Isaiah 37:26

These verses are God’s reply to the prayer Hezekiah prayed in the temple, with Sennacherib’s letter spread out before the LORD (Isaiah 37:14–20). The letter had told Hezekiah that the LORD could deliver him no better than the gods of the nations Assyria had already destroyed (Isaiah 37:8–13). That was the same taunt the Rabshakeh, Sennacherib’s field commander, had shouted at the walls of Jerusalem (Isaiah 36). Hezekiah had torn his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and sent to Isaiah for a word from the LORD (Isaiah 37:1–4), and in his prayer he asked God to act for the honour of his own name.

The year was about 701 BC. Assyria was the great power of the age, feared for its sieges, its deportations of whole peoples and its use of terror. Sennacherib, who reigned from 705 to 681 BC, had taken many of Judah’s fortified cities, Lachish among them, and Jerusalem stood almost alone. Hezekiah had first tried to buy him off with tribute (2 Kings 18:14–16). The whole account stands in Isaiah 36–39 and again in 2 Kings 18–19, and Sennacherib’s own annals, among them the Sennacherib Prism, record the same campaign.

The answer comes at once: “Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah”. God speaks through his prophet, as he had promised to put his words in the mouth of a prophet raised up among his people (Deuteronomy 18:18). The prophet’s name, Yᵉshaʻyâh, means “Jah has saved”, a fitting name for the man who carries this message. “Thus saith the LORD God of Israel” marks what follows as God’s own word. Yᵉhôvâh is the covenant name, the self-existent and eternal God, and “God of Israel” names the people he has bound to himself. Sennacherib had set him beside the gods of the conquered nations, and the answer comes from the God of whom all Israel cried at Carmel, “The LORD, he is the God” (1 Kings 18:39).

“Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria” ties God’s answer to the prayer. The verb pâlal is the usual word for praying and interceding. Hezekiah prayed, and God answered him by name. The psalmist calls God the one who hears prayer (Psalm 65:2), and through Jeremiah God tells his people to call on him and he will answer (Jeremiah 33:3).

“This is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him” turns the message toward the king of Assyria. The noun dâbâr means a word or speech, and it can also mean a matter or thing. The verb behind “hath spoken”, dâbar, is the ordinary verb for speaking. Everything from here to verse 29 is spoken to Sennacherib, though it was sent to Hezekiah to hear.

The city answers the conqueror first. “The virgin, the daughter of Zion” and “the daughter of Jerusalem” are poetic names for the city and its people. Bᵉthûwlâh means a virgin, a young unmarried woman, and the title pictures Jerusalem as a girl whom the invader has threatened and will fail to take. Tsîyôwn, Zion, is the hill of Jerusalem, and the name speaks of the city as the place where God dwells. She has “despised” Sennacherib, bâzâh, holding him as worthless, and she has “laughed thee to scorn”. She “hath shaken her head at thee”, the gesture of contempt for an empty boast. The word under “at thee” means behind or after, so the picture may be of the city shaking her head at his back as he goes.

The irony is plain. A besieged city mocks the king who has conquered nations, and her scorn is God’s own scorn for a proud man who has set himself against him. The LORD fights for his people (Exodus 14:14), and he is in the midst of his city as her refuge and strength (Psalm 46:1–5). Pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18), and God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Before him the nations are as a drop of a bucket (Isaiah 40:15), and he brings the princes of the earth to nothing (Isaiah 40:23). The same oracle stands in 2 Kings 19:21.

“Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed?” To reproach, châraph, is to taunt someone, to say sharp things against him. To blaspheme, gâdaph, is to hack at someone with words, to revile him. The Rabshakeh had mocked Judah’s trust in the LORD at length (Isaiah 36:4–10). “Exalted thy voice” is that loud boasting, and “lifted up thine eyes on high” is the look of a man who sets himself above everyone, God included. The word for “on high”, mârôwm, means height, and it comes back in the king’s boast in the next verse.

Then God answers his own question: “even against the Holy One of Israel.” Qâdôwsh, holy, means set apart and sacred. As a title it speaks of God’s moral purity and majesty, and of how far he stands above every other god. “Of Israel” adds that this holy God has bound himself to a people, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and made them his peculiar treasure (Exodus 19:5–6). The Holy One of Israel is Isaiah’s own name for God, which his book uses about twenty-five times. Under that name God is exalted in judgment (Isaiah 5:16), and under it he calls his people to return and rest in him (Isaiah 30:15). To blaspheme him is to attack the source of Israel’s hope.

