Isaiah 36 Study Notes

36:1 The year was 701 BC. The Assyrians had defeated the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and put Judah in a position where they had to pay annual tribute to keep the Assyrians from attacking them. In 703 BC Sennacherib succeeded his father Sargon on the throne of Assyria. Many nations, including Judah, seized upon this succession in leadership as an opportunity to rebel against Assyria. After taking care of rebellions in other parts of his empire, Sennacherib turned his attention to Judah in 701 BC. He easily took many of the smaller fortified cities on the way to Jerusalem. For accounts of this confrontation, see 2Kg 18-19 and 2Ch 32.

36:2 Lachish was an important garrison city about thirty miles west of Jerusalem. Along with other cities, it guarded the road that led to Jerusalem. The king of Assyria, along with his armies, was still at Lachish when he sent his royal spokesman (perhaps a Hebrew representation of an Akkadian title “chief cupbearer”), to present an ultimatum to Jerusalem. The spokesman stood at the same place where Isaiah had confronted Ahaz at an earlier time (7:3). This reminds the reader that the earlier Judean king was told not to trust the Assyrians, but Ahaz did not heed this advice, thus leading to the present situation.

36:3 Eliakim . . . Shebna, and Joah were high-ranking Judean officials who negotiated on behalf of King Hezekiah. On Shebna and Eliakim, see note at 22:15-25.

36:4-5 The purpose of the spokesman’s speech was to try to get Hezekiah to surrender. He questioned the basis of Hezekiah’s refusal by trying to undermine the foundations of his confidence. He first questioned whether the people of Judah were militarily prepared to counter the Assyrian threat.

36:6 The royal spokesman then undermined any confidence the nation of Judah might have in Egypt as an ally. He used the metaphor of a splintered reed of a staff. A staff was something a person leaned on for support. However, this staff was made out of a reed that could not support a person’s weight. Indeed, God through Isaiah had been making the same point. Egypt was not an ally that could be trusted.

36:7 Finally, the spokesman questioned whether God would provide protection to Hezekiah. His argument shows that he did not understand the religion of Judah. Indeed, the removal of all altars except the one on Mount Zion was in conformity with the law of centralization in Dt 12. However, the spokesman had a pagan mind-set that assumed a god would be pleased with multiple altars, and conversely displeased if the number of altars were constricted.

36:8-9 The spokesman then taunted Judah by offering them two thousand horses, suggesting that they could not find riders for them.

36:10 Here the spokesman’s statement reflects ancient Near Eastern pagan theology. The Assyrians believed that the God of Israel was a real deity, though perhaps not a strong one. The spokesman claimed that Judah’s God had ordered the nation’s destruction. God did use foreign nations on occasion to punish his own people, but in this case the spokesman was wrong, as further developments of the confrontation between Assyria and Israel would indicate.

36:11 The Assyrians spoke a dialect of Akkadian, and the Judeans spoke Hebrew at this time. The spokesman probably had been speaking Hebrew to the Judean delegation. The leaders of Judah did not want the people to be frightened by the spokesman’s speech. Perhaps because they did not know how to speak Akkadian, they requested that the conversation take place in Aramaic. This language was closely related to Hebrew. It was known more broadly throughout the ancient Near East, but not by the people who were listening to this conversation.

36:12 However, it served the spokesman’s propagandistic purpose to have the people hear and be frightened by the coming Assyrian army, so he refused this request. He reminded them of the consequences of a long siege. They would run out of water and have to drink their urine; they would run out of food and have to eat their excrement.

36:13-14 Sennacherib was a “great king,” but the Lord was the king maker (Dn 2:37).

36:15 The spokesman mocked the idea of trusting in God to rescue Judah from Assyria. But as the previous chapters have asserted many times, trusting God is precisely what the people of Judah needed to do in this situation.

36:16-17 Assyria’s imperialistic policy called for the deportation of a subjugated people. The spokesman presented his ultimatum for surrender. For the time being, the Judeans would stay in their own land, but after a while, they would be deported to another land. Such a policy was put into place in 722 BC when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom and deported the vast majority of the native population and then brought in foreigners to live there. This policy was intended to break the connection between a people and the god of their land.

36:18-20 The spokesman argued that the God of Judah, Yahweh, could not save Judah any more than the gods of other nations and cities that had been defeated by Assyria. He specifically mentioned the defeat of three cities whose gods were unable to rescue their inhabitants. Arpad and Hamath were cities in northern Syria known to have been defeated by Assyria at an earlier time. The exact identification of Sepharvaim is unknown.

36:21-22 Hezekiah did not give his officials authority to negotiate with Assyria. They simply reported the proceedings to the king. Their clothes that were torn were a customary sign of mourning, showing their deep distress.