What answer does Ezechias receive after spreading Sennacherib’s letter before the Lord?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Isaias sends word that the Lord has heard his prayer. The answer promises Jerusalem’s protection, the Assyrian king’s return by the way he came, and a sign for Ezechias and Juda’s remaining people. That night an angel kills 185,000 in the Assyrian camp; Sennacherib returns to Ninive and is later killed by two of his sons.

Chapter breakdown

When Ezechias hears the words, he tears his garments, covers himself with sackcloth and enters the Lord’s house. He sends Eliacim, who is over the house, Sobna the scribe and the elders of the priests, covered in sackcloth, to Isaias the prophet, son of Amos. They give Ezechias’s message: this is a day of trouble, rebuke and blasphemy, like children coming to birth when the woman in labour has no strength.

The message says it may be that the Lord, Isaias’s God, will hear all the words of Rabsaces, whom his master, the Assyrian king, has sent to reproach the living God and to reprove with words the Lord has heard. It asks Isaias to offer prayer for the remnants that are found. Ezechias’s servants come to Isaias.

Isaias tells them to give their master the Lord’s answer: he should not fear the words he has heard, by which the Assyrian king’s servants have blasphemed the Lord. The Lord says he will send a spirit upon the king; the king will hear a message and return to his own country, and the Lord will make him fall by the sword in his own country.

Rabsaces returns and finds the Assyrian king besieging Lobna, for he has heard that the king has left Lachis. The king hears that Tharaca, king of Ethiopia, has come out to fight him. As he goes against him, he sends messengers to Ezechias.

The messengers are to tell Ezechias, king of Juda, not to let the God he trusts deceive him or to say Jerusalem will not be given into the Assyrian king’s hands. The message says he has heard how Assyria’s kings laid all countries waste and asks whether he alone can be delivered. It asks whether the gods saved any of those the king’s fathers destroyed: Gozan, Haran, Reseph and the children of Eden in Thelassar. It asks where the kings of Emath, Arphad, the city of Sepharvaim, Ana and Ava are. These challenges are the king’s message to Ezechias.

Ezechias receives the letter from the messengers and reads it. He goes up to the Lord’s house and spreads it before the Lord.

Ezechias prays before the Lord, addressing the Lord God of Israel who sits upon the cherubims as alone the God of all the kings of the earth and the maker of heaven and earth. He asks him to incline his ear and hear, to open his eyes and see, and to hear all Sennacherib’s words reproaching the living God. He acknowledges that Assyria’s kings have destroyed nations and all their lands and cast their gods into fire. He says these were not gods but things made by human hands from wood and stone, which the Assyrians destroyed. He asks the Lord their God to save them from Sennacherib’s hand so that all the earth’s kingdoms may know he is the Lord, the only God.

Isaias, son of Amos, sends Ezechias the Lord God of Israel’s word that he has heard the prayer concerning Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians. The word describes the virgin daughter of Sion despising him and laughing him to scorn, and the daughter of Jerusalem shaking her head behind his back. It asks whom he has reproached and blasphemed, against whom he has raised his voice and lifted his eyes high: the holy one of Israel.

The answer says Sennacherib has reproached the Lord through his servants and has boasted of going with many chariots to the mountains’ height and the top of Libanus. In that boast he has cut down its tall cedars and choice fir trees and entered its furthest parts and the forest of its Carmel.

Challoner explains Carmel as a pleasant, fruitful hill in the forest. The note says these expressions are figurative: the names of mountains and forests signify the kings and provinces over which the Assyrians had triumphed.

The boast continues with cutting down, drinking strange waters and drying all the shut-up waters with the soles of his feet. The Lord’s answer asks whether he has heard what the Lord has done from the beginning and formed from days of old, now bringing it into effect: fenced cities of fighting men turned into heaps of ruins.

Challoner explains that the exploits in which the king takes pride are no more than what the Lord decreed, to be attributed to the Lord’s will and ordinance rather than the king’s wisdom or strength. The note says the Lord gave him the taking and destruction of so many fenced cities and the carrying of terror wherever he came. A second explanation says heaps of ruin literally means ruin of the hills. These are the note’s explanations.

The answer describes the inhabitants as weak of hand, trembling and confounded, like field grass and the green herb on house tops that withers before maturity. The Lord says he already knew the king’s dwelling, going out, coming in, way and rage against him. Because the king has raged against him and his pride has reached his ears, he will put a ring in his nose and a bit between his lips and turn him back by the way he came.

