Scripture Daily

Context No. 1888 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 37:26-32: in context

26“‘Have you not heard how I have done it long ago, and formed it in ancient times? Now I have brought it to pass, that it should be yours to destroy fortified cities, turning them into ruinous heaps. 27Therefore their inhabitants had little power. They were dismayed and confounded. They were like the grass of the field, and like the green herb, like the grass on the housetops, and like a field before its crop has grown. 28But I know your sitting down, your going out, your coming in, and your raging against me. 29Because of your raging against me, and because your arrogance has come up into 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 by which you came. 30“‘This shall be the sign to you: You will eat this year that which grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from it; and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 31The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. 32For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and survivors will escape from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of Armies will perform this.’

God answers the proud Sennacherib, who had raged against him and boasted of destroying nations. Have you not heard, God says, that I planned this long ago and now bring it to pass? The conquests you boast of were within my purpose. And then a piercing word: I know your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. Because of your arrogance, God says, I will put my hook in your nose and turn you back the way you came. Not one of the enemy's movements or words was hidden from God.

God's word to Sennacherib carries a truth that cuts two ways: I know your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. Nothing the proud king did was hidden from God, not his comings and goings, not his private schemes, not even the raging words he spoke against heaven. God knew it all, saw every movement, heard every arrogant boast. The enemy who imagined himself acting freely, unobserved, answerable to no one, was fully known to the God he defied. This is, first, a sobering word to the proud and to all of us in our sin. There is no acting unobserved before God; he knows our sitting and our rising, our going out and coming in, our secret plans and even the words we rage against him in our hearts. Nothing is hidden; all is naked and open before him. The one who thinks he acts unseen, like Sennacherib, is fully known to God. But this same truth is, for God's people, a deep comfort. The God who knew Sennacherib's every move knows ours too, and for those who are his, this knowing is not threat but care. You know my sitting down and my rising up, the psalmist says; you are acquainted with all my ways. The God who sees the raging of his enemies also sees the tears of his people, knows our sitting down in weariness and our rising up in the morning, is acquainted with all our ways, and is not distant from any of it. So the truth that nothing is hidden from God is at once a warning to the proud and a comfort to the faithful. To the arrogant who imagine they act unseen, God says, I know your rising and your raging; and to his own, weary and watched over, the same knowing is the care of a God from whom nothing about us is hidden, who sees and knows and does not look away.

Do I ever imagine, like Sennacherib, that I act unobserved, that my secret plans or the words I rage in my heart are hidden, forgetting that God knows my sitting and rising and all my ways, and can this truth both sober me where I would hide from God and comfort me that the God who knows all my ways is not distant from any of them?

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