God Answers Prayer. 2 Kings 19:16-37
Last time we just looked at the opening part of Hezekiah's prayer: the way he addressed God. In his address to God we see that it is not just a formal recitation of certain titles or certain names related to God but that the use of those names and titles are designed to bring before God the reality of His covenant relationship with Israel and to emphasize the fact that He, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, stands in a position as the unique God of the universe. He is the creator God of the universe and as such He sovereign in authority over all of history, the kingdoms of man, and over the destiny of these kingdoms.
The first thing that sort of overrode everything we saw last time is the principle that is stated at the end of James 4:2, that we have not because we ask not. Notice when Isaiah begins to relay to Hezekiah the answer that God gave to his prayer: 2 Kings 19:20 NASB "Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard {you.}'" It is important to stress "I have heard" because so often today people forget to pray, or we pray so casually because somehow we get infected with a human viewpoint concept of fatalism that God is just going to do what God is going to do and our prayer life really doesn't change things. Yet, again and again in Scripture we see examples of how our prayers do change things, and God does intervene in the normal affairs of human history.
In the introductory address to God in verse 15 we see first of all that Hezekiah emphasizes the uniqueness of God, and we see that the uniqueness of God cannot be separated from His identification with the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. The names that are used there for God emphasize that He is Yahweh, the God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubim as a reminder that God had entered into a covenant relationship with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is the basis for why Hezekiah comes to Him to deliver and save the people in this time of crisis. When we apply that into our own thinking and our own prayer life we need to think in terms of what is God's covenant relationship with us that is the foundation of our relationship to Him. That, of course, would be the new covenant and the death of Christ on the cross.
The second thing we saw was that the uniqueness of the God of Israel cannot be distinguished or separated from His role as the creator God who therefore has the right to rule in human history; emphasizing the fact that God is creator and the doctrine of creation as it is laid out in the Scriptures is not just some secondary doctrine but is at the very core of what distinguishes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from all of the other so-called gods and goddesses of all of the world's religions. Only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stands completely distinct and separate from the creation. He is not part of the creation.
Prayer presumes that God has the right to intervene in our lives and in history and change things. He can do so because He is above and beyond and outside of creation, and He is the sovereign ruler. What is embedded in that as a presupposition is that God is the creator and has the right to answer prayer in that way. So the conclusion is prayer to the sovereign God of Israel is based on the literal reality of the Genesis account of creation. We pray to the creator.
In Acts chapter four is a prayer where after John and Peter have been arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin and bullied by the religious authorities in Jerusalem, they go back to the other disciples and give a report to them and the first thing they say to God is that they are praying to the God who made the heavens and the earth, etc. So we see that even in the New Testament the doctrine of God as the creator is fundamental to our address to God in prayer. So this is the foundation for this prayer: God has the right to intervene in the affairs of mankind.
In 2 Kings 19:16 we see the expression of the petition itself. There is a cry to God, a call upon Him to listen, and then Hezekiah begins to outline exactly what the problem is that the kingdom of Judah faced. NASB "Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God." The use of the words "ear" and "eyes," "hearing" and seeing," are what are referred to as anthropomorphisms. An anthropomorphism is a figure of speech that attributes to God a human form or physical attribute that God doesn't actually possess in order to illustrate or make clear in a human frame of reference the plans and policies of God. God's "eyes" usually relates to knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge. Hearing is as well. It is not that God is unaware of what is going on bit in this kind of expression we see that God is referred to in this way, frequently in the Psalms, as a way to express the immediate urgency of a situation.
For example, Psalm 17:6 NASB "I have called upon You, for You will answer me, O God; Incline Your ear to me, hear my speech."
Psalm 31:2 NASB "Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly; Be to me a rock of strength, A stronghold to save me."
Psalm 102:2 NASB "Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress; Incline Your ear to me; In the day when I call answer me quickly."
In each of these examples we see that the one who is praying and calling upon God is expressing the urgency of the situation. There is a pressing need and God needs to pay attention to it and intervene right now. "Incline your ear" has the idea of "bend over and lower your ear so you can hear me more readily." In Hezekiah's prayer the word "reproach" has the idea of a taunt or a boast. God is being ridiculed; His character is being brought into question; His very existence is being challenged. In fact, Sennacherib is insulting the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by saying, "Your God is not better than any of these other gods." This is the challenge from the world system in so many ways: how can you trust God, how can you really believe in God? Hezekiah is calling upon God in this prayer to stand up for Himself.