The psalmist asks how long the adversary will reproach God and blaspheme his name (Psalm 74:10), and the law forbids taking the LORD’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7). Another great king, Nebuchadnezzar, learned that God is able to abase those who walk in pride, and he ended by praising the King of heaven (Daniel 4:34–37).

Verses 24 and 25 give Sennacherib’s boast in his own voice, as God has heard it. “By thy servants hast thou reproached the Lord”: he spoke through his messengers, and the verb is the same châraph as in verse 23. “The Lord” here is ʼĂdônây, an emphatic form of the word for lord or master, used as a name of God alone. The one Sennacherib taunted is the Master of all things.

“By the multitude of my chariots am I come up” puts everything down to his own strength. Rôb means multitude, abundance or greatness, and it is the great number of his chariots that he trusts. Scripture answers that no king is saved by the multitude of an host (Psalm 33:16–17), and that some trust in chariots and some in horses, while God’s people remember the name of the LORD their God (Psalm 20:7).

He claims to have climbed “to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon”. The same word mârôwm stands behind both uses of “height” in this verse, so the man who lifted his eyes “on high” boasts of reaching the heights. “Sides” means the far recesses. Lebanon, whose name means the white mountain from its snow, was famous for its cedars and fir trees, prized for their strength and beauty in great buildings such as Solomon’s temple. To cut down “the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof” was to take the best a land had. “The height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel” carries the boast to the furthest reaches of the land and into Carmel, a name that means a fruitful field and belongs to a hill known for its forest and fertility. Mountains and forests alike, he says, lie open to his chariots.

Verse 25 goes on: “I have digged, and drunk water”. Qûwr means to dig, and the boast is that his army digs its own wells and finds water wherever it marches, even in hostile and dry country. “With the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places.” To dry up, chârab, is to parch, and by extension to lay waste. The word for rivers, yᵉʼôr, means a channel or stream and is the usual word for the Nile, and the word for “besieged places” can also be a name for Egypt, so the boast may reach as far as Egypt’s streams. It is a deliberate exaggeration. His army is so vast, he means, that its march drains the streams and makes every water defence of a city useless.

God’s reply to all of this is a question: “Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it?” Shâmaʻ means to hear with understanding, and the question implies that Sennacherib should have known. The verb “formed”, yâtsar, is the potter’s word for moulding clay into shape, used here of God shaping his purpose long before. “Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps.” The defenced cities, bâtsar, were cities made hard to reach by walls and height, and they went down because God had appointed it. Nâtsâh, behind “ruinous”, means to lay waste, and gal is a heap of stones, in the plural ruins.

So every conquest Sennacherib boasted of was the working out of God’s ancient plan, and the king himself was a tool in God’s hand. Isaiah had already called Assyria the rod of God’s anger, used by him and then punished for its pride (Isaiah 10:5–19). God later used Babylon in the same way (Jeremiah 25:9–11). The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, who turns it wherever he will (Proverbs 21:1). God raised up Pharaoh to show his power in him (Romans 9:17–21), and the greatest wrong ever done, the crucifixion of Jesus, came about by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23).

Verse 27 follows on from that: “Therefore their inhabitants were of small power”. The people of the defenced cities had little strength, in the Hebrew they were short of hand, because God had given them into Sennacherib’s hand. They were “dismayed”, châthath, broken down by fear and discouraged, and “confounded”, bûwsh, ashamed and disappointed.

Four pictures of short-lived growth follow. They were “as the grass of the field”: ʻeseb is grass or any green plant or tender shoot, and sâdeh is the open field. They were “as the green herb”: yârâq is a green plant, and desheʼ is a young sprout. They were “as the grass on the housetops”, châtsîyr growing on the gâg, the flat roof of a house, where it springs up in a thin layer of dust and soil and withers quickly in the sun for lack of root. Every family in Judah had seen it. Last, they were “as corn blasted before it be grown up”. The word under “corn blasted”, shᵉdêmâh, means a field, especially one of grain, and qâmâh is standing grain, the stalk that rises. The picture is of a grain field that withers before its stalks are grown, and its harvest is lost.

The pictures explain Sennacherib’s victories. The cities he took were withering grass in God’s hand. The same pictures describe every human power, his own included. “All flesh is grass”, while the word of our God stands for ever (Isaiah 40:6–8). Men are like grass that flourishes in the morning and is cut down by evening (Psalm 90:5–6), and like the flower of the field that the wind passes over (Psalm 103:15–16). The rich man too fades away like the flower of the grass (James 1:10–11). The king who boasted of felling the cedars of Lebanon was himself grass before God.

