The Book of Isaiah

Word Study

Explanation

Hezekiah's first move is the right one: "when king Hezekiah heard it," he "rent his clothes... and went into the house of the LORD." He does not panic or send for Egypt; he goes to God. Then he sends his officials, in sackcloth, to Isaiah with a humble, honest confession: "This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy," and the raw admission, "there is not strength to bring forth." He is helpless, and he says so. But he fastens his hope on one thing, that Rabshakeh has "reproach[ed] the living God," and asks Isaiah to "lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left." God's answer through Isaiah is immediate and calm: "Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me." God takes the blasphemy personally, "blasphemed me," and promises to deal with Sennacherib: "I will send a blast upon him... and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land." The whole outcome is announced before a single thing has happened.

Gospel Focus

Hezekiah shows us what to do in "a day of trouble." He took it straight to "the house of the LORD." When the threat is bigger than we are, the first step is not strategy but the sanctuary, "in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion" (Psalm 27:5). And notice his honesty: "there is not strength to bring forth." He did not pretend to have it handled. God is not looking for our competence but our dependence; "my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). The place of no strength is exactly where God's power shows up. See too how God receives the insult against Himself: "wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me." When the world mocks your faith, it is not finally you they mock but the living God, and He will answer it in His time. And hear the first word He speaks into the crisis: "Be not afraid." It is the word He speaks again and again to His frightened people, and the word the risen Christ still speaks, "Fear not; I am the first and the last" (Revelation 1:17). When you are helpless and afraid, run to the house of the LORD, tell Him honestly you have no strength, and let Him say to you, "Be not afraid."

Word Study

Explanation

Sennacherib, distracted by an Egyptian army, sends a letter to finish the psychological attack: "Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee." He repeats the same blasphemy, no god of any nation has delivered its land, "and shalt thou be delivered?" Then comes the model response. Hezekiah "received the letter... and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD." He answers the king by appealing to the King of kings. His prayer is a masterpiece. He begins with who God is: "O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone... thou hast made heaven and earth." He asks God to hear the insult: "hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God." He concedes the enemy's power honestly, Assyria really has destroyed nations, but names the reason: their gods "were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone." And he closes with the true motive of the request: "save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only." He asks not merely for rescue but for God's glory.

Gospel Focus

"Hezekiah... spread it before the LORD." This is a pattern for every believer facing a threat too big to answer. Do not sit and stew over the letter; take it into the presence of God and spread it out before Him. "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you" (1 Peter 5:7); "in every thing by prayer and supplication... let your requests be made known unto God" (Philippians 4:6). Bring the actual thing, the diagnosis, the bill, the cruel message, and lay it open before the Lord. And notice the shape of Hezekiah's prayer, for it teaches us how to pray: he begins with worship ("thou art the God, even thou alone"), moves to God's concern ("reproach the living God"), states the problem honestly, and asks for deliverance chiefly so that God will be glorified, "that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only." That closing line is the Oneness heart of the whole prayer: there is one God, "even thou only," the Maker of heaven and earth, who came to us in Jesus Christ. When we pray for our own crises to end in God's glory rather than merely our comfort, we are praying Hezekiah's prayer, and it is a prayer God delights to answer.

Word Study

Explanation

God's answer opens by noting the ground of it: "Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib." Because Hezekiah prayed, God acts. The oracle then pours contempt on the proud king: "The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn." God asks the piercing question, "Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed?... even against the Holy One of Israel." Sennacherib had boasted that by his own chariots he climbed the mountains and dried up rivers, but God exposes the truth: every conquest Assyria made, God had planned "of ancient times" and "brought it to pass." The mighty empire was only a tool in God's hand, and now the tool has exalted itself against the Maker. So God will lead him home like a hooked animal: "I will put my hook in thy nose... and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest." He gives Hezekiah a sign of restored harvests and a promise that a remnant will "take root downward, and bear fruit upward," for "the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this." And the great promise lands: "He shall not come into this city... For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake."

Gospel Focus

The center of God's answer is the exposure of pride. Sennacherib boasted, "By the multitude of my chariots am I come up," and "with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers," as if his power were his own. God's reply is that the conqueror was only an axe in the Maker's hand, "shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith?" (Isaiah 10:15). All human greatness that forgets it is borrowed is racing toward a fall, for "God resisteth the proud" (James 4:6). But the sweetest words are the ground of the deliverance: "for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake." God did not save Jerusalem because Judah had earned it, but for His own name and His covenant with David. This is how God saves us too, "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy" (Titus 3:5), "for his name's sake" (Psalm 23:3), and for the sake of great David's greater Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of David in whom the covenant is fulfilled. Your salvation does not rest on your worthiness but on His faithfulness. He defends His own "for mine own sake," and no proud power, no matter how many chariots it counts, can overturn what the zeal of the LORD of hosts has purposed to do.

Word Study

Explanation

The word of God comes to pass without delay. "Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand." One angel, one night, 185,000 of the world's most feared army, and "when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." No arrow was shot from Jerusalem's wall; God did it exactly as He had promised in Isaiah 31:8, "not of a mighty man." Sennacherib, who had shouted that no god could deliver Jerusalem, "departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh", crawling home in defeat. And the end fits the crime with terrible precision: "as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god," the very idol he trusted, "his sons smote him with the sword." The god who could not save him stood by while he was murdered before it. The living God had the last word, and the blasphemer's own house of idols became his tomb.

Gospel Focus

The deliverance of Jerusalem is a thunderous demonstration that God saves by His own hand, without the arm of flesh. One angel undid an empire, "there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6). Whatever army is arrayed against God's purpose, He needs no help to scatter it. And the death of Sennacherib is a sober parable of the end of all who exalt themselves against the living God. He mocked the LORD as no better than the idols of the nations, and he died at the feet of his own idol, which could not save him. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked" (Galatians 6:7). Every proud power that blasphemes God is on the same road; the story always ends with the living God vindicated and the idol exposed as helpless. For God's people, the lesson is pure comfort: the God who answered one man's prayer by destroying an army in a night is the same God we serve. The threats that tower over you now can be gone by morning at His word. Spread your letter before the Lord, and trust the God who saves alone, for "if God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31).