not thy God in whom thou trustest - This letter is nearly the same with the speech delivered by Rab-shakeh. See 2Ki 18:29.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
devoting them to destruction: Barnes finds this boast of what the kings of Assyria had done in keeping with their own inscriptions, which record Sargon and Sennacherib taking countries. Matthew Henry answers that Tirhakah of Cush was troubling Sennacherib at that very moment. Henry calls the boast mole-hills swelled to mountains.
2 Kings 19:11
“All lands - This boast is in strict accordance with the general tenor of the Assyrian inscriptions. Hyperbole is the general language of the East; but in this instance it was not so extreme as in some others. The Assyrians under Sargon and Sennacherib had enjoyed an uninterrupted series of military successes: they had succeeded in establishing their pre-eminence from the Median desert to the banks of the Nile, and from the shores of Lake Van to those of the Persian Gulf.”
Haran is the city where Terah's family settled at Genesis 11:31, and Barnes notes it had been under Assyria from the twelfth century BC onward. Gozan is the district where Israel's exiles were placed at 2 Kings 17:6. Barnes places Rezeph near Haran.
2 Kings 19:12
“Haran - Harran, the Carrhae of the Greeks and Romans Gen 11:31, was among the earliest conquests of the Assyrians; being subject to them from the 12th century. Its conquest would have naturally followed that of Gozan (Gauzanitis, 2Ki 17:6), which lay between it and Assyria proper. Rezeph - Probably the Rozappa of the Assyrian inscriptions, a city in the neighborhood of Haran. The children of Eden - Or, “the Beni-Eden,” who appear from the Assyrian inscriptions to have inhabited the country on the east bank of the Euphrates, about the modern Balis.”
Where are the kings of Hamath: Barnes reads verse 12 as a list of old Assyrian conquests and this verse as a list of recent ones. Rabshakeh asked where the gods of these cities were at 18:34, and the letter asks for their kings. Matthew Henry takes either sense as the same boast.
2 Kings 19:13
“Compare the marginal reference 2Ki 17:24. 2Ki 19:12 refers to former Assyrian successes, 2Ki 19:13 to comparatively recent ones.”
Hezekiah spreads the letter out before Jehovah
spread it out before the LORD: Hezekiah carries the letter itself into the temple and lays it open before the Lord, a king answering a written threat with a physical hand-off. The scene has stood for centuries as the plain instruction to bring a trouble into God's presence rather than only speak of it there.
2 Kings 19:14
“Spread it before the Lord - The temple was considered to be God’s dwelling-place; and that whatever was there was peculiarly under his eye. Hezekiah spread the letter before the Lord, as he wished him to read the blasphemies spoken against himself.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 19:15-19
enthroned between the cherubim: The prayer moves to a universal claim, "You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth", the claim the letter denied. He turns the letter's record back: the gods were cast "into the fire" as "only wood and stone". The nations' gods failed because "they were not gods".
2 Kings 19:15
“Which dwellest between the cherubims - The reference is to the shechinah, or miraculous glory, which from time to time appeared above the mercy-seat from between the two cherubims, whose wings overshadowed the ark of the covenant (1Ki 6:23-27; compare Exo 25:22; Lev 16:2, etc.). Thou art the God, even thou alone - This is the protest of the pure theist against the intense polytheism of Sennacherib’s letter, which assumes that gods are only gods of particular nations, and that Hezekiah’s God is but one out of an indefinite number, no stronger or more formidable than the rest.”
Incline Your ear, O LORD: The living God repeats Hezekiah's phrase from verse 4, and David used it of Goliath's taunt at 1 Samuel 17:26. Matthew Henry notes that Hezekiah prays over the letter as proof under Sennacherib's own hand. Henry adds that an insult to Hezekiah alone would have passed.
