Isaiah 37:20

This prayer is the turning point of the long account of Assyria’s invasion of Judah, told in Isaiah 36–39 and again, in closely matching words, in 2 Kings 18–20. Around 701 BC Sennacherib, king of Assyria, the great power of that day, came against Judah. Assyria was known for brutal campaigns, for deporting whole peoples, and for wearing its enemies down with threats before a battle began. Sennacherib took many of Judah’s fortified cities (2 Kings 18:13), as his own annals also record. Some decades before, in 722 BC, Assyria had taken Samaria and carried the northern kingdom of Israel away (2 Kings 17:5–6). Jerusalem stood almost alone.

First Sennacherib sent his officer the Rabshakeh, whose speech to the city fills Isaiah 36. Its sharpest point was that the LORD was one more god among the gods of the lands Assyria had already beaten (Isaiah 36:18–20). Hezekiah tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and sent to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 37:1–5), and Isaiah answered with a word from the LORD that he would act (Isaiah 37:6–7). Then a second message came, a letter carried by messengers, boasting that the gods of nation after nation had failed to save them from Assyria and that Judah’s God would fare the same (Isaiah 37:8–13). Hezekiah was the king who had already cleared idolatry out of Judah and restored the worship of the LORD (2 Kings 18:4), and now the LORD himself was being mocked.

The word for the letter, çêpher, means a writing or document, and by extension a book or scroll. This one was a formal message of the kind Assyria used to break the nerve of a city’s leaders and people and to shake their trust in their God. The king’s own name, Chizqîyâh, means “strengthened of Jah”, from Yᵉhôvâh. In the hour when every human strength had failed, he carried a name that said where his strength came from.

Verse 14 moves quickly. Hezekiah received the letter, read it, went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out. He read it through, so he knew exactly what was being said against his kingdom and his God. Then his first move was toward the temple, the house (bayith) of the LORD, where God had set his presence among his people and where Israel worshipped him. Before he called his advisers or looked for allies, he went to God.

The verb pâras means to break apart, disperse or spread, and here Hezekiah spreads the letter open. God already knew every word in it. By laying it out before him, the king brought the whole matter into God’s presence: the threats, the blasphemy and his own helplessness. It is the gesture of someone setting a case before a judge and leaving it in his hands. Hezekiah treats Sennacherib’s taunts as an offence against the LORD’s own name, and so he gives the matter to the LORD. God’s answer later in the chapter speaks the same way, naming Sennacherib’s words as reproach and blasphemy against the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 37:23).

Verse 15 is short: “And Hezekiah prayed unto the LORD, saying”. The verb is pâlal, here in the form vayitpallel, and in this form it means to pray or to intercede, from a root whose sense is probably to intervene or step in. Hezekiah stands before God on behalf of his people. “Saying” tells us the prayer was spoken in words, and the words follow.

He prays to “the LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, which comes from the verb “to be” (hayah) and speaks of the self-existent, eternal One. Hezekiah calls on the God who had bound himself to Israel and made himself known to them by name, set apart from every god of Assyria.

In this crisis prayer comes first, and the king leads his people in it. God says, “call upon me in the day of trouble” (Psalm 50:15), and through Jeremiah he promises that when his people call to him he will answer (Jeremiah 33:3). The rest of Isaiah 37 shows that answer.

Hezekiah spends the whole of verse 16 saying who God is before he makes a single request, and each title answers the letter.

“O LORD of hosts” (Yᵉhôvâh Sabaoth) names God as commander of every army in heaven and on earth, and Assyria’s army is one more force under his rule. “God of Israel” names him as the God who chose Israel and bound himself to them by covenant.

“That dwellest between the cherubims” points to the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, with the cherubim over the mercy seat. The verb yâshab means to sit down, abide or inhabit, and here it pictures God enthroned above the mercy seat. This was his earthly throne, where his glory was revealed to Israel, and from above the mercy seat between the cherubim he spoke with Moses (Exodus 25:22). The God Hezekiah prays to is present with his people and hears them, and Hezekiah is standing in his house.

“Thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth” is the heart of the verse. Sennacherib had boasted that the gods of nation after nation had fallen before him. Hezekiah answers that the LORD is God over every one of those kingdoms, Assyria included. Israel confessed, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Daniel learned that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will (Daniel 4:17), and a psalm sings that God reigns over the nations (Psalm 47:8). Assyria’s power, great as it was, answered to him.

“Thou hast made heaven and earth” gives the reason. The verb ʻâsâh means to do or make in the broadest sense, and here what God made is the whole of creation. The one who made everything owns everything. The heavens are his and the earth also, for he founded the world and all that is in it (Psalm 89:11). The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fulness (Psalm 24:1), and David praised him as the one whose greatness and power reach to all that is in heaven and earth (1 Chronicles 29:11). This is the message of the whole book of Isaiah, which calls Judah to trust God alone and to stop leaning on alliances and armies. Later the prophet asks to whom God can be compared, and says that he brings princes to nothing and makes the judges of the earth as vanity (Isaiah 40:18–26).

“Incline thine ear, O LORD, and hear; open thine eyes, O LORD, and see”. To incline the ear (nâṭâh ‘ôzen) is to bend down and listen closely, and shâmaʻ, hear, is the ordinary word for hearing and listening. To open the eyes (pâqach ʻayin) is to look with full attention, and râʼâh, see, also means to perceive and understand. The two lines say one thing in two pictures, and the repetition carries Hezekiah’s urgency. “Hear” stands twice in this verse, and so does “O LORD”.

