In today’s first reading (2 Kings 19:9‑11, 14‑21, 31‑36), after conquering and deporting the Northern Kingdom, the Assyrians turn their attention to the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. What happens is almost the exact opposite of the earlier passage.
The Sennacherib, the one who “came down like a wolf on the fold”, is now the Assyrian king. He sends a letter to Hezekiah, king of the Southern Kingdom, demanding surrender. There is no use, says Sennacherib, in appealing to their God. All other countries fell before the Assyrian juggernaut. Why should Judah be the exception?
Hezekiah has only one option – to pray to his God, who alone is God over all the kingdoms of the earth. True, says the king, the Assyrians have conquered all nations before them. They laid nations to waste and tossed their gods into the fire. They could do this because these gods were just human artifacts of wood and stone.
But Hezekiah’s and Judah’s God is different. The king prayed: “So now, O Lord our God, save us, I pray you, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.”
At this point Isaiah, the prophet, intervenes with a message from God (and, except for its final verse, is not included in today‘s reading). Part of it is addressed to Sennacherib and the second part to Judah. It is a mocking statement directed against the Assyrians and guaranteeing that, no matter what happens: “…from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out and from Mount Zion, a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
Isaiah tells Sennacherib that he will not reach Jerusalem; he will not attack, nor be able to institute a siege against its walls: “By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” That very night, 185,000 men of the Assyrian army were mysteriously struck down, and Sennacherib had no option but to return to his capital at Nineveh. Soon after his return, we are told in the following verse that, while worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, Sennacherib was assassinated by two of his sons who then fled into Ararat. Another son took over the throne. A further example of what happens to those who attack God’s people.
Here, as in the previous passage from 2 Kings, we see that things do not happen by accident. The destruction of the Assyrian army may be attributed to purely natural causes, but the eyes of faith see their God’s protecting hand for his people, and especially for the city of David, to which he had made so many promises. Nevertheless, Jerusalem will not remain unscathed. It will, as Isaiah foretells today, not be destroyed, but reduced to a remnant. From that remnant will come a descendant of David.
Let us, too, see the hand of God operating in all the details of our lives, both the joyful and painful, and discern what God is trying to tell us.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!