2 Kings 19:16
“Here it is under his own hand; here it is in black and white." Had Hezekiah only been abused, he would have passed it by; but it is God, the living God, that is reproached, the jealous God.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Truly, O LORD: Hezekiah grants the letter's facts before he answers its argument. The kings of Assyria had laid waste the lands listed in verses 12 and 13, and Samaria had fallen at 18:10. Henry held that those conquests prove nothing against the God who made all things, and he cites Psalm 115.
2 Kings 19:17
“But those are deceived who think they can therefore be too hard for him. He is none of the gods whom men's hands have made, but he has himself made all things, Ps. cxv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Barnes notes that Assyria usually carried the images of conquered gods home to its own temples as trophies, and burned them only at times. Deuteronomy 4:28 calls such gods man-made gods of wood and stone. Isaiah 44:15 mocks the same wood, half fuel and half idol.
2 Kings 19:18
“Have cast their gods into the fire - In general the Assyrians carried off the images of the gods from the temples of the conquered nations, and deposited them in their own shrines, as at once trophies of victory and proof of the superiority of the Assyrian deities over those of their enemies. But sometimes the gods are said to have been “destroyed” or “burnt with fire;” which was probably done when the idols were of rude workmanship or coarse material; and when it was inconvenient to encumber an army with spoils so weighty and difficult, of transport.”
please save us from his hand: Barnes holds that the escape of a small king from the Assyrian army would force the nations around to credit the LORD alone. David spoke the same aim before Goliath at 1 Samuel 17:46, and Elijah prayed it on Carmel at 1 Kings 18:37. Isaiah 37:20 records the same prayer.
2 Kings 19:19
“If the mighty army of the great Assyrian king were successfully defied by a petty monarch like Hezekiah, it would force the surrounding nations to confess that the escape was owing to the protecting hand of Yahweh. They would thus be taught, in spite of themselves, that He, and He alone, was the true God.”
Isaiah's taunt-song: I will put my hook in thy nose
I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib: Isaiah's answer confirms the prayer was heard before a word of the oracle is spoken. The long poem of verses 21 to 34 arrives as the LORD's own reply. The formula "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says" answers Sennacherib's letter claim for claim.
Jerusalem is pictured as "The Virgin Daughter of Zion", untouched, mocking the king. "Daughter of Zion" becomes Isaiah's standing poetic name for the city across his later chapters. The mockery runs against Sennacherib's own claim to be irresistible: this city alone "shakes her head behind you" and goes unharmed.
2 Kings 19:22-24
Against the Holy One of Israel!: Isaiah's own signature title for God, "the Holy One of Israel", is used across his book, and it aims Sennacherib's boasting at a named person. Assyrian royal inscriptions record kings boasting of cutting Lebanon's cedar for building, so the oracle answers Sennacherib in language his own scribes used.
2 Kings 19:22
“The Holy One of Israel - This is a favorite phrase with Isaiah, in whose prophecies it is found 27 times, while it occurs five times only in the rest of Scripture Psa 71:22; Psa 78:41; Psa 89:18; Jer 50:29; Jer 51:5. Its occurrence here is a strong proof - one among many - of the genuineness of the present passage, which is not the composition of the writer of Kings, but an actual prophecy delivered at this time by Isaiah.”
you have taunted the Lord: Barnes compares Isaiah 10:7 to 14, where the same pride is ascribed to this king. Clarke reads the tallest cedars as the princes of the conquered lands, and Wesley as trees felled to clear a road for the chariots. Henry hears a claim to the power of a god.
2 Kings 19:23
“Lebanon - An high hill, famous for cedars and fir-trees. Cut down - I will cut down the trees that hinder my march, and plane the way for my numerous army and chariots. Lodgings - Those cities (which he calls lodgings in way of contempt) which are in his utmost borders.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:23
“And hast said - Isaiah clothes in words the thoughts of Sennacherib’s heart - thoughts of the most extreme self-confidence. Compare Isa 10:7-14, where, probably at an earlier date, the same overweening pride is ascribed to this king. With the multitude of my chariots - There are two readings here, which give, however, nearly the same sense. The more difficult and more poetical of the two is to be preferred.”