Then he rehearses the circumstances of the situation. 2 Kings 19:17 NASB "Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands." There is a parallel passage in Isaiah 37:20ff that covers almost the same incidents and events. There it is clear that what is taking place here is that the actions, the imperial advance of Assyria, has not only laid waste to foreign nations but because they have had to put such a large military into the field it has drawn on so much of the natural resources of the empire in terms of not only fiancés but of people that it has laid waste to the farms and industry back at home. Therefore it has created a situation of instability in Assyria. Their advance has not only laid waste the nations they have conquered but it has also had a negative effect in the homeland. 2 Kings 19:18 NASB "and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them." This shows that at the root of the Assyrian attitude is arrogance—arrogance toward God because they have rejected the true God. At God consciousness they have substituted these idols of wood and metal and stone, and now they have rejected those recognizing the gods have no power, so they have destroyed those, and once you remove an external God from your thinking then something else is going to move into that vacuum. What usually moves into the vacuum created by the absence of God or a god is man, and we put ourselves in a position of ultimate authority and therefore become more and more arrogant. This is what had taken place with Assyria, not recognizing that their very power, their very expansion had been as a result of the sovereign plan of God.
Hezekiah expresses his petition. 2 Kings 19:19 "Now, O LORD [Yahweh] our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God." The words "deliver us" is the Hebrew verb yasha which is the root of the name for Jesus, Yeshua. These come out of the same root which means to save or to deliver. In some cases it applies in a spiritual sense to ultimate salvation but in many cases it just refers to physical healing or deliverance. In this case it is physical deliverance from the enemy. So he is calling upon the Lord to deliver "from his hand," i.e. the hand of Sennacherib, and the reason he gives is "that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God." He grounds his petition not on the need of Judah or the inhabitants of Jerusalem but on the very character of God. That is one of the ways we ought to think through the petitions and intercessions that we bring before God. That is, on what basis should God answer this prayer, what is the Scriptural reason that God should intervene into this situation?
God answers through the prophet Isaiah. 2 Kings 19:20 NASB "Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard {you.}'" God is going to respond efficaciously to this prayer request. He hears all prayers but in this sense He is hearing with a response to answer the prayer positively. [21] "This is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: 'She has despised you and mocked you, The virgin daughter of Zion; She has shaken {her} head behind you, The daughter of Jerusalem!" Notice that the prophet is saying that this is the word of the Lord. This isn't Isaiah's understanding of how God might operate; he is claiming to speak and to get objective revelation from the very God of heaven. The Scripture is not man's words about God but it claims to present to us the very words of God to us.
There are three basic sections to this answer. The first is what is shaped in terms of what the literature of the day as a taunt or a mocking song where God is going to ridicule the abilities of Sennacherib, and he is going to put Sennacherib down as just some minor character on the stage of history who doesn't even recognize that ultimately it is God Himself who is working behind the scenes to bring about His will in history. A simple statement is made in verse 21 which refers to Jerusalem as a whole under the image of a virgin, the "daughter of Zion"— "has despised you [Sennacherib]." Zion or Jerusalem is called a virgin because this city has never been conquered as the capital of Judah or destroyed. It has never been taken and the implication is because God is the one who has protected Jerusalem. Because of the relationship of the people to Yahweh the people have despised Sennacherib, they have laughed at the things that he has said. The image of shaking the head behind the back of a person indicates derision and pleasure and a lack of respect for the person. So God is mocking Sennacherib who thinks he is so great and powerful because of all the conquests he has made, and yet here he comes to Jerusalem and they are just laughing at him.
2 Kings 19:22 NASB "Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised {your} voice, And haughtily lifted up your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!" The question there is a rhetorical question that is designed to make the point to Sennacherib and to say, Who is it that you have really blasphemed here? "Lifted up your eyes" means that Sennacherib has lifted his eyes and looked up heavenward; it is not a term that refers to arrogance or haughtiness. The answer is that it is "against the Holy One of Israel," indicating that He is distinct, separate or unique.
The boast that Sennacherib made. 2 Kings 19:23 NASB "Through your messengers you have reproached [ridiculed] the Lord, And you have said, 'With my many chariots I came up to the heights of the mountains, To the remotest parts of Lebanon; And I cut down its tall cedars {and} its choice cypresses. And I entered its farthest lodging place, its thickest forest.'" This emphasizes his power; no one can stand against him. [24] "I dug {wells} and drank foreign waters, And with the sole of my feet I dried up All the rivers of Egypt." What this is talking about is that as the army moves south they needed water so they had to dig wells. They had such a need for water that the wells that they had dried up. They took water out of the various brooks and just dried up the water sources.
Now God answers him. He is stressing that ultimately He is the one who rules over the affairs of men. What this answer brings out for us is the age-old conundrum of the sovereign will of God versus the individual free will of man. Both are true. God rules over history to bring about that which He intends. At the same time He gives man within a limited framework freedom to choose and to chart the course of his own life on the basis of his own volition and decisions. We get into problems when we start trying to define the causative relationship of God's will on human history in terms of creaturely causation. When we look at how causation works in the creaturely realm we extrapolate that back to the divine realm and try to define God's act of causation on human history in terms of the same categories and the same way that human causation works; and that is where we create a problem. God is wise enough and powerful enough to rule in the affairs of men without violating human freedom and responsibility, and to do so without making man into a puppet. So when man makes decisions he makes them freely and on his own terms, and yet when it is over with it seen to be exactly what God intended. Sennacherib on his own made the decisions he made to be who he was going to be and to rise up and set himself up in arrogance against God. That was his decision, not God's decision. Yet, when all is said and done we realize that God in His sovereignty allowed and intended for Assyria to rise as a powerful nation in order to use it to bring discipline and cursing upon the northern kingdom of Israel, and now in bringing invasion into the southern kingdom.
