2 Kings 19:22

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.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22) On high—i.e., towards heaven (Isaiah 40:26). (Comp. Isaiah 14:13-14.)

The Holy One of Israel.—A favourite expression of Isaiah’s, in whose book it occurs twenty-seven times, and only five times elsewhere in the Old Testameut (Psalm 71:22; Psalm 78:41; Psalm 89:19; Jeremiah 50:29; Jeremiah 51:5).

Benson Commentary

2 Kings 19:22. And lifted up thieve eyes on high — As those do who have haughty thoughts, and look down on others with contempt and scorn. Even against the Holy One of Israel — Whose honour is dear to him, and who has power to vindicate it, which the gods of the heathen have not.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

19:20-34 All Sennacherib's motions were under the Divine cognizance. God himself undertakes to defend the city; and that person, that place, cannot but be safe, which he undertakes to protect. The invasion of the Assyrians probably had prevented the land from being sown that year. The next is supposed to have been the sabbatical year, but the Lord engaged that the produce of the land should be sufficient for their support during those two years. As the performance of this promise was to be after the destruction of Sennacherib's army, it was a sign to Hezekiah's faith, assuring him of that present deliverance, as an earnest of the Lord's future care of the kingdom of Judah. This the Lord would perform, not for their righteousness, but his own glory. May our hearts be as good ground, that his word may strike root therein, and bring forth fruit in our lives.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The Holy One of Israel - This is a favorite phrase with Isaiah, in whose prophecies it is found 27 times, while it occurs five times only in the rest of Scripture Psalm 71:22; Psalm 78:41; Psalm 89:18; Jeremiah 50:29; Jeremiah 51:5. Its occurrence here is a strong proof - one among many - of the genuineness of the present passage, which is not the composition of the writer of Kings, but an actual prophecy delivered at this time by Isaiah.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. Then Isaiah … sent—A revelation having been made to Isaiah, the prophet announced to the king that his prayer was heard. The prophetic message consisted of three different portions:—First, Sennacherib is apostrophized (2Ki 19:21-28) in a highly poetical strain, admirably descriptive of the turgid vanity, haughty pretensions, and presumptuous impiety of the Assyrian despot. Secondly, Hezekiah is addressed (2Ki 19:29-31), and a sign is given him of the promised deliverance—namely, that for two years the presence of the enemy would interrupt the peaceful pursuits of husbandry, but in the third year the people would be in circumstances to till their fields and vineyards and reap the fruits as formerly. Thirdly, the issue of Sennacherib's invasion is announced (2Ki 19:32-34).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Exalted thy voice; by Rab-shakeh, who cried with a loud voice, 2 Kings 18:28.

Lifted up thine eyes on high; a gesture of pride and scornfulness, Proverbs 21:4.

Against the Holy One of Israel: not against man, but against the holy God, who will not suffer thy impious blasphemies to go unpunished; and against the Holy One of Israel, who hath a special relation and kindness to Israel, having as it were set himself apart for them, and set them apart for himself, as being at this time the God of the Jews only, and not the God of the Gentiles; whom, as yet, he suffered to walk in their own evil ways, Acts 14:16. And therefore he will plead their cause against thee.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard it,.... The report of Rabshakeh's speech, recorded in the preceding chapter:

that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth; rent his clothes because of the blasphemy in the speech; and he put on sackcloth, in token of mourning, for the calamities he feared were coming on him and his people: and he went into the house of the Lord; the temple, to pray unto him. The message he sent to Isaiah, with his answer, and the threatening letter of the king of Assyria, Hezekiah's prayer upon it, and the encouraging answer he had from the Lord, with the account of the destruction of the Assyrian army, and the death of Sennacherib, are the same "verbatim" as in Isaiah 37:1 throughout; and therefore the reader is referred thither for the exposition of them; only would add what Rauwolff (t) observes, that still to this day (1575) there are two great holes to be seen, wherein they flung the dead bodies (of the Assyrian army), one whereof is close by the road towards Bethlehem, the other towards the right hand against old Bethel.

(t) Travels, par. 3. ch. 22. p. 317.

Geneva Study Bible

Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even {o} against the Holy One of Israel.

(o) God counts that as an injury done to him, and will avenge what is done to any of his saints.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

22. and lift [R.V. lifted] up thine eyes on high] The name by which Jehovah is often called is ‘the Most High’ (cf. Psalm 56:2). To utter reproaches and blasphemies against Him betrays a great uplifting of the eyes, a terrible excess of arrogancy.

the Holy One of Israel] This title of God, which occurs very frequently in Isaiah, signifies not only that God Himself is holy and specially gracious unto Israel, but that He makes the people holy also, separate from the rest of the world and sanctified by and for Himself. It expresses both the praise of God, and the privilege of His people.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 22. - Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? i.e. "Against whom hast thou been mad enough to measure thyself? Whom hast thou dared to insult and defy?" Not an earthly king - not a mere angelic being - but the Omnipotent, the Lord of earth and heaven. What utter folly is this! What mere absurdity? And against whom hast thou exalted thy voice? i.e. "spoken proudly" - in the tone in which a superior speaks of an inferior - and lifted up thine eyes on high? - i.e. "looked down upon" - treated with contempt, as not worth consideration - even against the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah's favorite phrase - used by him twenty-seven times, and only five times in the rest of Scripture - marks this entire prophecy as his genuine utterance, net the composition of the writer of Kings, but a burst of sudden inspiration from the Coryphaeus of the prophetic band. The oracle bears all the marks of Isaiah's elevated, fervid, and highly poetic style. 2 Kings 19:22