Barnes reads the boast as obstacles that could stop an army: here the dry land where he dug wells and the streams he dried up. He takes the rare name for Egypt, Mazor, as the name the Assyrians wrote Muzr. Clarke hears foot soldiers enough to drink foreign waters dry.
2 Kings 19:24
“I have dipped and drunk strange waters - I have conquered strange countries, in which I have digged wells for my army; or, I have gained the wealth of strange countries. With the sole of my feet - My infantry have been so numerous that they alone have been sufficient to drink up the rivers of the places I have besieged.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 19:25-26
Long ago I ordained it: The oracle turns Sennacherib's career into evidence against him: his conquests were a plan the LORD made "Long ago". Isaiah states the same doctrine elsewhere of Assyria as a rod in another hand. The nations he crushed are "grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown".
2 Kings 19:25
“Hast thou not heard long ago ... - Rather, “Hast thou not heard, that from long ago I did this, from ancient times I fashioned it? etc.” The former part of the verse refers to the secret divine decrees, whereby the affairs of this world are determined and ordered from the very beginning of things. Sennacherib’s boasting, however, proved that he did not know this, that he did not recognize himself simply as God’s instrument - “the rod of His anger” Isa 10:5 - but regarded his victories as gained by his own “strength and wisdom” Isa 10:13.”
grass on the rooftops: Barnes holds that the weakness of these nations came from the same decree of verse 25 that gave Assyria its strength. He notes that grass on the flat roofs of the East springs up first and fades first. Psalm 129:6 uses the same picture.
2 Kings 19:26
“The weakness of the nations exposed to the Assyrian attacks was as much owing to the divine decrees as was the strength of the Assyrians themselves. The grass on the house tops - Compare the marginal reference. The vegetation on the flat roofs of Oriental houses is the first to spring up and the first to fade away.”
2 Kings 19:27-28
your going out and coming in: God knows Sennacherib's "sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against Me". The one who claims to survey everything is already known. The "hook in your nose" and "bit in your mouth" are an animal's gear, imagery Scripture uses of Leviathan at Job 41.
2 Kings 19:27
“I know - Though thou dost not know me, yet I throughly know thee, and all thy designs and actions, all thy secret contrivances in the place of thy abode, in thy own kingdom and court; and the execution of thy designs abroad, what thou intendest in thy going out, and with what farther thoughts thou comest in, or returnest to thy own land.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
My hook in your nose: Barnes points to Assyrian sculptures that show kings leading noble prisoners by a ring through the lip on a cord. The LORD promises Sennacherib the treatment Assyria gave its captives. 2 Chronicles 33:11 records Assyrian commanders taking Manasseh with a hook in his nose.
2 Kings 19:28
“I will put my hook in thy nose - This seems to be an allusion to the method of guiding a buffalo; he has a sort of ring put into his nose, to which a cord or bridle is attached, by which he can be turned to the right, or to the left, or round about, according to the pleasure of his driver.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 19:29-31
you will eat what grows on its own: The sign covers two years of eating "what grows on its own", then a third year when "you will sow and reap". Most likely the Assyrian withdrawal still leaves the fields untended. The remnant that will "take root below and bear fruit above" answers the rooftop grass of verse 26.
2 Kings 19:29
“The prophet now once more addresses Hezekiah, and gives him a “sign,” or token, whereby he and his may be assured that Sennacherib is indeed bridled, and will not trouble Judaea anymore. It was a sign of the continued freedom of the land from attack during the whole of the remainder of Sennacherib’s reign - a space of 17 years.”
take root below: Barnes explains the word remnant by the ravages of the first invasion, when Sennacherib took the fortified cities of 18:13. He sees the fruit above fulfilled in the reign of Josiah at 2 Kings 23:15 to 20. Clarke reads it as a growing population.
2 Kings 19:30
“The remnant - shall yet again take root - As your corn shall take root in the soil, and bring forth and abundantly multiply itself, so shall the Jewish people; the population shall be greatly increased, and the desolations occasioned by the sword soon be forgotten.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The zeal of the LORD: Matthew Henry links this remnant to Isaiah 10:22, which Paul quotes of the saved remnant of Israel at Romans 9:27. Clarke reports that some readers see here the apostles going out from Jerusalem to the nations. Wesley reads it as the growth of the city's people.
2 Kings 19:31
“Out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant - The Jews shall be so multiplied as not only to fill Jerusalem, but all the adjacent country. And they that escape out of Mount Zion - Some think that this refers to the going forth of the apostles to the Gentile world, and converting the nations by the preaching of the Gospel.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:31
“Great destruction had been made both in city and country, bit in both there was a remnant that escaped, which typified the saved remnant of Israelites indeed (as appears by comparing Isa. x. 22, 23 , which speaks of this very event, with Rom. ix. 27, 28 ), and they shall go forth into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 19:32-33
The oracle promises a siege that never happens: he will not "shoot an arrow into it". Sennacherib's Taylor Prism boasts of shutting Hezekiah up and never claims the city fell. That silence fits the oracle as evidence short of proof, since an inscription keeps silent about a failure.
2 Kings 19:32
“He shall not, etc. - Here follow the fullest proofs that Jerusalem shall not be taken by the Assyrians. 1. He shall not come into this city; 2. He shall not be able to get so near as to shoot an arrow into it; 3. He shall not be able to bring an army before it, 4. Nor shall he be able to raise any redoubt or mound against it; 5. No; not even an Assyrian shield shall be seen in the country; not even a foraging party shall come near the city.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
go back the way: Barnes traces the way he came through the Shephelah, the low hill country west of Judah, so the king goes back far from the city. Clarke notes that he goes back alone, his camp struck down at verse 35. Clarke held him kept for a more shameful death.
2 Kings 19:33
“By the way that he came - i. e., through the low country of the Shephelah, thus avoiding not only Jerusalem, but even Judaea.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:33
“So determined was this invader to conquer Judah and the neighboring countries (Isa 10:7), that nothing but a divine interposition could have saved Jerusalem.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
for My own sake and for the sake: The deliverance is granted "for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David," the covenant clause running from 1 Kings 11:12-13. Hezekiah, whom 18:5 ranks above every king, is still saved on David's account, the argument the book keeps making about grace running under merit.
2 Kings 19:34
“33 By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the L ORD . 34 For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake. We have here the gracious copious answer which God gave to Hezekiah's prayer.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:34
“For mine own sake - God’s honor was concerned to defend His own city against one who denied His power in direct terms, as did Sennacherib 2Ki 18:35; 2Ki 19:10-12. His faithfulness was also concerned to keep the promise made to David Psa 132:12-18.”
A hundred fourscore and five thousand, and a sword in Nisroch's temple
the angel of the LORD went out: Isaiah 37:36 preserves this verse word for word, and the text offers no natural explanation. The figure of "the angel of the LORD" as destroyer recalls the one who struck Egypt's firstborn and stands over Jerusalem in 1 Chronicles 21. Judgment and deliverance are carried by one office.
2 Kings 19:35
“The camp of the Assyrians - Which was now moved to Pelusium, if we may trust Herodotus; or which, at any rate, was at some considerable distance from Jerusalem. When they arose early in the morning, behold ... - These words form the only trustworthy data that we possess for determining to any extent the manner of the destruction now worked. They imply that there was no disturbance during the night, no alarm, no knowledge on the part of the living that their comrades were dying all around them by thousands.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:35
“Since the evil spirits have no power, they play as on a stage, changing their shapes and frightening children by the apparition of crowds and by their changed forms. This is why they are to be despised the more for their powerlessness. The true angel sent by the Lord against the Assyrians had no need of crowds or apparitions from without, or loud noises or clappings, but he used his power quietly and destroyed 185,000 at one time. Powerless demons such as these, however, try to frighten, if only by empty phantoms.”
Athanasius of Alexandria · written before 373 · Life of St. Anthony 28.9-10patristic
He returned to Nineveh and stayed there: The blast promised at verse 7 and the return promised at verse 33 both land: Sennacherib withdraws to his own capital and stays there. Nineveh remained his seat for the rest of his reign, which Assyrian records confirm on their own account, the same city Jonah had preached to.
2 Kings 19:36
“So Sennacherib king of Assyria . . . went and returned--the same way as he came (2Ki 19:33). The route is described (Isa 10:28-32). The early chariot track near Beyrout is on the rocky edge of Lebanon, which is skirted by the ancient Lycus (Nahr-el Kelb).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:36
“Dwelt at Nineveh - The meaning is not that Sennacherib made no more expeditions at all, which would he untrue, for his annals show us that he warred in Armenia, Babylonia, Susiana, and Cilicia, during his later years; but that he confined himself to his own part of Asia, and did not invade Palestine or threaten Jerusalem anymore. Nineveh, marked by some ruins opposite Mosul, appears here unmistakably as the Assyrian capital, which it became toward the close of the 9th century B.C. It has previously been mentioned only in Genesis (marginal reference).”
his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him: The sword promised at verse 7 arrives, while Sennacherib is "worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch", and his own sons strike him down. The king who mocked every god that failed its worshippers dies unprotected in his own god's house, and "his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place".
2 Kings 19:37
“The death of Sennacherib, which took place many years afterward (680 B.C.), is related here, as, from the divine point of view, the sequel to his Syrian expeditions. Nisroch his god - Nisroch has not been as yet identified with any known Assyrian deity. The word may not be the name of a god at all but the name of the temple, as Josephus understood it. Assyrian temples were almost all distinguished by special names.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 19:37
“Justly is his blood mingled with his sacrifices, since he will not be convinced by such a plain and dear-bought demonstration of his folly in worshipping idols. His sons that murdered him were suffered to escape, and no pursuit was made after them, his subjects perhaps being weary of the government of so proud a man and thinking themselves well rid of him.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
How this psalm is built
The form: Narrative carrying a prophetic oracle in verse, the answer to the speech of the previous chapter, as Kings classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The virgin daughter of Zion shaking her head | The oracle opens by picturing Jerusalem as an untouched daughter who mocks the king boasting of every fenced city he took. The figure answers Sennacherib's claim to be irresistible with the one city that has gone unharmed. Daughter of Zion becomes Isaiah's standing poetic name for the city across his later chapters. | 2 Kings 19:21 |
| Grass on the housetops against a remnant taking root | The oracle sets two plants against each other. The nations Assyria flattened are grass on the housetops, green for a morning and scorched before it can grow, which answers the king's claim to unstoppable strength with a plant that never had a root. The sign given to Hezekiah answers it with a remnant taking root downward and bearing fruit upward. | 2 Kings 19:26, 2 Kings 19:30 |
| The hook in the nose and the bridle in the lips | The furniture of a led animal is turned on the empire that led others. Scripture uses the same imagery of Leviathan at Job 41:1 to 2 and of Egypt's king at Ezekiel 29:4. The figure answers the boast of verse 23 by sending the beast back the way it came, which verse 33 then states plainly. | 2 Kings 19:28 |
| Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim | The written message repeats the argument of the speech at the wall by naming conquered cities one after another. The list is the whole of Sennacherib's theology, that every nation's god failed against Assyria, so this one will fail too. The letter allows the Lord no place outside the list, and verse 15 is where the prayer answers that assumption. | 2 Kings 19:12, 2 Kings 19:13 |
| The rumour and the sword promised, then delivered | Isaiah's first short oracle at verse 7 promises two things, a report that sends Sennacherib home and a sword that finds him in his own land. The first lands at verses 8 and 9 before the long oracle is even given. The second lands at verse 37, some twenty years later, and the chapter closes on it. | 2 Kings 19:7, 2 Kings 19:36, 2 Kings 19:37 |
The historical value
15 more paragraphs on the patterns
Tirhakah at verse 9 places the crisis in a datable theatre. A Cushite-backed Egyptian force draws Sennacherib's attention, and Assyrian records name a campaign against Egyptian forces at Eltekeh in this same period.
The oracle answers Sennacherib in language his own scribes used. Verse 23 quotes his boast of felling the cedars of Lebanon, and Assyrian royal inscriptions do record kings boasting of cutting Lebanon's cedar for building projects.
The promise of verses 32 and 33 is that the standard Assyrian siege will never be laid, with no arrow shot, no shield raised and no bank cast against the wall. The Lachish reliefs in the site's dossier show exactly those methods used on another city of Judah in the same campaign, which is what makes the promise specific.
Sennacherib's own Taylor Prism boasts of shutting Hezekiah up like a bird in a cage and never claims the city fell. The dossier states the point carefully, that an inscription is naturally silent about a failure, so the silence fits the oracle as evidence rather than as proof.
Verse 36 is confirmed on the Assyrian side. Nineveh remained Sennacherib's seat for the rest of his reign, which Assyrian records carry on their own account.
Verse 37 has independent support with a limit. Babylonian and Assyrian records name Esarhaddon's accession after a succession crisis and broadly support an assassination, and the court details differ between sources. This row states the support and the limit together.
The debated concept
The mode of the deliverance at verse 35 is the question the estate carries in the guide's own contested table, and it gives two views. The first reads it as a direct supernatural act, since the text names the angel of the Lord, a technical divine-agency phrase used also at 2 Samuel 24:16, on the model of the Exodus plagues. The second reads it as a providentially mediated mechanism, with plague proposed as the means, noting the independent tradition in Herodotus, Histories 2.141, of a rodent infestation near the same campaign.
The guide's own flag settles how the estate presents it. The text specifies angelic agency and offers no natural mechanism. The plague theory is carried as a mediating-cause hypothesis some have proposed rather than as a competing account.
Albert Barnes adds the geographical question, placing the Assyrian camp at Pelusium on the authority of Herodotus, or at any rate at some considerable distance from Jerusalem. Matthew Henry states the traditional reading plainly, that the army fell by the hand of an angel rather than by any man at all.
The New Testament's use
Verse 31 closes on the zeal of the Lord of hosts, the same phrase Isaiah uses at Isaiah 9:7 for the child who sits on David's throne and orders his kingdom. The clause that guarantees this deliverance and the clause that guarantees the messianic reign are the same clause.
The remnant of verses 4, 30 and 31 is the word Paul takes up at Romans 9:27, quoting Isaiah on the remnant that will be saved.
The divine connection
Verse 34 names the engine of the whole book. The city is defended for the Lord's own sake and for David his servant's sake. Hezekiah is the king 18:5 ranks above every other in Judah, and he is still delivered on David's account rather than his own. The same clause runs from 1 Kings 11:12 to 13 through 2 Kings 8:19 to this verse, and it reaches its stated height here.
Keep studying
People and groups4
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
Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
The form and classifications
the compiler of Kings, the narrative frame at 2 Kings 19:1 to 20 and 19:35 to 37, with the oracle at 2 Kings 19:21 to 34; the compiler of Kings, read against the prophet, 2 Kings 19:35, read with Isaiah 37:36 and the site's own guide to this book, the book's own guide module, src/components/book/guides/2-kings/Book2KingsGuide.tsx, the themes table on the for David's sake thread.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; F. W. Farrar, The Second Book of Kings (Expositor's Bible); Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.