Isaiah 36:19

19 Where is the god of Hamath, and of Arphad? Where is the god of Sepharvaim? Whether they delivered Samaria from mine 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 till I come, and take away you to a land which is as your land; to a land of wheat and of wine, to a land of loaves and of vineries. (until I come, and take you away to a land which is like your land; to a land full of corn, or of grain, and wine, a land full of loaves and of vineyards.)

18 Hezekiah trouble not you, and say, The Lord shall deliver us. Whether the gods of folks delivered (to) each his land from the hand of the king of Assyrians? (Let not Hezekiah trouble you, and say, The Lord shall save us. Did any of the gods of these other nations rescue their lands from the hands, or the power, of the king of Assyria?)

19 Where is the god of Hamath, and of Arphad? Where is the god of Sepharvaim? Whether they delivered Samaria from mine hand?

20 Who is of all [the] gods of these lands, that delivered his land from mine hand, (and so give thou reason to believe) that the Lord (shall) deliver Jerusalem from mine hand?

21 And they were still, and answered not to him a word (and did not answer a word to him). For why the king commanded to them, and said, Answer ye not to him.