I. SENNACHERIB AND HIS GENERALS. Their renewed efforts to take the city.

1. The letter of Sennacherib to Hezekiah. (Ver. 17.) The tartan with his assistants having failed to either storm Jerusalem or intimidate its inhabitants, returned, or more probably despatched, Rabshakeh to his master for further instructions. Sennacherib was now at Libnah, a few miles nearer Jerusalem than Lachish, which in the interval had capitulated. Learning that the King of Egypt was on the way north to give him battle, he sent back Rabshakeh, accompanied, by special messengers, bearing a letter to Hezekiah to expedite the taking of the city. The letter when received was read by Hezekiah with indignation and alarm. It contained a repetition with emphasis of what had been uttered by Rabshakeh in the hearing of the king's envoys and of the inhabitants of the city. Of course, the mere reassertion of Rabshakeh's boastings, though in the form of a letter from Sennacherib himself. did not make them the less false, insolent, or blasphemous.

2. The railings of Sennacherib's generals. As before by Rabshakeh, so a second time by the generals and perhaps also the messengers (ver. 18). To the people on the town wall in their own tongue were addressed words meant to terrify and persuade to capitulation - loud, boastful, arrogant, blasphemous reproaches against Jehovah. putting him on a level with idols, the works of men's hands, and declaring him to be as powerless as these (ver. 19), little dreaming they were so soon and so completely to be undeceived (ver. 21). So men often hug to their bosoms the false ideas they have formed of the Christian's God, without thinking that in a moment, by being admitted through death's portal into his presence, they may be proved to have been deceived.

II. HEZEKIAH AND HIS PROPHET. Their supplications to the God of heaven (ver. 20).

1. The prayer of Hezekiah. Recorded in 2 Kings 19:14-19 and Isaiah 37:15-19.

(1) Where offered. "In the house of the Lord." Having read the Assyrian's letter, Hezekiah repaired to the temple and spread it before the Lord; in which act lay a double propriety - Jehovah having invited his people to call upon him in the day of trouble (Psalm 1:15), and promised to deliver them (Psalm 91:15); and Jehovah being the One most insulted by Sennacherib's reproaches.

(2) To whom addressed. To Jehovah, the covenant God of Israel, whose presence was with his people, who alone governed the nations, and was supreme Creator of heaven and earth (cf. Jehoshaphat's prayer, 2 Chronicles 20:6-12).

(3) In what terms couched. Earnest, reverential, direct, and hopeful. Requesting a favourable audience for his intercession, he first called God to see and hear the reproaches of Sennacherib, next acknowledged the truth of Sennacherib's language concerning the gods of the nations he destroyed, and finally besought God to show that he alone was God, by saving them out of the King of Assyria's hand.

(4) With what result followed. It was answered by Isaiah, the son of Amoz, who, speaking in God's name, assured him that "Sennacherib should not come into the city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it, but should return by the way that he came, and should not come into the city" (2 Kings 19:32, 33; Isaiah 37:33, 34).

2. The prayer of Isaiah. Though not recorded by the writer of 2 Kings that Isaiah prayed along with or in addition to Hezekiah, the fact mentioned that, on Rabshakeh's first approach, Hezekiah requested Isaiah to "lift up his prayer" on their behalf (2 Kings 19:4), renders it probable that on this occasion also he joined the king in crying unto Heaven.

III. JEHOVAH AND HIS ANGEL. Their interposition on behalf of Judah and Jerusalem (vers. 21, 22).

1. The destruction of Sennacherib's army.

(1) Where? "In the camp of the King of Assyria;" most probably in that of the tartan lying before Jerusalem (Delitzsch), though it may have been in that of Sennacherib's army. According to Herodotus (2. 141), the disaster occurred at Pelusium, whither Sennacherib, "King of the Arabians and Assyrians," had marched with a great host on his way to Egypt. If so (Ewald, Cheyne, and others), then Sennacherib must have broken up his camp at Libnah, and moved south to intercept Tirhakah (cf. Driver, 'Isaiah: his Life and Times,' pp. 81, 82).

(2) When? "That night" (2 Kings 19:35); but Whether the night after Hezekiah's prayer (Rawlinson, Bahr)is uncertain. Hardly, if Pelusium was the scene of the overthrow; possibly, if the Assyrian camp still remained at Libnah (Keil). That the night was that in which Sennacherib, in the following year, sat down to besiege Jerusalem with his own army (Keil, Delitzsch) does not seem likely.

(3) How? By an angel - the angel of the Lord (2 Kings 19:35; Isaiah 37:36). Whether the blow was supernatural or natural cannot be determined from the language of Scripture. The destruction of the firstborn of Egypt (Exodus 12:29) and the diminution of David's army (2 Samuel 24:15, 16) were both accomplished by the angel of the Lord; yet the former only appear to have been suddenly smitten, while the latter were cut off by pestilence. Herodotus's notion, that the bow-strings, and shield-straps of Sennacherib's soldiers were gnawed through during the night by innumerable field-mice, favours the pestilence-theory - among the Egyptians the mouse having been the hieroglyph of devastation by pestilence (J. D. Michaelis).

