Isaiah 36:19

19 Where [are] the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where [are] the gods of Sepharvaim? Indeed, [have] they delivered Samaria from my hand?

Isaiah 36:19 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 36:19

Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad?
&c.] What is become of them? where are they to be found? where's their power to protect and defend the people they presided over? thus they might be justly derided, but not so the God at Israel; these places are mentioned in ( Isaiah 10:9 ) . Hamath was a city in Syria, thought by some to be the same afterwards called Antiochia and Epiphania, from Antiochus Epiphanes: Arphad is joined with it in ( Jeremiah 49:23 ) as a city of Syria; perhaps originally founded and inhabited by the Arvadite, mentioned with the Hamathite, in ( Genesis 10:18 ) : where are the gods of Sepharvaim?
another place in Syria, the city Sipphore; not the Sipphara of Ptolemy ^F14, in Mesopotamia, or that, near Babylon, Abydenus ^F15 makes mention of, but a city in Syro-Phoenicia, ( 2 Kings 17:24 ) : and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
the gods of the above places, which were worshipped in Samaria, or the gods peculiar to that place; though Samaria was not taken by the present king of Assyria, Sennacherib, but by a predecessor of his, Shalmaneser, 2Ki 17:3,6,
which yet is here boasted of as a conquest of the present king.

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FOOTNOTES:

F14 Geograph. l. 5. c. 18.
F15 Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 41. p. 457.

Isaiah 36:19 In-Context

17 until {I come} and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards,

18 lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, 'Yahweh will save us!' Did the gods of the nations each save his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

19 Where [are] the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where [are] the gods of Sepharvaim? Indeed, [have] they delivered Samaria from my hand?

20 Who [are there] among all the gods of these countries who have saved their land from my hand, that Yahweh should save Jerusalem from my hand?" '"

21 But they were silent and did not answer him a word, for the command of the king was, "You must not answer him."