Isaiah · chapter 37 of 66
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Isaiah 37 tells how Hezekiah, facing Sennacherib's threat, puts on sackcloth, enters the temple and sends to ask Isaiah to pray, and Isaiah promises that the king of Assyria will return to his land. Hezekiah spreads Sennacherib's letter before the Lord and prays; the Lord answers through Isaiah, and the angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib returns to Nineveh, where his sons kill him.
Isaiah 37 is the answer to the previous chapter and the high point of the narratives about Hezekiah. The Assyrian threat reaches its maximum pressure, and the king responds with humility and prayer. The account is almost parallel to 2 Kings 19 and shows how the Lord defends Jerusalem for his own name's sake and for the promise made to David.
On hearing the Rabshakeh, Hezekiah tears his clothes, covers himself with sackcloth and enters the house of the Lord. He sends Eliakim, Shebna and the senior priests to Isaiah with a message: it is a day of distress and disgrace; perhaps the Lord will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, so lift up a prayer for the remnant. Isaiah answers that they should not fear: the Lord will put a spirit in the king of Assyria, he will hear a rumor, return to his land and fall there by the sword.
Sennacherib, already fighting against Libnah, hears that Tirhakah king of Cush has set out to fight him, and sends Hezekiah a letter: do not let your God deceive you, for the gods of other nations did not deliver them. Hezekiah takes the letter, goes up to the house of the Lord and spreads it out before him. He prays to the Lord of hosts, enthroned above the cherubim, the only God of all the kingdoms, maker of heaven and earth. He admits that the gods of the nations were wood and stone, and asks for salvation so that all may know that the Lord alone is God.
Isaiah sends the answer: the Lord has heard the prayer. The king of Assyria has mocked the Holy One of Israel; the Lord will put his hook in his nose and his bit in his mouth and turn him back the way he came. The remnant of Judah will take root downward and bear fruit upward. The king of Assyria will not enter the city or shoot an arrow there, for the Lord will defend it for his own sake and for David his servant.
Then the angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp; at dawn they are all dead bodies. Sennacherib returns to Nineveh, and while he is worshiping in the house of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer strike him down 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 tears his clothes, covers himself with sackcloth and enters the house of the Lord. The king's first reaction to the threat is to humble himself and seek God, not to mobilize his army.
Hezekiah takes the letter from the messengers, reads it, goes up to the temple and spreads it out before the Lord. It is a simple, profound gesture: setting the problem, just as it is, in God's sight.
Hezekiah begins his prayer by acknowledging that the Lord of hosts alone is God of all the kingdoms and the maker of heaven and earth. Before asking, he remembers who God is, and that changes the perspective on the problem.
The angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp, and the next morning all are corpses. Jerusalem's deliverance is God's work, without the army of Judah having to fight.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: He tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. — Isaiah 37:1
Answer: The prophet Isaiah, through Eliakim, Shebna and the senior priests. — Isaiah 37:2-4
Answer: He went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before him. — Isaiah 37:14
Answer: As the Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, the only God of all the kingdoms. — Isaiah 37:16
Answer: For his own sake and for the sake of David his servant. — Isaiah 37:35
Answer: The angel of the Lord struck down 185,000, and in the morning all were dead bodies. — Isaiah 37:36
Isaiah 37 is a model of prayer in crisis. Hezekiah does not minimize the threat or run from it: he spreads it before the Lord, acknowledges who God is and asks for help so that his name will be known. In a Sunday school class you can practice this kind of prayer by writing down a hard situation and presenting it to God concretely.
It also shows the value of community in prayer: Hezekiah asked Isaiah to pray for the remnant. In a small group you can encourage asking others to pray for us and listening to God's word in Scripture, trusting that the Lord is faithful to his promises and defends his people for the sake of his name.
Isaiah 37 ends with the deliverance of Jerusalem and the death of Sennacherib. Chapter 38 will turn the focus to Hezekiah himself, who will fall deathly ill, pray again and receive more years of life.
Sennacherib's own annals boast that he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage, but they do not claim the city was captured. Many readers see in this silence a match with the biblical account, which says Jerusalem was not taken.
Tirhakah was king of Cush, a region south of Egypt. The text mentions him as the king who sets out to fight Sennacherib, which leads Sennacherib to send his letter to Hezekiah. Historians debate the exact chronology of that moment in detail, but the biblical account does not depend on it.
Isaiah 37:7 says the Lord would make him fall by the sword in his own land, and vv. 37-38 tell how his sons killed him in the temple of his god in Nineveh. The text presents that death as the fulfillment of the announced word, some years after the retreat.