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This derision falls upon the Assyrian, for having blasphemed the Lord God by his foolish boasting about his irresistible power. "Whom hast thou despised and blasphemed, and against whom hast thou lifted up the voice? and thou liftest up thine eyes against the Holy One of Israel." Lifting up the voice refers to the tone of threatening assumption, in which Rabshakeh and Sennacherib had spoken. Lifting up the eyes on high, i.e., to the heavens, signifies simply looking up to the sky (cf. Isaiah 40:26), not "directing proud looks against God" (Ges.). Still less is מרום to be taken adverbially in the sense of haughtily, as Thenius and Knobel suppose. The bad sense of proud arrogance lies in the words which follow, "against the Holy One of Israel," or in the case of Isaiah, where אל stands for על, in the context, viz., the parallelism of the members. God is called the Holy One of Israel as He who manifests His holiness in and upon Israel. This title of the Deity is one of the peculiarities of Isaiah's range of thought, although it originated with Asaph (Psalm 78:41; see at Isaiah 1:4). This insult to the holy God consisted in the fact that Sennacherib had said through his servants (2 Kings 19:23, 2 Kings 19:24): "With my chariots upon chariots I have ascended the height of the mountains, the uttermost part of Lebanon, so that I felled the tallness of its cedars, the choice of its cypresses, and came to the shelter of its border, to the forest of its orchard. I have dug and drunk strange water, so that I dried up all the rivers of Egypt with the sole of my feet." The words put into the mouth of the Assyrian are expressive of the feeling which underlay all his blasphemies (Drechsler). The two verses are kept quite uniform, the second hemistich in both cases expressing the result of the first, that is to say, what the Assyrian intended still further to perform after having accomplished what is stated in the first hemistich. When he has ascended the heights of Lebanon, he devastates the glorious trees of the mountain. Consequently in 2 Kings 19:24 the drying up of the Nile of Egypt is to be taken as the result of the digging of wells in the parched desert; in other words, it is to be interpreted as descriptive of the devastation of Egypt, whose whole fertility depended upon its being watered by the Nile and its canals. We cannot therefore take these verses exactly as Drechsler does; that is to say, we cannot assume that the Assyrian is speaking in the first hemistichs of both verses of what he (not necessarily Sennacherib himself, but one of his predecessors) has actually performed. For even if the ascent of the uttermost heights of Lebanon had been performed by one of the kings of Assyria, there is no historical evidence whatever that Sennacherib or one of his predecessors had already forced his way into Egypt. The words are therefore to be understood in a figurative sense, as an individualizing picture of the conquests which the Assyrians had already accomplished, and those which they were still intending to effect; and this assumption does not necessarily exhibit Sennacherib "as a mere braggart, who boastfully heaps up in ridiculous hyperbole an enumeration of the things which he means to perform" (Drechsler). For if the Assyrian had not ascended with the whole multitude of his war-chariots to the loftiest summits of Lebanon, to feel its cedars and its cypresses, Lebanon had set no bounds to his plans of conquest, so that Sennacherib might very well represent his forcing his way into Canaan as an ascent of the lofty peaks of this mountain range. Lebanon is mentioned, partly as a range of mountains that was quite inaccessible to war-chariots, and partly as the northern defence of the land of Canaan, through the conquest of which one made himself lord of the land. And so far as Lebanon is used synecdochically for the land of which it formed the defence, the hewing down of its cedars and cypresses, those glorious witnesses of the creation of God, denotes the devastation of the whole land, with all its glorious works of nature and of human hands. The chief strength of the early Asiatic conquerors consisted in the multitude of their war-chariots: they are therefore brought into consideration simply as signs of vast military resources; the fact that they could only be used on level ground being therefore disregarded. The Chethb רכבּי רכב, "my chariots upon chariots," is used poetically for an innumerable multitude of chariots, as גּובי גּוב for an innumerable host of locusts (Nahum 3:17), and is more original than the Keri רכבּי רב, the multitude of my chariots, which simply follows Isaiah. The "height of the mountains" is more precisely defined by the emphatic לבנון ירכּתי, the uttermost sides, i.e., the loftiest heights, of Lebanon, just as בור ירכּתי in Isaiah 14:15 and Ezekiel 32:23 are the uttermost depths of Sheol. ארזיו קומת, his tallest cedars. בּרשׁיו מבחור, his most select or finest cypresses. קצּה מלון, for which Isaiah has the more usual קצּו מרום, "the height of his end," is the loftiest point of Lebanon on which a man can rest, not a lodging built on the highest point of Lebanon (Cler., Vitr., Ros.). כּרמלּו יער, the forest of his orchard, i.e., the forest resembling an orchard. The reference is to the celebrated cedar-forest between the loftiest peaks of Lebanon at the village of Bjerreh.