2 Kings 19:8 - Meaning and Application

Rabshakeh had delivered his message and gotten no answer. Whether he took that silence as agreement or as insult, we are not told. He left his army outside Jerusalem under the other commanders and went back to his king for further orders. There he found Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, attacking Libnah, a city that had rebelled from Judah (2 Kings 8:22).

It is not certain whether Sennacherib had already taken Lachish. Some think he left because he found it too hard to capture (2 Kings 19:8). In any case, he was now troubled by the report that Tirhakah, king of Cush, a region near Arabia, was coming against him with a large army (2 Kings 19:9). That made him eager to win Jerusalem quickly. Taking it by force would cost too much time and too many men, so he tried again to get Hezekiah to give it up without a fight. He had once found King Hezekiah easy to pressure, when Hezekiah said, "Whatever you put on me I will bear" (2 Kings 18:14), and Sennacherib hoped to scare him into giving in again. But he failed.

Sennacherib sent Hezekiah a letter, full of insults and blasphemy, to persuade him that resisting was useless. The letter says much the same thing Rabshakeh had already said. Rabshakeh had told the people, "Do not let Hezekiah fool you" (2 Kings 18:29). Sennacherib writes to Hezekiah, "Do not let your God fool you" (2 Kings 18:10). Those who trust the God of Jacob and hope in the Lord their God do not need to fear being misled by him, as the nations were by their false gods.

To frighten Hezekiah and shake his confidence, Sennacherib boasts about himself and his victories. First, he boasts of the lands he had conquered (2 Kings 18:11). He speaks as if he had destroyed every land, but this is proud exaggeration. In truth, he had not destroyed all lands, since at that very time the land of Cush and King Tirhakah were a threat to him. Proud people always speak bigger than the facts.

Second, he boasts of the gods he had defeated (2 Kings 18:12). He says that the gods of the nations could not save their people, and therefore Hezekiah’s God could not save him either. Third, he boasts of the kings he had conquered, such as the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad (2 Kings 18:13). Whether he is speaking of rulers or idols, his aim is the same, to make himself seem greater than all of them and therefore more frightening still.

Hezekiah answered this threat by sending the letter, as it were, into another letter, a prayer of faith, and bringing it before the King of kings. He did not refuse the letter, even though the opening probably lacked the respect he deserved. He read it, but he did not answer in anger with more insults. Instead, he went up to the temple and spread the letter before the Lord (2 Kings 18:14). God did not need to see it, of course, because he already knew every word. Hezekiah did this to show that he was putting the matter in God’s hands, and to shape his own heart for prayer. We all need every help we can get to stir us up to pray well.

In his prayer, Hezekiah first honors the God whom Sennacherib had insulted (2 Kings 18:15). He calls him the God of Israel, because Israel was his chosen people, and the God who sits between the cherubim, because that was the special place where his glory was known on earth. Yet Hezekiah also confesses him as the God of the whole earth, not merely the God of Israel, as Sennacherib wrongly imagined. "You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made heaven and earth." As Creator of all, he has the right to rule over all.

Next, Hezekiah asks God to hear and see Sennacherib’s pride and blasphemy (2 Kings 18:16). He points to the letter itself, as plain proof of what the king of Assyria has said. If Hezekiah alone had been insulted, he might have overlooked it. But the living God has been mocked, and that is far more serious. So he pleads, in effect, "Lord, what will you do for your great name?"

Hezekiah then admits that Sennacherib has indeed defeated the gods of the nations, but he sharply separates those false gods from the true God of Israel (2 Kings 18:17, 18:18). Those gods were no gods at all, only helpless idols. They could not save themselves or the people who worshiped them, so it is no surprise that Sennacherib destroyed them. In doing so, though he did not know it, he was serving the justice of the God of Israel, who has planned to remove the false gods of the nations. But people are badly mistaken if they think this means he can also overpower the Lord. God is not one of the idols made by human hands. He made all things himself (Psalm 115:3, Psalm 115:4).

Finally, Hezekiah asks God to rescue them now and show his glory in defeating Sennacherib and saving Jerusalem from his hand (2 Kings 19:19). He argues that if Jerusalem falls like the other lands, the world will say that Israel’s God has been defeated just as those other gods were. So he asks God to act for his own name’s sake, to make it clear that he alone is Lord, and that all other claims to divinity are empty and false.

This is a strong model for prayer. The best arguments in prayer are those that come from God’s own honor. That is why the Lord’s Prayer begins, "Hallowed be your name," and ends with, "Yours is the glory."