The secret of the trusting weak against the strong
2 Kings 19:20-37
Last week, we saw Hezekiah’s growing trust of God as he took steps, albeit tentative, towards Him. Today, we hear God’s answer, His perspective, and learn about His character. This immediately raises the question for us: what kind of image do we carry in our hearts about God? Are we worried that His anger is just simmering away under the surface ready to mark our every sin? Do we see Him as a loving God who makes all problems go away? How do we cope when they do not? Is He an inscrutable, even capricious, God whose actions make no sense to us? Is He ineffectual, a God who cannot change the world and does He even care about us? These are important questions because when life becomes overwhelming and we need help beyond ourselves we will only turn to God if we believe we can trust Him.
The secret of the weak against the strong
God’s answer to Hezekiah’s plea is ‘I have heard you’ (2 Kings 19:20). The cries of those in need are not ignored by the Lord. Isaiah’s prophecy starts surprisingly with an image of Zion (Jerusalem) mocking the great king of Assyria (2 Kings 19:21): the weak thumbing their nose at the powerful. What is the secret of such confidence? It is the implicit conviction that God is on their side. It is the pattern throughout Scripture of the helpless and the insignificant shaming the mighty and the proud (cf. 1 Cor 1:26-31) because they trust in God and overcome. There is no greater humiliation for the arrogant than to be defeated by a foe considered negligible. The key issue is that Assyria’s boastful pride in its achievements (note all the ‘I-statements’ in vv.23-24) usurps God’s place and authority (2 Kings 19:22-24).
God’s sovereignty and commitment
In reality, God is sovereign over all the nations. Thus, He allowed Assyria’s conquests, even planned it a while back (2 Kings 19:25-26)[1] and is not ignorant of the Assyrian king’s arrogance (2 Kings 19:27-28). Reminiscent of the practice of pulling captives along with a chain attached to a ring in their nose, or perhaps leading dumb beasts where the owner wants them to go, God will impose His will even on the most powerful (v.28). His sovereignty will extend to providing food for his people until normal agricultural cycles can be resumed but this will only be a token sign of His greater concern to restore Judah to flourishing again (2 Kings 19:29-30). His zeal for His people (2 Kings 19:31) shows that He cares for their wellbeing. Assyria cannot harm Jerusalem because God is its defender for His own sake and for David’s sake (2 Kings 19:32-34).[2] Thus, the Lord remembers His commitments (here the covenant with David) and is faithful to them. How God decimated the Assyrian army is left unsaid (a plague perhaps?), but the point is God’s sovereignty in saving His people (2 Kings 19:35-36). Ironically, the Assyrian king belittled Israel’s God, yet his own god could not save him from assassination in his own temple (2 Kings 19:37)![3]
The God we serve: willing and able to help
More than anything, this passage underlines that God is both able and willing to help when we cry out to Him. He hears us and such hearing in the Hebrew is never a passive listening only but involves an active response. Even when the answer is not what we hope for, we can know that the Lord does not sit idly while we struggle. Neither is God limited in His sphere of influence; He can shape circumstances and move even non-believers, world leaders, and other powerful figures opposed to Him to do just what He wants. No situation is out of His control. He is also zealous for His people and is committed to us. In Israel’s day, it was for the sake of David, today it is for the sake of the Son of David, the Son after God’s own heart, Jesus Christ. Jesus entered into our human weakness and gave us an example of what it means to trust God’s power rather than our own strength. He also showed us the depth of God’s commitment to break the power of sin and death over us. This is the God we serve. May we fix this image of God in our hearts and minds and trust Him with all our circumstances.
[1] Isaiah warned Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, of the Assyrian danger some thirty odd years earlier. He illustrated Ahaz’s misplaced trust using the imagery of two rivers. Judah and its king rejected the gentle stream of Shiloah (probably a reference to Siloam by Jerusalem), which stands for God’s help (Isa 8:6). Instead, Ahaz allied himself with Assyria trusting its power more than God (2 Kings 16:7-9). However, Isaiah prophesied that Assyria would conquer Judah (symbolised by the flooding of the Euphrates River sweeping into Judah and coming up to the neck, i.e. Jerusalem; Isa 8:7-8).
[2] Sennacherib’s Annals (also known as the Taylor Prism, after Colonel Robert Taylor who found it in 1830 in Nineveh) are written on a clay hexagon and describe the Assyrian king’s campaign against Judah (ANET, 287-88), the conquest of 46 cities, as well as Hezekiah’s tribute. Famously, Sennacherib refers to Hezekiah as ‘a caged bird’ whom he shut into Jerusalem. There is no mention of taking Jerusalem, which corroborates the evidence from the biblical account. That the Assyrian king would not go into the details of his humiliating setback is in keeping with ancient Near Eastern sources that focused on victories and neglected to include defeats. The biblical accounts with their references to where the kings of Israel and Judah went wrong and their subsequent failures are unusual.
[3] Lissa M. Wray Beal, 1 & 2 Kings, AOTC 9 (Nottingham: Apollos, 2014), 473. Although the assassination of Sennacherib is not recorded elsewhere, his youngest son, Esarhaddon came to the throne amid turmoil over the succession, which makes his father’s assassination plausible. Esarhaddon describes in The Prisms of Esarhaddon and of Ashurbanipal (ANET, 289-90) how he was chosen by his father to rule and how his brothers fought against him to take over the kingship. There is also a potential hint of Sennacherib’s violent death in the annals of Ashurbanipal (ANET, 288), his grandson. He tells of enemies who plotted against him whom he defeated and mentions in that context how he also took revenge on his enemies for ‘smashing’ his grandfather, Sennacherib.
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