Bird's-eye view
In this passage, we see the second wave of Sennacherib's psychological warfare against Hezekiah and the people of Judah. The first attempt, delivered by the Rabshakeh in person, was a public assault on faith, designed to demoralize the men on the wall (Isaiah 36). This second attempt is a more direct, personal message to Hezekiah himself. Having been drawn away by a military distraction, Sennacherib doubles down on his blasphemous threats. The core of his message is simple and brutal: history is on my side, your God is a fantasy, and your hope is a delusion. This is the logic of raw, godless power. The Assyrian king presents his resume of destruction as an ironclad argument for Jerusalem's inevitable doom. Hezekiah is being tempted to exchange the word of the living God for a history lesson written by a bloody tyrant.
The conflict is therefore set up in the starkest possible terms. It is not a battle between Assyria and Judah, but rather a contest between the god-king of Assyria and the God of Heaven. Sennacherib's argument is entirely empirical, based on what he and his fathers have done. The question posed to Hezekiah, and to every believer in every age, is whether we will trust the God who speaks, or the "facts on the ground" presented by arrogant men who believe they are the masters of history.
Outline
- 1. The Arrogance of Assyria Renewed (Isa 37:8-13)
- a. A Shift in Military Fronts (Isa 37:8)
- b. A Rumor of Opposition (Isa 37:9a)
- c. A Second Blasphemous Message (Isa 37:9b-10)
- d. The Assyrian Resume of Destruction (Isa 37:11-13)
- i. The Unanswerable Question of Power (Isa 37:11)
- ii. The Impotence of Idols (Isa 37:12)
- iii. The Roll Call of Conquered Kings (Isa 37:13)
Context In Isaiah
This section is the historical heart of a larger block of Isaiah's prophecy (chapters 36-39) that details the crisis of Sennacherib's invasion. It serves as the ultimate test of the prophecies delivered earlier, where Isaiah assured Ahaz, and later Hezekiah, that God was Judah's only true security, not foreign alliances (cf. Isaiah 7-8). Hezekiah, unlike his father Ahaz, has chosen to trust the Lord, having cleansed the temple and celebrated the Passover. Now that trust is being put to the fire.
The events here run parallel to the account in 2 Kings 19. The Rabshakeh's first speech failed to produce the desired surrender, and now, with a new military threat emerging from Ethiopia, Sennacherib seeks to end the siege of Jerusalem quickly with another round of intimidation. This sets the stage for Hezekiah's profound prayer in the verses that follow (Isa 37:14-20) and God's devastating response through the prophet Isaiah (Isa 37:21-38).
Key Issues
- The Blasphemy of Pragmatism
- The Geography of Defeat
- God's Reputation on the Line
- Faith vs. Empirical Evidence
- The Folly of Trusting in Dead Gods
Commentary
8 Then Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had set out from Lachish.
The gears of the war machine are grinding. The Rabshakeh, Sennacherib's mouthpiece, finishes his propaganda tour at Jerusalem's wall and reports back to his master. The king is not idle; he has moved from Lachish to Libnah, continuing his campaign of subjugation. This is a logistical detail, but it's the kind of detail that communicates relentless, inexorable force. The Assyrians are not a stationary target; they are a rolling tide of destruction. For the inhabitants of Jerusalem, this news would have been grim. The enemy is methodical, efficient, and constantly advancing. There is no respite.
9 Then he heard them say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, “He has come out to fight against you.” So he heard it and sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
Here we see what motivates Sennacherib's second message. A rumor of a geopolitical shift reaches his ears. Tirhakah, a formidable power from the south, is on the move. This is a problem for the Assyrian king. A protracted siege of Jerusalem with a new enemy army approaching from the rear is a tactical nightmare. So, what does he do? He doesn't panic. He acts. He decides to ratchet up the psychological pressure on Hezekiah to get a quick win. The world's tyrants are always driven by expediency. Sennacherib's actions are not dictated by principle or justice, but by the raw calculus of power and time. He needs Jerusalem to fold, and he needs it to happen now. This is a crucial point: the enemies of God often appear most fearsome when they are, in fact, feeling the pressure.
