Isaiah 37
The blasphemy has been spoken. In the chapter before, the field-commander of Assyria stood at the wall of Jerusalem and shouted that no god of any nation had ever saved a city from his master's hand - so why should the LORD save this one? Isaiah 37 is the answer. It opens with king Hezekiah hearing the taunt and tearing his clothes; but notice where he takes the grief. He went into the house of the LORD (v. 1), and he sent his officials, and the elders of the priests, to Isaiah the prophet with a single request: lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left (v. 4). The man under siege does not turn first to his generals. He turns to the temple and to the word of God.3
The reply is swift: Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard… Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land (vv. 6-7). But the pressure does not lift at once. A second message comes, harder than the first - a letter, daring Hezekiah's God to deliver where the gods of Gozan and Haran and Sepharvaim could not. And here the chapter gives the church one of its most enduring pictures of prayer. Hezekiah received the letter… and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD (v. 14). He lays the threat open in the presence of the God who made heaven and earth, and asks for one thing - that the whole watching world might learn who alone is God: save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only (v. 20).
God answers through Isaiah with a long oracle - first turning Assyria's own boast back on its head, then promising that a remnant will take root and bear fruit, and finally stating, as plain as a verdict, that the great king will not so much as shoot an arrow into the city: I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake (v. 35). Then the deliverance arrives in a single, staggering verse: Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand (v. 36). The siege is over before sunrise. Sennacherib withdraws to Nineveh and is cut down by his own sons. The chapter that began with a taunt against the living God ends with the living God having the last word - and not a single arrow from Judah was loosed.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 37:1-7He Went Into the House of the LORD
1And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD. 2And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz. 3And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. 4It may be the LORD thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left.
The chapter opens on a king at the end of his options. Hezekiah rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth (v. 1) - the ancient signs of grief and helplessness - and his message to Isaiah names the day for what it is: a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy (v. 3). Three words, each heavier than the last. There is trouble, the plain distress of a city under siege; there is rebuke, the public shaming of a people who look about to lose; and there is blasphemy, the thing that cuts deepest, for the enemy has not merely threatened Judah but mocked Judah's God. Then comes one of the most vivid images in the prophets: the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. It is the picture of a labor that has reached the final, decisive moment - and the mother has no strength left to finish. Everything hangs at the point of crisis with no power to carry it through. That is exactly where Hezekiah stands: at the hinge of life and death, utterly spent, unable to save himself. And it is from that precise place of weakness, not from any reserve of strength, that he turns to God.3
Notice the first thing the king reaches for: not a strategy but a sanctuary. When king Hezekiah heard it… he went into the house of the LORD (v. 1). The siege does not drive him to his armory or his allies; it drives him to the temple. And the request he sends to Isaiah is strikingly modest - not tell me what to do, but lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left (v. 4). He asks for intercession. Underneath the asking is a quiet confidence about what the real offense has been. Twice the king frames the crisis around God's honor: the enemy has come to reproach the living God, and the words spoken are words which the LORD thy God hath heard. Hezekiah has grasped something the field-commander of Assyria never did - that to taunt Judah is one thing, but to taunt the living God is to pick a quarrel with the Maker of heaven and earth. The phrase is chosen with care. The gods of the conquered nations were wood and stone, lifeless things that could be carried off and burned. Judah's God is living - and a living God hears, and answers, the words flung against Him.
5So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah. 6And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. 7Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
The answer that comes back through Isaiah is short, sovereign, and oddly specific. First the command: Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard (v. 6). The enemy's whole campaign at the wall had been a campaign of words - the field-commander's aim was to break Jerusalem's nerve before a single arrow was fired. God meets the attack at exactly that point: do not let the words frighten you, for they are blasphemy against Me, and I have heard them. Then comes the plan, laid out before any of it has happened: I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land (v. 7). Three moves are named in advance - a blast from God, a rumour that turns the king homeward, and finally a death by the sword on Assyrian soil. Every one of them comes to pass by the end of the chapter, in order. The point is not merely that God will rescue Judah, but that He has already written the script. The mightiest army on earth is, from heaven's side, a piece moved exactly where the LORD intends.
Isaiah 37:8-20He Spread It Before the LORD
8So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish. 9And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered? 12Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Telassar? 13Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?
