God Vindicates His Honor over an Arrogant Foe

Isaiah 37:21-38

The verdict now comes down from the Judge of the whole earth; it takes our breath away. It comes in two parts: God’s mighty words (vv. 21-35) and God’s mighty deeds (vv. 36-38). God speaks to Hezekiah first: “Because you prayed to me about King Sennacherib of Assyria . . .” God has not changed his plan because of Hezekiah’s prayer, but rather God uses Hezekiah’s prayer mysteriously to accomplish his preordained ends, and God includes Hezekiah ahead of time in what he’s going to do. There are four parts to God’s answer: (1) God promises to judge the blasphemer (vv. 22-29); (2) God promises to save his remnant (vv. 30-32); (3) God promises to deliver Jerusalem (vv. 33-35); and (4) God makes clear that he does all of this for his own glory (v. 35).

First, God promises to judge the blasphemer. God turns the arrogance of Sennacherib against him (vv. 22-29). Sennacherib, in effect, has said to Hezekiah, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know what I have done to other nations? Why aren’t you afraid of me?” God, in effect, turns the whole thing around: “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you understand the infinite power at my disposal? Why aren’t you afraid to blaspheme me?”

Next, God discusses the centerpiece of Sennacherib’s argument: his recent history of military conquest. The king of Assyria has made outrageous claims: ascending mountains with his chariots, chopping down the cedars of Lebanon, drying up the Nile by merely stepping in it (vv. 24-25)! Now God pulls the curtain back and reveals the sovereignty of his rule over the nations of the earth: God asserts that all of their military successes have been preordained in his eternal plan (vv. 26-27). It is not only that they won because the gods of the nations are merely idols; they won because the God of the Jews ordained it. God ends by threatening Sennacherib with personal destruction because of his personal blasphemy. Verse 28 says that God tracks every single moment of his life and knows everything he is doing. If Sennacherib heard this prophecy and took it seriously, he should have been thoroughly unnerved. This verse is a clear threat from an omniscient and omnipotent God: God will drag him back to Assyria by the nose and there have him assassinated by his own sons.

God then offers tender words of assurance to Hezekiah and to the remnant of Judah that still survives (vv. 30-32). God promises to provide food for them as agricultural production steadily returns to normal. God’s zeal for the welfare of his people will guarantee their survival.

Next, God makes his verdict clear concerning the Assyrian army and Jerusalem. In the original language five of the clauses in verses 33-34 emphasize what Sennacherib will not do: He will not enter this city; he will not shoot an arrow here; he will not come against the city with shield; he will not build a siege ramp against it; I repeat, he will not enter this city. Instead, he will return by the way he came. The sovereign God will defend this city by himself. Often God raises up his own people—mighty warriors—to win great victories. Or sometimes God causes confusion among the enemy so that they destroy themselves. Sometimes God raises up other nations to fight the people threatening his own people. But here God does it all by himself, as he said he would do: “Then Assyria will fall, but not by human sword” (Isa 31:8).

So this is the end of the Assyrian threat. For all the terrifying power of the seemingly undefeatable army of Assyria, God’s simple word overrules all things. On the scales of human history, all the nations are like tiny weights: some weighing a gram, some weighing a tenth of a gram, some weighing a kilogram. But God weighs a trillion grams (and more!), and whatever side of the scales he comes down on, that side will win.

Finally, God reveals the motive behind all this: his own glory. Verse 35 makes plain that he will defend the city of Jerusalem for his own name’s sake. He mentions David at this point as a foretaste of the Son of David, Jesus Christ. Because of the plan he has to redeem the world through Christ, he must defend Jerusalem from the Assyrians.

The mighty words of God lead to the mighty deeds of God. The angel of the Lord is dispatched, and in one night he slaughters 185,000 Assyrian troops. This staggering slaughter is approximately the total number of troops that fought on both sides of the battle of Gettysburg! It is quite possible that God used a quick-acting plague, a fever that burned up these warriors, as Isaiah 10:16 seems to indicate. But whatever the means were, the end was clear: death. The angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is frequently the preincarnate Christ (Gen 22:11; Exod 3:2). Here it is not so clear that it was Christ, but it seems to fit with the significance of this moment. Just as Jesus would one day return in glory to destroy the antichrist in Revelation 19 and rescue his people, so he does here.

The epilogue is stunning. Not only the macro-scale (185,000 Assyrian troops dead) but so also the micro-scale: a single blasphemer cut down. God’s arm is immeasurably long; there is not a single square inch on this planet that God doesn’t rule. He moves in Sennacherib’s sons to assassinate their father while he is worshiping in the temple of his “god” Nisroch. This is the justice of God to Sennacherib: “You said I don’t have power to save my people from you; the fact is, your ‘god’ doesn’t have power to save you from me, not even on his own turf!”

Let us list some of the timeless lessons of this chapter:

Each of these deserves a full sermon!

A final word: The true tyrant threatening the people of God is sin ruling in death (Rom 5:21). God dispatches his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who defeats this terrifying foe, not by killing but by dying. To him alone be the glory.