Ezechias is given a sign: this year he is to eat what he finds; in the second year, what springs up of itself; in the third year, he is to sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. What remains of the house of Juda will take root downward and bear fruit upward. A remnant will go out from Jerusalem, and those saved from mount Sion; the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The Lord’s word about the Assyrian king says he will not enter the city, shoot an arrow into it, come before it with a shield or cast a trench around it. He will return by the way he came and will not enter the city. The Lord says he will protect and save the city for his own sake and for David his servant’s sake.

That night an angel of the Lord comes and kills 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. The account says that when he rises early in the morning, he sees all the dead bodies. Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, departs, returns to Ninive and lives there.

While Sennacherib worships in the temple of Nesroch his god, his sons Adramelech and Sarasar kill him with the sword. They flee to the land of the Armenians. His son Asarhaddon reigns in his place.

The story inside

Ezechias’s hearing of the words leads to torn garments, sackcloth, entry to the Lord’s house and a delegation to Isaias. His message describes distress with the childbirth image and asks prayer for the remnant while saying it may be the Lord will hear Rabsaces’s reproaches. Isaias first relays the Lord’s assurance not to fear and the promise of a spirit, a heard message, return and death by sword in the king’s own country. Rabsaces finds the Assyrian king at Lobna after his departure from Lachis. The news of Tharaca’s coming to fight is followed by another message to Ezechias questioning rescue and naming destroyed peoples and absent kings. Ezechias receives and reads the letter, spreads it before the Lord and prays. He acknowledges the Assyrians’ destruction of nations and their man-made gods while asking rescue so all kingdoms may know the Lord as the only God. Isaias’s answer explicitly says this prayer has been heard. It describes Sion’s scorn, names the holy one of Israel as the target of the reproach and answers the king’s boasts about chariots, trees and waters with what the Lord formed from old. The king’s rage and pride are followed by the promised ring, bit and reversal of his journey. Challoner separately explains Carmel’s figurative kings and provinces, the attribution of exploits to decree rather than the king’s strength, and ruin of the hills. The sign gives three distinct years of eating, then sowing, reaping and vineyard planting, followed by the remnant’s rooting and fruiting. The city promise excludes entry, arrow, shield and trench and names the Lord’s own sake and David’s sake as reasons for protection. That night the angel kills 185,000 in the camp. Sennacherib returns and lives in Ninive; the later account of his worship in Nesroch’s temple ends with death by two sons’ swords, their flight and another son’s succession. The stated promises and events are retained without adding a universal guarantee that prayer or an empire’s pride must always end this way.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Ezechias’s prayer answers the letter’s comparison with particular words. He agrees that Assyria destroyed nations and burned their gods, but says the gods were wood and stone made by human hands. He asks rescue so all kingdoms may know the Lord as the only God. Isaias’s answer says the prayer about Sennacherib has been heard; this is the chapter’s stated prayer and answer.
2
The sign has three distinct stages. This year Ezechias is to eat what he finds, the next year what springs up by itself, and the third year he is to sow, reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. The remnant of Juda is described as rooting downward and bearing fruit upward, with people coming from Jerusalem and mount Sion through the Lord of hosts’ zeal. Keeping the sequence preserves more than a general promise of recovery.
3
The promised protection and the ending are concrete. The Assyrian king is not to enter, shoot an arrow, come with a shield or cast a trench around the city; he is to return by his route. The angel’s camp deaths number 185,000. Sennacherib returns to Ninive, where two named sons later kill him as he worships Nesroch; they flee, and Asarhaddon succeeds. The account supplies those outcomes without giving the sons’ motives or the date of the killing.