The reprieve God promised begins to stir even before Hezekiah prays. Word reaches Sennacherib that Tirhakah king of Ethiopia is marching out to fight him (v. 9) - the first tremor of the rumour God foretold in verse 7. But the Assyrian king, pressed now on two fronts, does not soften; he hardens. Unable to spare the troops for a long siege, he tries to finish Jerusalem with words instead, sending a letter calculated to crush its faith. And the letter's whole strategy is to attack the one thing holding the city together: its trust in God. Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee (v. 10). It is a shrewd and wicked stroke - not your walls are weak or your army is small, but your God will let you down. Then comes the sneer that the whole chapter is built to answer: shalt thou be delivered? (v. 11). To back it up he reels off a grim roll-call of fallen cities - Gozan, Haran, Sepharvaim, Hamath, Arphad - each one a place whose god could not save it. His logic is airtight on its own terms: no god has ever stopped Assyria, so this one will not either. The single flaw in it is the flaw he cannot see - that the gods he has bested were no gods, and the God he now defies is the living One.
14And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. 15And Hezekiah prayed unto the LORD, saying, 16O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made heaven and earth. 17Incline thine ear, O LORD, and hear; open thine eyes, O LORD, and see: and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God.
Here is the picture the whole chapter has been moving toward, and it is unforgettable: Hezekiah received the letter… and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD (v. 14). He does not crumple it in fear or fire back a defiant reply. He carries it up to the temple and lays it open - flat, unrolled, every blasphemous line exposed - in the presence of God, as if to say: You read it. These words were spoken against You. It is one of the most quietly powerful acts in all of Scripture, and it teaches more about prayer than a hundred lectures could. Then he prays, and the prayer opens not with the crisis but with God: O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made heaven and earth (v. 16). Every phrase is a deliberate answer to the letter. Sennacherib boasted of all lands; Hezekiah addresses the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. Sennacherib ranked Judah's God among the helpless idols; Hezekiah names Him the Maker of heaven and earth. Before he asks for a single thing, Hezekiah gets the proportions right - setting the vast Maker over against the kingdom of Assyria, which suddenly looks very small indeed.
The prayer's requests are stunningly direct: Incline thine ear, O LORD, and hear; open thine eyes, O LORD, and see: and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God (v. 17). Hezekiah asks God to hear and to see - not because he imagines God is deaf or blind, but because the language of a desperate man reaching for the attention of his only hope is the language of a child tugging a parent's sleeve: Listen. Look. Did you hear what he said? And what he most wants God to hear is not Judah's peril but Sennacherib's blasphemy - the words that reproach the living God. The prayer's center of gravity is not save us because we are frightened but act because Your name has been mocked. This is the deepest note in Hezekiah's intercession and the secret of its power. He has hold of the truth that the gods of Gozan and Hamath were the work of men's hands, wood and stone (v. 19) - carryable, burnable, no gods at all - while the One he prays to is the living God, who hears the very words flung against Him and is not indifferent to His own honor.
18Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries, 19And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. 20Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only.
Hezekiah is honest about the facts on the ground. He does not pretend Assyria is weak: Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries, and have cast their gods into the fire (vv. 18-19). The conquests are real; the burned shrines are real. But he draws the right conclusion from them - the very opposite of the one Sennacherib drew. Sennacherib reasoned: I beat every god, so I will beat this one too. Hezekiah reasons: those were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which is exactly why they fell - therefore they have destroyed them. An idol of wood cannot defend a city; it cannot even defend itself from the fire. To compare the LORD to such things is to misunderstand the contest entirely. And so the prayer arrives at its single, soaring request: Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only (v. 20). Notice the reason Hezekiah gives for the rescue he asks. Not so that we may be comfortable, not even so that we may live - but that all the kingdoms of the earth may know. He ties Judah's deliverance to God's glory among the watching nations. The prayer that moves heaven is the prayer that wants, above its own safety, the honor of God's name.
Isaiah 37:21-35I Will Defend This City
21Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria: 22This is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. 23Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.
God's answer opens by reframing the entire confrontation. Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib… this is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him (vv. 21-22). The prayer has been heard; now comes the verdict - and it is addressed not to Hezekiah but, astonishingly, to Sennacherib himself, as though the Assyrian king were standing in the dock. The first image is a deliberate reversal of everything the siege seemed to mean: The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee (v. 22). To the eye, Jerusalem is the cornered, helpless one, a city about to be violated by an overwhelming army. God calls her the virgin, the daughter of Zion - untouched, undefiled, inviolable - and pictures her not trembling but laughing, tossing her head in scorn at the great king as he retreats. The shaking of the head was a gesture of mockery; God puts that gesture on the wrong party from Sennacherib's point of view. The conqueror who thought to humiliate Zion will himself be the object of her scorn. This is not military analysis; it is the verdict of heaven on who really holds the high ground - and from where God sits, the besieged city is safe and the besieger is already beaten.
