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Context No. 749 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 37:1-5: in context

1When King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the LORD’s house. 2He sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. 3They said to him, “Hezekiah says, ‘Today is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of rejection; for the children have come to the birth, and there is no strength to give birth. 4It may be the LORD your God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master has sent to defy the living God, and will rebuke the words which the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.’” 5So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

The Assyrian army is at the walls of Jerusalem, and its field commander has stood outside and mocked not just King Hezekiah but the God of Israel, jeering that no god of any nation has saved its people from Assyria, so why should this one? When the message reaches Hezekiah, he does not call a council of war or fire back a threat. He tears his clothes, wraps himself in sackcloth, and walks into the house of the LORD. Then he sends his highest officials, also in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah with a plea.

The message he sends is honest about how bad it is. Today is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, he says, and then he reaches for an image of a labor gone wrong: the children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them. Everything has been spent and the crisis has arrived and there is nothing left to push with. But he does not stop there. Perhaps, he says, the LORD your God heard the commander mocking the living God, and will answer the insult himself; so lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. Overwhelmed and out of strength, the king's first move is into the temple, and his first request is not a plan but a prayer.

At the end of his strength, with the enemy mocking God himself, Hezekiah went to the temple and asked for prayer. When a crisis outruns my strength, where do I take it first, and is prayer my first move or my last?

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