2 Kings · chapter 19 of 25
Updated on
2 Kings 19 tells how Hezekiah, facing Sennacherib's threat, tears his clothes, goes up to the temple and sends to Isaiah, who assures him God will act. When Sennacherib sends a threatening letter, Hezekiah spreads it before the Lord and prays. Isaiah announces that the Assyrian king will not enter Jerusalem, and that night the angel of the Lord strikes 185,000 soldiers. Sennacherib returns to Nineveh, where his sons kill him.
Chapter 18 left Jerusalem surrounded and mocked by the Assyrian commander. In 2 Kings 19 Hezekiah responds with prayer, not strategy, and receives a prophetic word from Isaiah. It is one of the clearest accounts in the Bible of the deliverance God gives to those who trust him, and it shows that the Lord defends his name and his city.
When Hezekiah hears the Assyrian commander's speech, he tears his clothes, covers himself with sackcloth and goes into the house of the Lord. He sends Eliakim, Shebna and the senior priests to Isaiah, asking him to pray for the remnant. Isaiah answers that they should not fear the blasphemies of the king of Assyria's servants: the Lord will make him hear a rumor, return to his land and fall by the sword there.
The commander finds the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah. Sennacherib hears that Tirhakah, king of Cush, has set out to fight him and sends Hezekiah a letter warning him not to trust his God, since no god has delivered other nations. Hezekiah takes the letter, goes up to the temple, spreads it before the Lord and prays. He acknowledges that the Lord alone is God of all the kingdoms of the earth, who made heaven and earth, and asks him to save him so that all may know that he alone is God.
Isaiah sends a message: the Lord has heard the prayer. He announces that Sennacherib has boasted against the Holy One of Israel, that the Lord planned it long ago, and that he will turn him back by the way he came, with a hook in his nose and a bit in his mouth. He gives a sign: this year and the next they will eat what grows by itself, and in the third year they will sow and reap. Sennacherib will not enter Jerusalem or shoot an arrow there; the Lord will defend the city for his own sake and for David's.
That night the angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib breaks camp and returns to Nineveh. While he is worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer kill him with the sword and escape to Ararat. His son Esarhaddon reigns in his place.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Hezekiah takes the letter, goes up to the house of the Lord and spreads it before him. It is a concrete act of prayer: setting the problem before God just as it is, instead of carrying it alone.
Hezekiah asks the Lord to save him from the hand of Assyria so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that he alone is God. His request seeks God's glory, not only his own relief.
The Lord promises to defend the city for his own sake and for his servant David's. The deliverance rests on God's faithfulness to his name and his promise, not on Jerusalem's merits.
The angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp during the night. Without Judah lifting a sword, God defeats the army that had defied his name.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: To the prophet Isaiah. — 2 Kings 19:1-2
Answer: He spread it before the Lord in the temple and prayed. — 2 Kings 19:14
Answer: That he alone is God of all the kingdoms and made heaven and earth. — 2 Kings 19:15
Answer: That they would eat what grows by itself for two years and in the third sow and reap. — 2 Kings 19:29
Answer: One hundred and eighty-five thousand. — 2 Kings 19:35
Answer: His sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword while he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch. — 2 Kings 19:36-37
Hezekiah did not answer the challenge with a strategy but by spreading the letter before the Lord. There are problems that overwhelm us, and the first step is to set them before God honestly. In a small group you can pray for concrete situations and remember that the Lord hears when we cry out.
Hezekiah's prayer also teaches us to ask with a larger goal: that God's glory be known. And the deliverance of Jerusalem reminds us that no empire, however powerful it seems, has the last word. Whoever trusts the Lord can wait, even when the threat seems final.
2 Kings 19 ends with the defeat of Sennacherib and his death in Nineveh. In chapter 20, Hezekiah will fall mortally ill, and the Lord will give him fifteen more years, but a mistake of the king will foreshadow a darker future for Judah.
The text says the angel of the Lord struck them in one night, without explaining the manner. Some have proposed a plague, but the Bible presents it as a direct act of God. Sennacherib's own annals do not mention the capture of Jerusalem.
He was king of Cush, that is, Ethiopia or Nubia, and later became pharaoh of Egypt in the twenty-fifth dynasty. His move to fight Assyria concerned Sennacherib.
It is an image of control: the Assyrians led their captives with hooks, and God announces that he will treat Sennacherib like an animal that cannot resist. It shows that the empire, however great, is under the Lord's control.