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Context No. 414 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 32:1-8: in context

1After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, entered into Judah, encamped against the fortified cities, and intended to win them for himself. 2When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, and that he was planning to fight against Jerusalem, 3he took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the springs which were outside of the city, and they helped him. 4Then many people gathered together and they stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the middle of the land, saying, “Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find abundant water?” 5He took courage, built up all the wall that was broken down, and raised it up to the towers, with the other wall outside, and strengthened Millo in David’s city, and made weapons and shields in abundance. 6He set captains of war over the people, gathered them together to him in the wide place at the gate of the city, and spoke encouragingly to them, saying, 7“Be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid or dismayed because of the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude who is with him; for there is a greater one with us than with him. 8An arm of flesh is with him, but the LORD our God is with us to help us and to fight our battles.” The people rested themselves on the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

The Assyrian army under Sennacherib is bearing down on Judah, and Hezekiah's response is worth watching closely, because he does two things at once that we often treat as opposites. First, he prepares, thoroughly and practically. He blocks up the springs outside the city so the invaders will find no water. He repairs every broken section of the wall, raises the towers, builds a second wall outside the first, reinforces the strongholds, and manufactures weapons and shields in quantity. He appoints military commanders over the people. He does not sit back and wait for a miracle; he works as hard and as competently as if everything depended on his own efforts.

And then, having done all of that, he gathers the people and gives a speech that locates his actual confidence somewhere entirely different from his walls. Be strong and courageous, he says. Do not be afraid of the king of Assyria or of the huge army with him, for there is a greater one with us than with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles. Notice the two halves. He counts the enemy's strength honestly, a vast multitude, and he names it for what it is, an arm of flesh, merely human power however large. And he rests the people's morale not on the fortifications he just built but on the presence of God. The text says the people took heart from his words, not from the walls.

The whole thing is a model of how faith and diligence belong together rather than competing. We tend to fall off one side or the other, either working frantically as though it all depends on us and God is irrelevant, or claiming to trust God as an excuse to skip the hard work of preparing. Hezekiah did both fully: he prepared as if it were up to him, and he trusted as if it were up to God, and he was careful to rest his final confidence in God's presence and not in his own arm of flesh. When I face something daunting, do I split those two apart, and where is my real confidence actually resting, in the preparations I have made, or in the greater one who is with me?

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