Then God puts the question that exposes the true nature of Sennacherib's offense: Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel (v. 23). The whole campaign of taunts at the wall, the whole sneering letter, is here weighed and named. Sennacherib thought he was matching armies against a small kingdom; God tells him whom he has actually been shouting at. The title is the heart of it - the Holy One of Israel, Isaiah's great name for God throughout the book, the One whose holiness is the very thing the seraphim sing. To lift up thine eyes on high against such a One is the oldest sin there is: the creature exalting itself against its Maker. And this is the line God will not let pass. Judgment in this chapter does not fall because Assyria is powerful or even because Assyria is cruel; it falls because Assyria has lifted its voice against the Holy One of Israel. The deepest danger Sennacherib faces is not that he has provoked a stubborn king behind a wall, but that he has reproached the living God - and the living God has heard every word.
24By thy servants hast thou reproached the LORD, and hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel. 25I have digged, and drunk water; and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places. 26Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps.
God now quotes Sennacherib's own boasting back to him, and the arrogance is breathtaking. In the king's own words: By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains… I will cut down the tall cedars… I have digged, and drunk water; and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers (vv. 24-25). It is the speech of a man who imagines himself unstoppable - scaling the highest peaks, felling the proudest cedars of Lebanon, drying up whole rivers under his marching feet. He has made himself the subject of every verb: I am come, I will cut down, I have digged, I have dried up. Then God answers with the one fact that topples the whole boast: Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass (v. 26). Every conquest Sennacherib has bragged of, God says, was something I planned long ago and brought… to pass. The Assyrian was never the author of his victories; he was the instrument of a purpose formed in heaven before he was born. He thought he was the woodcutter; he was only the axe. And an axe that boasts itself against him that heweth therewith (as Isaiah says elsewhere) has badly mistaken who is holding it.
27Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded: they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. 28But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me. 29Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest. 30And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself; and the second year that which springeth of the same: and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof.
God now answers the boast with a sentence of total control: But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me (v. 28). The king who thought himself the watcher of nations is himself watched - God knows his every movement, his rest and his marching, and reads even the rage in his heart. Then comes the verdict, framed in an image drawn straight from Assyria's own brutality: therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest (v. 29). Assyrian carvings show captives being led with cords hooked through the nose or lip, dragged like beasts before the conqueror. God takes that very image and turns it on the conqueror himself. The great king who hauled others home on a hook will be hooked and hauled back the way he came, like a led animal. The proud lips that uttered the blasphemy will wear God's bridle. And to seal the promise, God gives Hezekiah a sign stretching three years into a future Sennacherib will not be there to spoil: a season of wild-grown food, then another, then a third year of sowing and reaping and planting vineyards in peace (v. 30). The sign says the threat is not merely survived but finished - long enough gone that the land will be planting and harvesting again, and Assyria nowhere in the picture.
31And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward: 32For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this. 33Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. 34By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD. 35For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.
The oracle turns from the doomed king to the rescued people, and the language is the language of new life. The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward (v. 31). The survivors will not merely cling on; they will take root and bear fruit - sink down into the soil and grow up into a harvest, the very opposite of a people uprooted and carried off. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion (v. 32). And then the engine driving all of it is named: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this. Not Judah's strength, not Hezekiah's diplomacy, not even Hezekiah's prayer in itself, but God's own zeal - His burning, jealous commitment to His people and His name. From there the verdict on Sennacherib becomes flatly specific, almost a legal ruling: He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it (v. 33). Not a siege-ramp, not a shield, not one arrow over the wall. The army that has terrified the city will not so much as scratch it. And the ground of the whole deliverance comes last and deepest: I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake (v. 35). God will save - but mark why. For His own sake, because His name has been challenged; and for David's sake, because of the covenant He swore to David's house. The city is spared not by its merit but by God's honor and God's promise.
Isaiah 37:36-38The Angel of the LORD Went Forth
36Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. 37So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. 38And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia: and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.
After the long oracle, the deliverance itself lands in a single, shattering sentence: Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses (v. 36). A hundred and eighty-five thousand - the most feared army on earth - struck down in the dark of a single night. There is no battle. There is no Judean charge, no clever maneuver, not so much as the arrow God said would never fly (v. 33). The defenders simply sleep, and when they arose early in the morning the siege is not lifted but ended, the besiegers all dead corpses. The word behold carries the shock of the survivors at first light: they came out expecting to face an army and found a field of the dead. Everything God promised in verses 6 and 7 and 29 and 33 has come to pass, in order and to the letter - the blast, the turning back, the city untouched. And the agent is named plainly: the angel of the LORD. This is not weather, not plague stumbled upon by chance, not the fortunes of war. It is the direct hand of God, sent out at His word, accomplishing what no army of Judah could have done. The rescue was never Judah's to win. It was God's to give, and He gave it while His people slept.
