1And it happened when King Hezekiah heard, that he rent his garments and covered himself in sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD. 2And he sent Eliakim, who was appointed over the house, and Shebnah the scribe and the elders of the priests, covered in sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet son of Amos. 3And they said to him, “Thus said Hezekiah: ‘A day of distress and chastisement and insult in this day.
For children have come to the birth-stool,
and there is no strength to give birth.
4Perhaps the LORD will have heard the words of Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria sent, to defame the living God, and He will chastise for the words that the LORD your God heard and you will offer prayers for the remnant that still exists.’” 5And the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. 6And Isaiah said to them, “Thus shall you say to your master: Thus said the LORD: ‘Do not fear the words that you have heard, with which the flunkies of the king of Assyria reviled Me. 7I am about to send an ill spirit into him, and he shall hear a rumor and go back to his land, and I shall make him fall by the sword in his land.’” 8And Rabshakeh went back and found the king of Assyria battling against Libnah, for he had heard that he had journeyed on from Lachish. 9And he heard about Tirhakah king of Cush, saying, “Look, he has sallied forth to do battle with you.” And he heard, and he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10“Thus shall you say to Hezekiah king of Judah, ‘Let not your god in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11Look, you yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria did to all the lands, annihilating them—and will you be saved? 12Did the gods of the nations save them, when my fathers destroyed Gozan and Haram and Rezeph and the Edomites who are in Telassar? 13Where is the king of Hammath, and the kings of Arpad and the king of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?’” 14And Hezekiah took the letters from the hand of the messengers and read them, and he went up to the house of the LORD, and Hezekiah spread them out before the LORD. 15And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD, saying: 16“LORD of Armies, enthroned on the cherubim, You alone are God of all the kingdoms of earth. You it was made heaven and earth. 17Bend Your ear and listen; open, LORD, Your eyes and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib that he sent to insult the living God. 18Indeed, LORD, the king of Assyria destroyed all the nations and their lands 19and consigned their gods to fire, for they are not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone, and they destroyed them. 20And now, O LORD our God, rescue us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone are the LORD our God.” 21And Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus said the LORD God of Israel: ‘Of which you prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, 22this is the word of the LORD concerning him:
the maiden, Zion’s Daughter.
Jerusalem’s Daughter.
23Whom did you insult and revile,
and against whom have you lifted your voice,
against Israel’s Holy One?
24By your messengers you insulted the Master
and thought, “With my many chariots
I will go up to the heights of the mountains,
the far reaches of Lebanon.
I will cut down its lofty cedars,
its choicest cypresses,
and will come to its uttermost heights,
and the woods of its undergrowth.
25It is I who have dug and drunk
and dried up with the soles of my feet
26Have you not heard from afar
that which I did from time of old?
I fashioned it, brought it to pass—
and fortified towns
have turned into heaps of ruins.
27Their inhabitants, impotent,
are shattered and put to shame,
become the grass of the field
and green growth,
by the east wind blasted.”
28And your stayings and comings and goings I know
and your raging against Me.
29Because of your raging against Me
and your din that came up in My ears
I will put My hook in your nose
and My bit between your lips,
and will turn you back on the way
on which you came.
30And this is the sign for you: eat aftergrowth this year, and in the second year stubble, and in the third year sow and harvest and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 31And the remnant of the house of Judah shall add root beneath and put forth fruit above. 32For from Jerusalem shall come forth the surviving remnant from Mount Zion. The LORD’s zeal shall do this.’ 33Therefore, thus said the LORD about the king of Assyria: ‘He shall not enter this city and he shall not shoot an arrow there, and no shield shall go before him, nor shall he raise a siege-work against it. 34In the way he came he shall go back, and he shall not enter this city, said the LORD. 35And I will defend this city to rescue it, for My sake and for the sake of David My servant.’” 36And the LORD’s messenger went out and struck down in the Assyrian camp, a hundred eighty-five thousand. And when they arose early in the morning—look, they were all dead. 37And Sennacherib king of Assyria pulled up stakes and went off and returned to Assyria and stayed in Nineveh. 38And it happened as he was bowing down in the house of his god Nisroch, that Adrammelech and Sarezer struck him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esharaddon his son became king in his stead.
CHAPTER 37 NOTES
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3. For children have come to the birth-stool. The poetic style makes these words seem initially cryptic, but the obvious meaning is that the children about to be born cannot emerge because when the mothers come to the birth-stool, they do not have the strength to push the babies out. The delegation from the king may want to speak to the prophet in his own characteristic language by first addressing him in a line of verse. In any case, the line forcefully frames their message to Isaiah with an image of desperate impotence that represents the plight of the people. The prophet in this narrative resembles Elijah and Elisha in being seen by others as a holy man who has the power to intercede on their behalf with God.
5. And the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. Their arrival was clearly implied by the end of verse 2. Perhaps one should construe the verb as a pluperfect, though its form does not indicate that.
6. flunkies. The Hebrew neʿarim, youths or people in a subservient status, is usually represented in this translation as “lads,” but its use here by Isaiah, instead of the expected ʿavadim, “servants,” has a pejorative connotation.
