Scripture Daily

Context No. 1051 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 19:29-37: in context

29“This will be the sign to you: This year, you will eat that which grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from that; and in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 30The remnant that has escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. 31For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and out of Mount Zion those who shall escape. The LORD’s zeal will perform this. 32“Therefore the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria, ‘He will not come to this city, nor shoot an arrow there. He will not come before it with shield, nor cast up a mound against it. 33He will return the same way that he came, and he will not come to this city,’ says the LORD. 34‘For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’” 35That night, the LORD’s angel went out and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 36So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, went home, and lived at Nineveh. 37As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. Esar Haddon his son reigned in his place.

God gives Hezekiah a sign about the future: this year and next you will eat what grows on its own, but in the third year you will sow and reap and plant vineyards again, for the surviving remnant of Judah will take root downward and bear fruit upward. As for the Assyrian king, God declares he will not enter the city, not shoot an arrow, not raise a siege ramp; he will go back the way he came, because God will defend the city for his own sake and for David's. Then, that very night, the angel of the LORD strikes down a hundred eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp, and Sennacherib withdraws, only to be killed by his own sons while worshiping in the temple of his god.

The deliverance of Jerusalem is total, and it is entirely God's doing. Hezekiah does not fight a battle; the city is saved while its people sleep, by an angel in the night, so that when the men rise in the morning the vast army that terrified them is a field of corpses. God said the Assyrian would not so much as shoot an arrow into the city, and he did not. This is one of scripture's clearest pictures of a salvation the people contribute nothing to but faith and prayer; the LORD's zeal, not Hezekiah's army, accomplished it. And the ending is grimly fitting. Sennacherib, who boasted that no god could save a city from his hand and mocked the Holy One of Israel, is cut down by his own sons in the temple of the god he trusted, the false god unable to protect him even in its own house, while the God he blasphemed defended Jerusalem without a soldier lifting a hand. The remnant takes root and bears fruit; the blasphemer falls in his idol's temple. God defends his own.

Where am I straining to fight a battle God intends to win himself, and can I trust the God who saved a sleeping city that his zeal, not my strength, will accomplish the deliverance?

Sources