The chapter closes by tracking the great king all the way home to his end. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh (v. 37). The three verbs - departed… returned… dwelt - mark the exact reversal God decreed: turned back by the way by which thou camest (v. 29), the would-be conqueror of Jerusalem now sitting idle in his own capital. But the prophecy is not yet fully spent. God had said in verse 7, I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land - and verse 38 records its grim fulfillment: as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword. There is a sharp irony in the setting. The man who mocked the living God is cut down in the temple of a dead one - killed before the idol of Nisroch, a god of wood or stone that could not save its own worshipper any more than the gods of Hamath and Sepharvaim could save their cities. And he is killed by his own sons, in the place he felt safest, by the hands he trusted most. The contrast with Hezekiah could not be drawn more starkly. One king went into the house of the LORD and lived; the other went into the house of his god and died there. The chapter that opened with blasphemy against the living God ends with the blasphemer dead at the feet of his idol, and the throne of Assyria passing, as God allowed, to another.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 37 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for mal'akh YHWH (v. 36, “the angel of the LORD”), for the language of the spread-out letter and the prayer (vv. 14-20), and for the much-discussed remnant that is escaped in verses 31-32.
- Isaiah 37 ↔ 2 Kings 19 · Psalm 46 · Philippians 4Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 37 to the rest of Scripture - the nearly word-for-word parallel in 2 Kings 19, the temple-prayer under siege read beside God is our refuge and strength (Ps. 46:1), and Hezekiah spreading his threat before the LORD read alongside in every thing by prayer… let your requests be made known unto God (Phil. 4:6).
- Isaiah 37 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 37 - the proverb of the children come to the birth without strength to be born (v. 3), the geography of Lachish and Libnah (v. 8), the “hook in the nose” drawn from Assyria's own treatment of captives (v. 29), and the report of the camp struck in a single night (v. 36).
Where this echoes in Scripture
He Went Into the House of the LORD
- 2 Kings 19:1-7when king Hezekiah heard it... he went into the house of the LORD... Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid.The same scene told again, almost word for word - Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19 record one event from two books.
- Philippians 4:6-7in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.The instinct of verses 1 and 14 made a command - carry the threat, whole, into God’s presence.
- Isaiah 7:3Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son.The remnant of verse 4 named long before - Isaiah’s own son carried the promise “a remnant shall return.”
- Psalm 46:1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.The confidence behind Hezekiah’s walk into the temple - a refuge sought in the day of trouble (v. 3).
- Matthew 11:28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.The invitation behind “be not afraid” (v. 6) - the burdened brought to the One who gives rest.
He Spread It Before the LORD
- 2 Kings 19:14-19Hezekiah received the letter... and spread it before the LORD... save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.The same prayer, recorded again - the spread-out letter and the plea for God’s name across both books.
- Matthew 6:9-10Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.The order of Hezekiah’s prayer (v. 20) - God’s name and will sought before our own deliverance.
- Psalm 115:3-8Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not... they that make them are like unto them.The truth Hezekiah names in verse 19 - the nations’ gods are wood and stone, no gods at all.
- John 12:28Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.The motive of verse 20 on the Lord’s own lips - the cry that God’s name be glorified.
- Daniel 9:18-19we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies... do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God.The same ground as Hezekiah’s prayer - appeal made not on the petitioner’s merit but for God’s own sake.
I Will Defend This City
- Isaiah 10:15Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith?... as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up.The exact rebuke behind verse 26 - Assyria was only the axe in the hand of the God who swung it.
- 2 Samuel 7:16And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.The covenant behind “for my servant David’s sake” (v. 35) - the promise God defends the city to keep.
- Isaiah 9:7Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David... The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.The same zeal that saves the city (v. 32) - the zeal that establishes the throne of David’s coming King.
- Luke 1:32-33the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David... and of his kingdom there shall be no end.Where “for my servant David’s sake” (v. 35) finally leads - the everlasting throne promised to David’s line.
- Psalm 2:1-4Why do the heathen rage... He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.The scene of verse 22 - the raging nations met not with fear from heaven but with laughter.
The Angel of the LORD Went Forth
- 2 Kings 19:35-37the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand... So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed... and dwelt at Nineveh.The same deliverance and the same death, told again - the chapter’s close mirrored almost exactly.
- Psalm 3:8Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people.The lesson of verse 36 in a line - the rescue was God’s to give, not Judah’s to win.
- Exodus 14:13-14Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD... The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.The pattern of the deliverance (v. 36) - God fighting while His people stand still.
- Ephesians 2:8-9by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.The shape of the rescue (v. 36) - salvation worked for God’s people, not by them.
- Matthew 26:53thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?The angelic deliverance of verse 36 withheld at the cross - so a greater rescue could be won by His death.