10 “Thus you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah, ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
This is the very heart of the blasphemy. Sennacherib is not simply saying that he is stronger than Judah. He is claiming that Hezekiah's God is a liar. Notice the insidious nature of the temptation. He frames it as an act of friendly counsel: 'Don't be deceived.' This is how the devil always works. He doesn't just deny God's word; he offers a counterfeit word of "truth" and "reason." The Assyrian message is that faith in God is a form of self-deception. Hezekiah's trust is painted as a pitiable delusion. The one true God is cast in the role of a lying, local deity who makes promises He cannot keep. This is a direct assault on the character of God. The battle is now explicitly theological. Who is the deceiver? The God of Abraham, or the king of Assyria?
11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction. So will you be delivered?
Sennacherib now lays his cards on the table. His argument is an appeal to history, or rather, his version of history. "Behold," he says, which means "pay attention to the facts, look at the evidence." The evidence is an unbroken string of victories. The Assyrian kings have a perfect record. They don't just conquer; they devote lands to destruction, a terrible practice of utter annihilation. The question is posed as a rhetorical one, dripping with contempt: "So will you be delivered?" The implied answer is, of course not. This is the argument from godless pragmatism. It dismisses faith as irrelevant in the face of overwhelming empirical data. The pragmatist always asks, "What has God done for you lately?" while pointing to a mountain of evidence for what man has done.
12 Did the gods of those nations, which my fathers have brought to ruin, deliver them, even Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?
Now comes the roll call of the defeated. Sennacherib lumps the God of Israel in with all the dead idols of the surrounding nations. This is his fatal mistake. He sees Yahweh as just one more tribal god, a name on a long list of divine failures. He recites the names of conquered cities like a man reading a resume: Gozan, Haran, Rezeph. These were real places, and their destruction was a real and terrible event. From a purely human standpoint, his logic is impeccable. If all those other gods couldn't save their people, what makes yours any different? He is operating entirely within a pagan, polytheistic framework, unable to conceive of the Creator God who is in a category all by Himself. He is judging the living God by the standards of dead idols.
13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, and of Hena and Ivvah?’ ”
The taunt concludes by moving from the gods to the kings. "Where are they now?" The kings are gone. The cities are ruins. The gods are silent. This is the final nail in the coffin of his argument. Power is the only reality. History is written by the victors. The kings who resisted Assyria are dead, and so are their gods. The message to Hezekiah is clear: this is your future. Join the scrap heap of history, or bow the knee. Sennacherib believes he is the one who holds the power of life and death, the one who determines the fate of kings and nations. He has made himself god, and in so doing, has sealed his own doom.
Application
The temptation facing Hezekiah is the same one that confronts every Christian. The world, like Sennacherib, presents us with a long list of its victories. It points to its power, its technology, its philosophies, and its sheer, brute force, and it asks us, "So will you be delivered?" It tells us that our God is a deceiver, that our faith is a quaint delusion, and that history is on the side of the powerful.
When the Rabshakeh of our age sends his messages, whether through the media, the academy, or the government, he always uses the same logic. He points to the "facts" and dismisses faith. He mocks our trust in a God who cannot be seen and catalogues the failures of those who have tried to stand against the spirit of the age.
Our response must be that of Hezekiah. We must take the enemy's blasphemous letter, spread it out before the Lord, and pray. We must recognize that the battle is not ultimately about us, but about the name and reputation of our God. Sennacherib's mistake was to assume that the God of the Bible was like the gods of the nations. The world's mistake is to assume that the Church is just another human institution that can be intimidated into submission. Our God is the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and He does not take kindly to being compared to the impotent idols of Gozan and Haran.
Therefore, we must not be rattled by the roll call of the world's conquests. We must not be deceived by the argument from pragmatism. Our trust is not in what we can see, but in what God has said. And God has said that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His church. Sennacherib's army ended up as a field of corpses, not because Hezekiah had a superior military strategy, but because God defends His own glory. And so it will be for all who set themselves against Him.