Test your recall

How does Ezechias respond to the letter, why does Isaias say the prayer has been heard, what does each of the three years in the sign require, and how do the king’s return and death follow the earlier promise?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 40302–40321
4 Kings Chapter 19 Ezechias is assured of God’s help by Isaias the prophet. The king of the Assyrians still threateneth and blasphemeth. Ezechias prayeth, and God promiseth to protect Jerusalem. An angel destroyeth the army of the Assyrians, their king returneth to Nineve, and is slain by his two sons. 19:1. And when king Ezechias heard these words, he rent his garments, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord. 19:2. And he sent Eliacim, who was over the house, and Sobna, the scribe, and the ancients of the priests, covered with sackcloths, to Isaias, the prophet, the son of Amos. 19:3. And they said to him: Thus saith Ezechias: This day is a day of tribulation, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: the children are come to the birth, and the woman in travail hath not strength.
Lines 40322–40328
19:4. It may be the Lord, thy God, will hear all the words of Rabsaces, whom the king of the Assyrians, his master, hath sent to reproach the living God, and to reprove with words, which the Lord, thy God, hath heard: and do thou offer prayer for the remnants that are found. 19:5. So the servants of king Ezechias came to Isaias.
Lines 40329–40336
19:6. And Isaias said to them: Thus shall you say to your master: Thus saith the Lord: Be not afraid for the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of the Assyrians have blasphemed me. 19:7. Behold I will send a spirit upon him, and he shall hear a message, and shall return into his own country, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own country.
Lines 40337–40343
19:8. And Rabsaces returned, and found the king of the Assyrians besieging Lobna: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachis. 19:9. And when he heard of Tharaca, king of Ethiopia: Behold, he is come out to fight with thee: and was going against him, he sent messengers to Ezechias, saying:
Lines 40344–40358
19:10. Thus shall you say to Ezechias, king of Juda: Let not thy God deceive thee, in whom thou trustest: and do not say: Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hands of the king of the Assyrians. 19:11. Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of the Assyrians have done to all countries, how they have laid them waste: and canst thou alone be delivered? 19:12. Have the gods of the nations delivered any of them, whom my fathers have destroyed, to wit, Gozan, and Haran, and Reseph, and the children of Eden, that were in Thelassar? 19:13. Where is the king of Emath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, and of Ana, and of Ava?
Lines 40359–40362
19:14. And when Ezechias had received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and had read it, he went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord,
Lines 40363–40381
19:15. And he prayed in his sight, saying: O Lord God of Israel, who sittest upon the cherubims, thou alone art the God of all the kings of the earth: thou madest heaven and earth: 19:16. Incline thy ear, and hear: open, O Lord, thy eyes and see: and hear all the words of Sennacherib, who hath sent to upbraid unto us the living God. 19:17. Of a truth, O Lord, the kings of the Assyrians have destroyed nations, and the lands of them all. 19:18. And they have cast their gods into the fire: for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, of wood and stone, and they destroyed them. 19:19. Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord, the only God.
Lines 40382–40393
19:20. And Isaias, the son of Amos, sent to Ezechias, saying: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: I have heard the prayer thou hast made to me concerning Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians. 19:21. This is the word that the Lord hath spoken of him: The virgin, the daughter of Sion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn: the daughter of Jerusalem hath wagged her head behind thy back. 19:22. Whom hast thou reproached, and whom hast thou blasphemed? against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thy eyes on high? against the holy one of Israel.
Lines 40394–40399
19:23. By the hand of thy servants thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said: With the multitude of my chariots I have gone up to the height of the mountains, to the top of Libanus, and have cut down its tall cedars, and its choice fir trees. And I have entered into the furthest parts thereof, and the forest of its Carmel.
Lines 40400–40403
Carmel.... A pleasant fruitful hill in the forest. These expressions are figurative, signifying under the names of mountains and forests, the kings and provinces whom the Assyrians had triumphed over.
Lines 40404–40410
19:24. I have cut down, and I have drunk strange waters, and have dried up with the soles of my feet all the shut up waters. 19:25. Hast thou not heard what I have done from the beginning? from the days of old I have formed it, and now I have brought it to effect: that fenced cities of fighting men should be turned to heaps of ruins:
Lines 40411–40417
I have formed it, etc.... All thy exploits, in which thou takest pride, are no more than what I have decreed; and are not to be ascribed to thy wisdom or strength, but to my will and ordinance: who have given to thee to take and destroy so many fenced cities, and to carry terror wherever thou comest.—Ibid. Heaps of ruin.... Literally ruin of the hills.
Lines 40418–40428
19:26. And the inhabitants of them were weak of hand, they trembled and were confounded, they became like the grass of the field, and the green herb on the tops of houses, which withered before it came to maturity. 19:27. Thy dwelling, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy way I knew before, and thy rage against me. 19:28. Thou hast been mad against me, and thy pride hath come up to my ears: therefore I will put a ring in thy nose, and a bit between thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.
Lines 40429–40440
19:29. And to thee, O Ezechias, this shall be a sign: Eat this year what thou shalt find: and in the second year, such things as spring of themselves: but in the third year sow and reap: plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. 19:30. And whatsoever shall be left of the house of Juda, shall take root downward, and bear fruit upward. 19:31. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and that which shall be saved out of mount Sion: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this.
Lines 40441–40450
19:32. Wherefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of the Assyrians: He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow into it, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a trench about it. 19:33. By the way that he came he shall return: and into this city he shall not come, saith the Lord. 19:34. And I will protect this city, and will save it for my own sake, and for David, my servant’s sake.
Lines 40451–40458
19:35. And it came to pass that night, that an angel of the Lord came, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when he arose early in the morning, he saw all the bodies of the dead. 19:36. And Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, departing, went away, and he returned and abode in Ninive.
Lines 40459–40464
19:37. And as he was worshipping in the temple of Nesroch, his god, Adramelech and Sarasar, his sons, slew him with the sword, and they fled into the land of the Armenians, and Asarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead.