Chapter Nineteen

1–4. Hezekiah in his distress turns himself to prayer and sends a mournful embassy to the prophet Isaiah with a request for him to pray for Jerusalem and the people of Judah. 5–7. Encouragement from the prophet. 8–13. A new threatening embassy of the Assyrian king. 14–19. A new prayer of Hezekiah. 20–34. The answer of the prophet Isaiah to this prayer. 35–37. The defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sennacherib.

2 Kings 19:1. When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. 2 Kings 19:2. And he sent Eliakim, the one over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and the elder priests, clothed in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz. 2 Kings 19:3. And they said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace; for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth. 2 Kings 19:4. “It may be that the Lord your God heard all the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom his master, the king of Assyria, sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. Perceiving in the invasion of the Assyrians and the siege of Jerusalem that Hezekiah, like his officials (2 Kgs 18:37), put on the garment of mourning and repentance (verse 1, cf. 1 Kgs 20:32; 2 Kgs 6:30) and goes to the temple with a prayer of repentance and entreaty (the rabbis derived from this passage the rule that when blasphemies are heard, both the one who hears them and the one to whom they are reported should rend their garments). At the same time Hezekiah in this critical moment remembers the prophet Isaiah, who from the time of the memorable Syro-Israelite invasion of Jerusalem (2 Kgs 7:3 and following) was the sole counselor of the king and people, and they therefore now turned their eyes to him. In the composition of the embassy (cf. Jer 21:1) to the prophet entered also the “elders of the priests” (apparently, the priesthood at this time was combined into a complex organization): here the distinction between priestly and prophetic ministry in Israel appears: priests were professional servants of worship, predestined by their very origin to serve religion and worship, while prophets were extraordinary chosen ones of God, divinely inspired organs of Him, to whom naturally the gaze of the people turned in critical moments. In Hezekiah’s words “children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth” (verse 3) is contained “in the highest degree an imaginative representation of the hopeless, agonizing state in which the Judeans must have found themselves awaiting the approaching danger. Such a position was expressed in no way more vividly than by comparison with the state of a woman in labor, in the last moments before the child comes into the world, when the mother grows weak in the pangs of childbirth and despairs of relief” (Prof. Gulyaev, p. 357). This comparison has the form of a common proverb (cf. Isa 13:8; Hos 13:13; see in Prof. Brodovich, cited work, p. 452–453). Hezekiah calls the Lord the God of the prophet (verse 4) in the sense of God’s special closeness to the prophet, as to His chosen one, and upon this closeness is based the belief in the effectiveness of his intercession before God (cf. Gen 18:17 and further, Gen 20:7; Exod 32:31 and further). “The remnant that remains,” i.e., the inhabitants of Jerusalem and other cities, not yet conquered by the Assyrians.

2 Kings 19:6. And Isaiah said to them, “Thus shall you say to your lord: Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. 2 Kings 19:7. “Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. The reassuring answer of the prophet Isaiah foretells a happy outcome for Judah and a sad one for Assyria and its king of Sennacherib’s invasion, which soon was fulfilled in complete accuracy (verses 35–37). The expression “Behold, I will put a spirit in him, and he shall hear a report” (verse 7) is understood in different ways. Some understand “spirit” (Hebrew ruach) figuratively: either in the sense of a guardian angel of the Judeans (verse 35) or, on the contrary, in the sense of a spirit of deception (cf. 1 Kgs 22:20-23), which inspired Sennacherib with false news, which forced him to return to Assyria. Others understand it in the sense of an intention inspired in Sennacherib, or more particularly, as a spirit of fear: blessed Theodoret (question 52) writes: “what is said: ‘I am giving him a spirit,’ I think means fear (πνεῦμα τὴν δειλίαν οἴμαι δηλοῦν). For the divine apostle also said: ‘God did not give us a spirit of fear’.” Finally, others, taking the Hebrew ruach in its primary meaning of wind, see here an indication of a plague-bearing wind, like a samum, which destroyed a large part of the Assyrian army (verse 35), see in Prof. Gulyaev, p. 353. Of these opinions, the most acceptable is the opinion of blessed Theodoret, but it should be supplemented, in accordance with the context of verse 9 (cf. verse 7), that fear was inspired in Sennacherib precisely by the news of the campaign of Tirhakah the Ethiopian against him (similarly to the lifting of the siege of Samaria and the flight of the Syrians, 2 Kgs 7:6).

2 Kings 19:8. And the Rab-shakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah; for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. 2 Kings 19:9. And when the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, “Behold, he has set out to fight against you,” he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying, 2 Kings 19:10. “Thus shall you say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by saying, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ 2 Kings 19:11. “Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 2 Kings 19:12. “Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations which my fathers destroyed—Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 2 Kings 19:13. “Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah? Not receiving the desired answer from Hezekiah, the Rab-shakeh, probably with his army (cf. 2 Kgs 18:17), leaves the walls of Jerusalem and with news of the results of the negotiations heads toward the fortress city of Libnah (Beit-Jibrin now. Onomast. 634, see the commentaries on 2 Kgs 8:22), also in the tribe of Judah, but to the southwest of Jerusalem and north of the conquered and already abandoned Lachish, midway between these cities. Apparently, Sennacherib in his direction toward Egypt made a turn back, leaving in his rear a strong fortress—Lachish, near which he received news of the campaign of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, Hebrew Kush (verse 9). The name Kush or Hush (Hus) sometimes meant also a region to the north of the Persian Gulf (cf. Gen 2:13 and others; 1 Chr 1:8 and others), the ancient name of which is preserved even today in the name of the Persian region Khuzistan. But usually this name, well known in Egyptian monuments (Kas, Kis, Kes) and Assyrian (Kassu), means the country, people, and then the state to the south of Egypt along the Nile, in the territory of present-day Nubia, the country called in the Bible usually in connection with Egypt (Isa 20:3-5; Jer 46:9 and others; Onomasticon, 317, 344; 807): namely this latter Ethiopia, without doubt, is meant here (verse 9). Tirhakah (in Manetho: Ταρακύς, in Strabo: Τε όρκων ὁ Αιθίψ; on Egyptian monuments: Tahark or Taharka, Assyrian: Tarku, LXX: θαρακά, Vulgate: Tharaca, Slavonic: “Pharaka”). Egyptian monuments know Tirhakah, the third and last king of the Ethiopian dynasty of Egypt, more as a builder (the renewal and expansion of the famous Karnak temple in Thebes belongs to him) than as a conqueror. More so from this latter side does Tirhakah appear in the Assyrian inscriptions of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal; in particular concerning Sennacherib, according to these, as with the Bible, it is said that in his third campaign against Phoenicia and Palestine he was attacked by the king of Meroe (Ethiopia) and defeated him (the latter the Bible does not mention) (see Brogsch, Gesch. Aegyptens 1877, s. 715 ff., cf. Ebers in Riehm “Handwörterbuch des Biblischen Altertums”, II, 1698–1699). The campaign of Tirhakah was probably a retaliatory movement against Sennacherib’s raid (cf. Prof. Gulyaev, p. 359). His letter (verse 96 and following) Sennacherib now directs directly to Hezekiah, hoping, of course, to achieve better results, but uses the same argumentation (verse 10; cf. 2 Kgs 18:30) as the Rab-shakeh, only names an even larger number of conquered by him countries and cities (verses 12–13), of course, in order to produce a stronger impression. Concerning Gozan see the commentaries on 2 Kgs 17:6. Haran, LXX: Ξαρράv, Slavonic-Russian: “Harran” (Gen 11:31), in the classics Κάῤῥαι, Carrae, in northwestern Mesopotamia to the southeast of Edessa (Onomasticon, 951; cf. “Commentary on the Bible” vol. I, p. 49). Rezeph, LXX: ᾿Ραφίς, Vulgate: Reseph, Slavonic “Phares”, is identified with Ρησὰφα or Ρεσκίφα of Ptolemy, between Palmyra and the Euphrates (Onomast. 773). “The sons of Eden” (ὑιοὺς ᾿Εδέμ, Vulgate: filios Eden, Slavonic: “sons of Edomli”), Hebrew: bene-Eden, probably a region known in the cuneiform inscriptions as Bit-Adini to the north of Rezeph, on both banks of the middle course of the Euphrates. Telassar, LXX: θαεσθέν, Hebrew and Vulgate: Thelassar—perhaps one of the prominent points of the region just named (Onomasticon, 494).

2 Kings 19:14. And Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord, 2 Kings 19:15. and prayed before the Lord and said, “O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 2 Kings 19:16. “Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. 2 Kings 19:17. “It is true, O Lord, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, 2 Kings 19:18. “and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; therefore they were destroyed. 2 Kings 19:19. “So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone. Symbolically presenting before Jehovah (in the form of the unfolded letter) the full weight of the mockeries and threats of Sennacherib, Hezekiah pronounces a prayer which can serve as a model of Old Testament theocratic confession of faith. Concerning the expression “enthroned above the cherubim” (verse 15, cf. 1 Sam 4:4; Ps 98:1) cf. “Commentary on the Bible”, vol. I, pp. 356–357.

2 Kings 19:20. And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. 2 Kings 19:21. “This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him: She despises you, she scoffs at you—the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you—the daughter of Jerusalem. 2 Kings 19:22. “Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel! 2 Kings 19:23. “Through your messengers you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, ‘With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far reaches of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I reached its remotest height, its densest forest; 2 Kings 19:24. “I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt. 2 Kings 19:25. “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, 2 Kings 19:26. “while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded; they have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the rooftops, blighted before it is grown. 2 Kings 19:27. “But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. 2 Kings 19:28. “Because you have raged against me and your arrogance has come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came. 2 Kings 19:29. “And this shall be the sign for you: this year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 2 Kings 19:30. “And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. 2 Kings 19:31. “For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. 2 Kings 19:32. “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 2 Kings 19:33. “By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 2 Kings 19:34. “For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. The whole prophetic answer of Isaiah falls into three parts: a) the rebuke of Sennacherib’s pride and boastfulness, verses 21–28; b) the turn to Hezekiah, verses 29–31; and c) an indication of the outcome or result of the Assyrian invasion, verses 31–34. Sennacherib’s arrogance and boastfulness are opposed (verse 21) by the calm confidence of the “virgin daughter of Zion” (i.e., Jerusalem, cf. Isa 23:12; Jer 1:15 and others), scornfully and mockingly shaking her head (cf. Ps 21:8; Isa 16:4), and this scorn is fully deserved, because Sennacherib reviled the “Holy One of Israel” (verse 22)—an epithet of Jehovah, very frequently used by the prophet Isaiah (Isa 1:4 and many others), here especially appropriate: the holiness of Jehovah is precisely that His property by which the greatness of God cannot be despised with impunity (cf. Isa 5:16). To clarify the figurative speech of Sennacherib, verses 23–24, one may note that “in the poetic and animated speech of the Hebrews, the expressions Lebanon, cedar, and the ascent of Lebanon, the highest mountain in that region, are very often used as a symbol of the most powerful pride, which deems all things possible to itself”; that “in hot countries, water and a well constitute the most precious possession (cf. Prov 5:15; Num 20:17 and following); to dig a well on another’s land or to drink another’s water meant to seize complete possession of that other’s property” (Prof. Gulyaev, p. 361); if verse 23 relates to Palestinian territory, which the campaign of Sennacherib first touched, then verse 24 relates to Egypt, also being the goal of his conquest campaign. In verses 25–28 the omniscience of God’s providence is opposed to Sennacherib’s self-reliance, especially concerning Israel (verses 25–26), and then, after reminding that God knows all the details of Sennacherib’s life and behavior (verse 27, cf. Ps 120:8; Deut 28:6), the complete arranging of his fate according to the almighty will of God is announced (in verse 28 is the image of tamed animals, cf. Ps 31:9; Isa 30:28). In verses 29–31 Hezekiah is given a reassuring sign (cf. Exod 3:12) that the Assyrian invasion will end for Judah not only without harm, but will serve for some renewal of the Judean people—the race, for the sake of the delivered remnant, the better part of God’s people; in verse 29, perhaps there is an indication, though very indefinite, to the sabbath and jubilee years (Lev 25:1, cf. in Prof. Gulyaev, p. 362–363). In verses 32–34 complete safety for Jerusalem, guarded by God, is announced against Sennacherib, who will vainly return by the same road. At this time, one should suppose, there took place the battle of Sennacherib with Tirhakah near Altaku, of which the cuneiform inscriptions speak; Altaku, according to Schrader (Keilnischriften und das Alte Testament, ss. 171, 289), is identical with the biblical Eltekeh in the portion of Dan (Josh 19:44), identified, by supposition, with the present Beit-Lukia (Onomast. 416–217). In the battle Tirhakah was defeated (cf. in Bishop Platon, cited work, pp. 242–243, 254). This victory, of course, further emboldened Sennacherib, filling him with confidence in the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem, but heavenly punishment was already near.