“But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me.” Yâdaʻ is to know, properly by seeing, the knowledge of someone who has watched. Yâshab, behind “abode”, is to sit down or dwell. His sitting at home, his going out on campaign and his coming back cover the whole of his life, at rest and on the move, and God knows all of it. David says that God knows his downsitting and his uprising and understands his thoughts afar off (Psalm 139:2–4). Through Jeremiah God asks whether anyone can hide himself in secret places from him, since he fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24). The eyes of the LORD are in every place (Proverbs 15:3), and all things are naked and opened to his eyes (Hebrews 4:13).

“Thy rage against me” names what lay beneath it all. Râgaz is to quiver with violent emotion, anger above all. Sennacherib’s fury was aimed at the LORD himself, and God had heard every word of it.

“Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into mine ears”. “Rage” is the same word as in verse 28, and “tumult” is the arrogance of his boasting. God speaks in human terms of his ears to say that he has heard and taken account of it all.

“Therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips”. Châch is a ring for the nose or lips, the kind used to lead an ox or a camel, and conquerors led captive kings the same way. The bridle is a bit in the mouth. The great king will be led like a beast wherever God chooses, and hook and bridle are both called God’s own.

“And I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.” Shûwb is to turn back or return. Sennacherib came to take Jerusalem, and he will go home along the road he came by, with his purpose undone. God makes the wrath of man praise him and restrains the rest of it (Psalm 76:10). The Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he will (Daniel 4:17).

With verse 30 the LORD turns from Sennacherib to Hezekiah: “And this shall be a sign unto thee”. ʼÔwth is a sign, a signal or token, something that can be seen and that confirms God’s word. This sign runs over three years.

“Ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself”. Çâphîyach is a self-sown crop, grain that springs up from seed fallen at the last harvest. With the Assyrians in the land the fields had gone unsown, so the people would live that year on what came up by itself. “And the second year that which springeth of the same”: shâchîyç is aftergrowth, what sprouts again from the self-sown crop. For a second year the people would live on what God made grow without a farmer’s hand.

“And in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof.” Zâraʻ is to sow. By the third year the land would be quiet enough for ordinary farming again. Vineyards were a long-term investment, so planting them meant the people expected to live in peace long enough to enjoy the fruit. Each year that came true would confirm that the Assyrian threat was over and that God had kept his word.

The sign rests on God’s old promise that seedtime and harvest will continue while the earth remains (Genesis 8:22). He visits the earth and crowns the year with his goodness (Psalm 65:9–13). He had promised blessing on field and harvest to his obedient people (Deuteronomy 28:1–14), and his thoughts toward them are thoughts of peace, to give them a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

“And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward”. The word behind “escaped”, pᵉlêyṭâh, means deliverance, and concretely the part of a people that has escaped. It is formed from pâlîyṭ. Judah had been cut down like a tree, with its cities in ruins, and the survivors would grow again. Sheresh is a root, here taking hold downward, and “bear” is ʻâsâh, the broad verb to do or make, here yielding fruit. Deep roots below and fruit above picture a people settled and flourishing in their land once more. The blessed man of the first psalm is a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season (Psalm 1:3), and the man who trusts in the LORD is a tree that spreads out its roots by the river (Jeremiah 17:7–8). Isaiah had already promised that a remnant would return (Isaiah 10:20–22).

“For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion”. The remnant here is shᵉʼêrîyth, a remainder, those left out of a larger number, and “they that escape” is the same word pᵉlêyṭâh as in verse 31. The people shut up in Jerusalem would go out of it alive. God had left Judah a very small remnant before (Isaiah 1:9). Paul quotes Isaiah on the remnant of Israel (Romans 9:27), and he says that in his own day there is a remnant according to the election of grace (Romans 11:5).

“Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria” brings back the words that opened the message in verse 21, and now God gives his 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.” Each clause shuts out a step of an Assyrian siege. Archers shot volleys of arrows, chêts, to clear the defenders from the walls. Soldiers came up under cover of shields to reach the walls and bring up their engines. A bank, çôlᵉlâh, was a siege mound, a great ramp of earth thrown up against a city’s wall so that battering rams and siege towers could reach it and archers could shoot down into the streets. The army that had taken so many fortified cities would be held back from every one of these against Jerusalem.