God is going to emphasize this by raising another rhetorical question. 2 Kings 19:25 NASB "Have you not heard? Long ago I did it; From ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, That you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps." Sennacherib is fulfilling the plan of God even though he has made these decisions himself and is not aware at all that God is orchestrating history, nevertheless God is ultimately in control. No human being can operate outside of the sovereign will of God.
2 Kings 19:26 NASB "Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength, They were dismayed and put to shame; They were as the vegetation of the field and as the green herb, As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up. [27] But I know your sitting down, And your going out and your coming in, And your raging against Me." What God is emphasizing here is that He is the one in control, He is the one who allowed Assyria to develop its military power, to have its victories over all the other nations, and it is God's sovereign will that Assyria and Sennacherib were raised up to this position of power. God was not unaware of his existence. [28] "Because of your raging against Me, And because your arrogance has come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose, And My bridle in your lips, And I will turn you back by the way which you came." Again, this is showing that God is going to intervene in history in a way that is going to pull Sennacherib back home and away from Judah. He is going to turn him around by way of utilizing circumstances. That is often how God directs history: by working through circumstances so that people are left with limited options, not because he forces their will to go in a certain direction but because the options that they perceive to be available to them, or are truly available to them, are limited by God so that the individual will take only one course of action.
A shift to addressing Hezekiah: a promise of deliverance. 2 Kings 19:29 NASB "Then this shall be the sign for you: you will eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit." A sign is usually a miraculous sign of how God is going to act on behalf of someone in a positive way. Judah has been under the invasion of the Assyrian army. Industry has broken down, agriculture has broken down because of the presence of enemy troops. So whatever grows is whatever just happened to grow in the fields left over from the natural seeding from the crops the year before. "In the second year what springs from the same." In other words, the economic devastation of the southern kingdom of Judah was such that it didn't just affect the immediate time of the invasion but it would also have consequences into the coming year and even into the third year before the economy is going to return to normal.
When Sennacherib is defeated and leaves the whole army doesn't get killed. There were many more troops than the ones around Jerusalem and so there were ongoing consequences to this invasion that lasted for the next couple of years. But the promise is that in the third year things will begin to return to normal. 2 Kings 19:30 NASB "The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward." Even in the ancient world economies could not be turned around over night. [31] "For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant, and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the LORD will perform this." The term "remnant" is never used outside of the Old Testament, it is a technical word for the believers within the house of Israel and the house of Judah; it is never used in the New Testament or in reference to church age believers. It is a concept that was unique to those who were under the Mosaic Law and in the house of Israel. It refers to that minority within Israel who were believers and who trusted in God, and who did not go along with the idolatry and rebellion against God that characterized Israel at certain times. That last phrase says that it is His character that is going to provide this victory, this promise, and will provide a future hope for the nation.
Then we have the promise related to what God is going to do to the king of Assyria. 2 Kings 19:32 NASB "Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, 'He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield or throw up a siege ramp against it. [33] By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he shall not come to this city,' declares the LORD." So there is a specific promise here that there will not be an attack on the city of Jerusalem. Why does God answer this way? [34] "For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake." Again, God's intervention is based on the covenant. He is going to preserve the Davidic dynasty. Remember, Hezekiah is in the line of David, is a descendant of David, and God has promised that one of David's descendants will sit on the throne of Jerusalem forever and ever. So in order to preserve the Davidic line and dynasty, and so that God will be faithful to His covenant, God promised to defend and protect the city.
How this was fulfilled just shortly thereafter. 2 Kings 19:35 NASB "Then it happened that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead." There are a number of studies that have been done which indicate that the army of Assyria that was in Judah much larger than this. This is why they were having such problems back home, because they had brought virtually all of the males that they could into the army in order to conquer all of these various territories. Before this happened Sennacherib fled. One of the reasons was that he read a rumor about a potential coup against his throne back in Nineveh. [36] "So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned {home,} and lived at Nineveh."
The next verse takes place sometime later when there is another threat tom then throne. 2 Kings 19:37 "It came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place." At this point what had happened was that Sennacherib has bypassed his two older sons in order to pass the throne down to his third son, Esarhaddon. Out of jealousy the two older sons assassinated him as he was in the temple of the eagle god worshipping, and then they escaped.
So again we see a tremendous example of the veracity of Scripture and that the prophecies that God gives come true precisely as he describes they would, and these things are not simply made up or are things people wrote down because they had some sort of emotional encounter with God. In the same way God can intervene in our lives—maybe not as dramatically, but in such a way that he protects and defends us because we are members of the body of Christ and on that basis we come to Him in prayer.
This is why prayer is to be a priority in our lives, not just something we do on occasion but something that is to be a top priority in our life.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
by: George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824)
THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!