2 Kings 19:35. And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 2 Kings 19:36. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived in Nineveh. 2 Kings 19:37. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him down with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place. “The Lord, having heard the prayer, on that very night, in the blink of an eye, struck with death 185,000 Assyrians” (blessed Theodoret, question 52). What was the plague that caused the death of such a mass of the army that forced Sennacherib to hurriedly depart to Assyria? Herodotus (History. II, 141) tells that upon the army of the Assyrians during their Egyptian campaign fell an innumerable number of mice, which gnawed through the bowstrings of the bows and the straps of the shields and thereby deprived the Assyrian army of the ability to continue the war. Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 10:1, 5) considers the plague a pestilence; this opinion predominates even now in historical, explanatory, and medical science (see in Bishop Platon, p. 254, note 4; in I. Popov, “Biblical Information on Various Diseases”, p. 114). But from the biblical perspective, the supernatural character of the plague is beyond doubt; it was inflicted by an angel of death (Hebrew hamashchit), who once struck the firstborn of Egypt (Exod 12:12), and also inflicted massive punishment on Israel after David’s census of the people (2 Sam 24:15 and following). Sennacherib returned to Nineveh (the capital of Assyria on the eastern bank of the Tigris, now the villages of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus, Onomast. 749), where, according to the account in the book of Tobit, he poured out his malice on the captive Israelites ((Tob 1:15), cf. in Prof. I. M. Drozdov, cited work, p. 111). According to Assyrian monuments, Sennacherib after the Palestinian campaign lived another 20 years. He died a violent death: while worshiping the god Nisroch (see about Nisroch in Palmov, cited work, pp. 472–476) in the temple of this god, he was killed by his own sons (their names apparently are identical with the names of Assyrian gods; concerning Adrammelech cf. 2 Kgs 17:31), who then fled from the people’s wrath to the land of Ararat (Isa 37:38) according to the LXX—to Armenia (Onomast. 111, 129, cf. “Commentary on the Bible”, vol. I, pp. 37–38). * * * In the book of Bishop Platon (cited work, p. 236–237) the reverse order of events is allowed: the embassy of Merodach-Baladan is placed in direct causal and chronological connection with the West-Asian coalition formed against Sennacherib. But coalitions of this kind were formed against Assyria several times. The order of the biblical narrative in any case speaks for the sequence we have indicated.