“Of a truth, LORD” opens with ʼomnâm, verily or indeed, from a root meaning firm. Hezekiah concedes the enemy’s point: “the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries”. The kings are Sennacherib and those before him, among them Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II. The verb chârab, laid waste, means here that a place is destroyed and lies in ruins, so that settled life there comes to an end. “Nations” and “countries” both translate ʼerets, land, and the doubled word stretches the ruin across land after land. “All” is a sweeping word, the way people speak of a power that has swallowed everything around them.

Hezekiah’s faith looks straight at the facts. He tells God the grim truth, and that honesty sets the stage for God’s greater power. Isaiah had spoken against human pride from the start of his book (Isaiah 2). The LORD overturns the plans of the nations while his own counsel stands for ever (Psalm 33:10–11), and his dominion is everlasting (Daniel 4:34–35).

“And have cast their gods into the fire”. The verb nâthan is the common word for give, used very widely for put or set, and here it is the putting of the idols into the fire. Burning them destroyed and desecrated them at once. Conquerors also melted idols down or carried them off as trophies, to show that the gods and their worshippers had fallen together. The idols were as helpless as the people who had trusted them.

“For they were no gods” gives the reason. The word for gods here, ʼĕlôhîym, is the same word Hezekiah uses for “the living God” in verse 17. It is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is a plural of majesty. Hezekiah uses the name the nations gave their idols and then says what they really were. The KJV prints “were” in italics, because the translators supplied it.

“But the work of men’s hands, wood and stone”. The word maʻăseh, work, means a deed, a product or a piece of workmanship. These gods were made by craftsmen from common wood and stone, and so “therefore they have destroyed them”. What men’s hands had made, men’s hands could burn. Hezekiah has just called the LORD the maker of heaven and earth, and here the gods of the nations are things men made. That answers the Rabshakeh. Assyria’s victories over the gods of the nations proved only that those gods were wood and stone, and they left the LORD, who made all things, untouched.

“Now therefore” turns from the truth Hezekiah has confessed to his request. He calls on “O LORD our God”, joining Yᵉhôvâh to ʼĕlôhîym with the personal “our”, the same confession Israel made in the Shema.

“Save us from his hand.” The verb yâshaʻ properly means to be open, wide or free, and so to be safe. In its causative form it means to set free or to help, and it is the word for God delivering his people, as he did at the Exodus. “Hand”, yâd, stands for Sennacherib’s power and control over Judah.

Then comes the purpose: “that all the kingdoms of the earth may know”. The verb yâdaʻ, know, means at root to ascertain by seeing, and it covers recognising and acknowledging. Hezekiah asks for a deliverance the nations will see, so that they acknowledge the LORD as the one God. The words are mamlâkâh, kingdom, and ʼerets, earth, the word that named the ruined lands of verse 18. The prayer began with the LORD as God “of all the kingdoms of the earth”, and it ends asking that all those kingdoms may know it. “Even thou only”, levaddekha, brings back the “thou alone” of verse 16.

Hezekiah’s request for his people’s rescue is caught up in God’s own purpose to make his name known. God displayed his power in Egypt so that it would be known (Exodus 9:16). He says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Another psalmist prays, “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth” (Psalm 83:18). Through Ezekiel God says that he acts for his holy name, so that it will be sanctified among the nations (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

Hezekiah was a king who carried his people’s trouble to God and prayed for them. Jesus is the greater King who prays for his own. He prayed for his disciples and for all who would believe (John 17:9–26). As our high priest he lives for ever to intercede for us (Hebrews 7:25), so we come boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace in time of need (Hebrews 4:16). Hezekiah came to God in the earthly temple, and our way to the Father is Christ himself, the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

The God Hezekiah called on, enthroned between the cherubim, came to live among us in Jesus, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). The maker of heaven and earth made all things through the Son and for him, thrones and rulers included (Colossians 1:15–16), and the risen Christ said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18).

God saved Judah from one army. In Christ he saves us from sin and death. All have sinned (Romans 3:23), and Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death (Philippians 2:8) as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The reproach that Hezekiah felt for God’s name fell on Christ, who endured the cross and despised its shame (Hebrews 12:2). God raised him, because death could not hold him (Acts 2:24), and by the cross he triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). God has delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son (Colossians 1:13–14).

Hezekiah prayed that the kingdoms would know the LORD. In Jesus God is known, for “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:9–11). The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ (Revelation 11:15), and a great multitude from every nation stands before the throne praising God for salvation (Revelation 7:9–10).

Few of us will hold a letter from an emperor, but trouble still arrives in plain words: a diagnosis, a debt, a broken relationship, a setback at work, an attack on our faith. Hezekiah’s prayer shows the way such words can be carried to God. He read the letter through, took it to the LORD, laid it open, said who God is, told him honestly what was true, and asked him to act for the sake of his own name. Paul gives the same pattern for every believer: “in every thing by prayer and supplication” with thanksgiving, and the peace of God keeps the heart (Philippians 4:6–7). Peter speaks of “Casting all your care upon him” (1 Peter 5:7), and Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour”, and promises rest (Matthew 11:28–30).

The gods that burned in Assyria’s fires have their likenesses today in money, achievement, standing, politics and our own self-sufficiency. They are the work of men’s hands too, and they fail when real trouble comes. The LORD who made heaven and earth stays the living God when they fall. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). In him we have received a kingdom which cannot be moved (Hebrews 12:28), and every answered prayer of his people makes his name known.