“By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD.” The way, derek, a trodden road, and return, shûwb, are the same words as in verse 29, so the promise made to Sennacherib is repeated for Hezekiah. The “saith” of this verse translates a different word from the “saith” of verse 33. It is nᵉʼum, an utterance or declaration, the word that marks a prophetic oracle, and here it seals the promise with the name of the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh.

Hezekiah himself told his people that with Sennacherib was an arm of flesh, but with them was the LORD their God to help them and to fight their battles (2 Chronicles 32:7–8). As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people (Psalm 125:1–2). Zechariah later heard God promise to be a wall of fire round about Jerusalem (Zechariah 2:5), and Daniel praised the God who removes kings and sets up kings (Daniel 2:21).

“For I will defend this city to save it for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.” Gânan, defend, means to hedge about, to put a protecting fence around. Yâshaʻ, save, properly means to be open, wide or free, and so to be safe, and in the form used here it means to set free or to rescue. The city, ʻîyr, is a town, in Strong’s account a place guarded by a watch, and here God himself is its guard.

God gives two reasons, and both lie in himself and his promises. “For mine own sake” means for his name and honour. Sennacherib had mocked the LORD as one more helpless god, and God would show the nations who he is. He says the same through Ezekiel, that he acts for his holy name, which had been profaned among the nations (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

“For my servant David’s sake” calls back God’s covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7. There God promised David a house and a throne that would be established for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16). Jerusalem was the city of David, and David’s line still reigned there in Hezekiah. God kept the city for the sake of a promise made generations earlier, out of his steadfast love, his hesed, whatever the faithfulness of the generation he saved. The word for servant, ʻebed, is the same word as “thy servants” in verse 24. Sennacherib sent his servants to reproach the Lord, and the Lord defends his city for the sake of his servant David.

The verses that follow tell what happened. “Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses” (Isaiah 37:36). The parallel account says it happened that night (2 Kings 19:35). Sennacherib “departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh”, and later, as he worshipped in the house of Nisroch his god, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him (Isaiah 37:37–38). The city was saved without a battle, and the king of Assyria went home by the way he came without shooting one arrow at it, just as God had said.

The rescue of Jerusalem looks forward to the greater salvation God gives in Jesus Christ. Isaiah’s name means “Jah has saved”, and the name of Jesus, from the Hebrew Yeshua, means “the LORD saves”. God answered Hezekiah’s prayer, and Christ now makes intercession for his people at the right hand of God (Romans 8:34). The God who spoke through Isaiah has spoken his fullest word in the Word made flesh (John 1:14).

Sennacherib reproached the Holy One of Israel, and the world reproached the Holy One of God, a name even the demons gave Jesus (Mark 1:24). At the cross the passers-by reviled him, wagging their heads (Matthew 27:39–44), as the daughter of Zion had once shaken her head at Assyria. God raised him up and made him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:32–36). Sennacherib came with a multitude of chariots, while Christ came to Jerusalem lowly, riding upon an ass (Zechariah 9:9). He humbled himself to death on a cross, and God highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). He is King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11–16).

God turned back Sennacherib’s army without a battle. Paul says that God has forgiven us and that Christ “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:13–15). Through death Christ destroyed the devil, who had the power of death, and set free those who lived in fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). When he cleansed the temple, his disciples remembered that it was written, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up” (John 2:17), the zeal of the LORD at work in the Son.

God defended Jerusalem for David’s sake, and Jesus is the son of David (Matthew 1:1), the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:10) and the root and offspring of David (Revelation 22:16). The remnant of Judah took root and bore fruit, and believers are rooted and built up in Christ (Colossians 2:7) and bear much fruit as branches of the true vine (John 15:5). God kept his city from the Assyrian, and Christ promised of his church that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Believers have come to mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22–24), and John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven (Revelation 21:2).

God hears prayer. Hezekiah took a threatening letter and spread it before the LORD, and the answer began “Whereas thou hast prayed to me”. The God who answered him then is the same God who hears his people now.

God’s knowledge and rule reach the proudest power on earth. He knew Sennacherib’s sitting down and his going out, he had planned the very victories the king boasted of, and he turned him home with a word. Every rage set against God comes up into his ears, and every boast against him ends where Sennacherib’s did.

God acts for his own name and for his promises. He defended Jerusalem for his own sake and for David’s, so the safety of his people rests on who he is and on what he has promised. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). The zeal of the LORD of hosts did this, and the same zeal that kept the city of David has given us the Son of David.