7. an ill spirit. The Hebrew says only “a spirit,” but since it induces fear followed by flight, it appears to be a troubling spirit.
he shall hear a rumor. What this might be is not spelled out. If the prophecy is to be consistent with what is reported at the end of the chapter, it would be the news that his army has been stricken with a plague.
9. king of Cush. Cush is Nubia, just south of Egypt and politically linked with it. Egypt was a key player in the uprising against the Assyrian imperial forces, and so it is not surprising that the Nubian king would oppose Sennacherib. The connection of this report with the siege against Jerusalem is not entirely clear. Perhaps Sennacherib is impelled to finish off Jerusalem quickly so that he can turn his forces to the south.
14. read them . . . spread them out. The Hebrew has a singular object for these two verbs, but the first part of the verse speaks of multiple letters.
16. You alone are God of all the kingdoms of earth. These words are a direct rebuttal of the arrogant words of Rabshakeh in verse 12. Hezekiah will make his rejoinder to the Assyrian boast still more explicit in verses 18–19.
18. destroyed all the nations. The received text has “lands,” which looks like a dittography, triggered by “land” at the end of the verse. The parallel passage in 2 Kings and some Hebrew manuscripts show “nations.”
22. She scorns you, mocks you. The “you” is of course Sennacherib. The personified Zion, scorned by Sennacherib’s spokesman, has nothing but contempt for the presumptuous Assyrian king.
She wags her head at you. In biblical poetry, this is a conventional gesture of scorn.
23. raised your eyes up high / against Israel’s Holy One. Isaiah ups the ante of denunciation: Sennacherib’s presumption in declaring that he will destroy the kingdom of Judah is cast as an assault on the God of heaven and earth.
24. I will go up to the heights of the mountains, / the far reaches of Lebanon. Although Sennacherib’s campaign did include Phoenicia, here he is besieging Jerusalem. The mountains of Lebanon, however, are the proverbial loftiest heights in biblical poetry, and yarketey levanon, “the far reaches of Lebanon,” contains an echo of yarketey tsafon, “the far reaches of Tsafon,” the dwelling place of the gods. Sennacherib’s declaration at this point sounds rather like that of the overweening king of Babylonia brought down to Sheol in chapter 14, which may allude to the text here. The cutting down of lofty cedars also figures in chapter 14.
the woods of its undergrowth. The Hebrew karmel usually means “farmland,” which would be anomalous on the Lebanon heights, but as Yehuda Feliks has noted, it can also mean “low shrubs.” This would be the sparse vegetation in the mountaintops above the treeline.
25. the waters of foreigners. The Masoretic Text here says only “waters,” and the translation follows the version of this line in 2 Kings 19:24. The phrase, slightly opaque, is part of Sennacherib’s boast of conquest: he has seized the territories of nations and even sunk wells to exploit their water resources.
and dried up with the soles of my feet / all Egypt’s rivers. This is an antithetical act to the digging of wells—Egypt, blessed by the Nile, abounds in water. Here the Assyrian king makes himself, at least through hyperbole, a divine figure with the power to dry up rivers as he treads upon them.
all Egypt’s rivers. The translation reads kol yeʾ orey mitsrayim instead of the Masoretic kol yeʾ orey motsar, “all the waters of siege,” which does not make much sense.
27. thatch on the roofs / by the east wind blasted. The speech Isaiah attributes to Sennacherib concludes with a metaphor common in biblical poetry of the nations as mere grass, blasted by the hot wind blowing from the eastern desert.
29. your din. The received text has shaʾ anenekha, “your complacent one,” for which this translation reads, with several ancient versions, sheʾ onkha, “your din.”
I will put My hook in your nose / and My bit between your lips. Sennacherib has imagined himself as a god. Now the God of Israel describes him as a dumb helpless beast to be driven where God wants.
turn you back. This is Isaiah’s prophecy of Sennacherib’s flight back to Assyria.
30. eat aftergrowth this year. The “you” now is Hezekiah, and the verb will then switch to the plural, referring to the people. Because the invading army has laid waste to the countryside, there will be no crops for two years—and yet, as a “sign,” the Judahites will survive.
36. And the LORD’s messenger went out. The parallel text in Kings begins with the phrase, “And it happened on that night.”
struck down in the Assyrian camp. The lifting of the siege is a historical event, though the reason for it is uncertain. If the report is authentic, it might be because a plague swept through the Assyrian camp. But one must say that the historian in 2 Kings has a vested interest in presenting the event as a miraculous intervention, demonstrating God’s commitment to protect Jerusalem (in contrast to Samaria, destroyed by an Assyrian king twenty years earlier).
38. Adrammelech and Sarezer struck him down with the sword. The two figures named are Sennacherib’s sons. One gets the impression from the narrative report that the assassination took place directly after the emperor’s return to Nineveh. In fact, Sennacherib was murdered twenty years after the military campaign of 701 B.C.E. The writer, however, wants to present this killing in the temple of a pagan god as an immediate fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (verse 7) and a prompt retribution against the boasting conqueror depicted in Isaiah’s poem.
And Esharaddon his son became king in his stead. Esharaddon had been Sennacherib’s chosen successor. It was evidently this choice that led Adrammelech, abetted by one of his brothers, to kill his father, hoping to seize the throne. One infers that he then discovered no support in the court for his claim to the crown and thus was obliged to flee with his brother to Ararat in the far north.