(4) To what extent? To the cutting off of "all the mighty men of valour," with "the leaders and the captains"? (ver. 21); in all, 185,000 (2 Kings 19:35; Isaiah 37:86).

(5) With what effect? The return of Sennacherib to Assyria with shame of face, because of having failed to effect the object of his expedition. Whether the fleeing Assyrians were pursued by the liberated Judahites (Ewald) is not stated by the Chronicler, and is only a doubtful inference from Psalm 46:7, 8; Psalm 76:3,

5. That the Assyrian monuments have preserved no record of Sennacherib's humiliation is not surprising. The Egyptian monuments of the nineteenth dynasty contain no memorial of Menephtah's overthrow in the Red Sea. Nations, like individuals, do not publish their misfortunes) least of all perpetuate the remembrance of their defeats.

2. The assassination of Sennacherib himself. The usual end of kings in Assyria (Sargon, and probably Shalmaneser II. and Assurnirari), no less than in Israel and Judah. "Within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court," etc. ('Richard II.,' act 3. sc. 2).

(1) Where Sennacherib was murdered. "In his own land," in "the house of his god" (ver. 21); i.e. in Nineveh, in the house of Nisroch his god (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 36:37) - a divinity not yet identified in the Assyrian pantheon.

(2) When? Not immediately on returning to Nineveh, since, according to the inscriptions, he lived twenty years after the Egyptian and Jewish expedition, and undertook five more campaigns in other parts of his empire.

(3) By whom? "They that came forth of his own bowels" - "Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons" (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 36:38); the former in Assyrian Adar-malik, "Adar is prince," also the name of an Assyrian god (2 Kings 17:31); and the latter in Assyrian Sar-usur, a shortened form of an Assyrian word, of which the first part was probably Assur, Bil, or Nergal, meaning "Assur (Bel or Nergal) protect the king" (Schrader, p. 329). Nergal-sarezer occurs as a proper name in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:3, 13). This may have been the full designation of Sennacherib's son (Alexander on 'Isaiah,' 2:74; Cheyne, 'The Prophecies of Isaiah,' 1:225).

IV. THE PEOPLES AND THEIR PRESENTS. The effect produced by this deliverance on surrounding nations.

1. Gifts unto Jehovah. Brought not by Judahites alone, but by the inhabitants of nations who had been delivered from the Assyrians' yoke, and were designed as a grateful recognition of Jehovah's hand in effecting their emancipation. No benefactor more deserving of man's thanks than God (Psalm 139:17, 18); no duty more frequently urged upon men than gratitude to the Supreme Giver (Psalm 50:14; Psalm 100:4; Psalm 107:1; Ephesians 5:20; Philippians 4:6; Colossians 1:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:18); yet no bestower of good receives less thanks than he.

2. Precious things to Hezekiah. As the Philistines and Arabians had brought presents to Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:10), so now the inhabitants of heathen countries, among whom may have been the Babylonians - though ver. 31; 2 Kings 20:12; and Isaiah 39:1 refer not to this (see below) - sent gifts to Hezekiah in recognition of his greatness, as attested by the Divine deliverance wrought on his behalf. Learn:

1. The heinousness of scoffing at religion.

2. The impotence of human rage against God (Psalm 2:1-5).

3. The superiority of the true God over all divinities worshipped by the heathen (Psalm 115:3, 4).

4. The efficacy of prayer (James 5:16).

5. The advantage of social supplication (Matthew 18:19).

6. The command of God over the resources of nature (Numbers 11:23).

7. The ability of God to save his people out of any sort of peril (1 Corinthians 10:13).

8. The sad fate of the ungodly (Psalm 75:8, 10).

9. The indebtedness of the world to the Church's God. - W.

True prayer is not pestering the Throne with passionate entreaties that a certain method of deliverance which seems best to us, should be forthwith effected; but is a calm utterance of need, and a patient, submissive expectance of fitting help, of which we dare not define the manner or the time. They are wisest, most trustful and reverent, who do not seek to impose their notions or wills on the clearer wisdom and deeper love to which they betake themselves, but are satisfied with leaving all to His arbitrament. True prayer is the bending of our own wills to the Divine, not the urging of ours on it. When Hezekiah received the insolent letter from the invader, he took it and "spread it before the Lord," asking God to read it, leaving all else to Him to determine: as if he had said, "Behold, Lord, this boastful page. I bring it to Thee, and now it is Thine affair more than mine." The burden which we roll on God lies lightly on our own shoulders; and if we do roll it thither, we need not trouble ourselves with the question of how He will deal with it.

(Alex. Maclaren, D.D.)