Isaiah 37

Wesley: rent his cloaths—great men must not think it any disparagement to them, to sympathize with the injured honour of the great God. Hezekiah mourns and sends to Isaiah to pray for them.

Hezekiah’s first response is to tear his clothes, put on sackcloth, and go to the temple. Wesley notes that great men should not think it beneath them to grieve for God’s injured honor.

Calvin: when Jerusalem appears to be completely ruined, Hezekiah, being bereft of earthly assistance, betakes himself to the protection of God, and thus acknowledges that there is no other remedy for heavy distresses. He immediately betook himself to the temple in the same manner as to a place of safety. He likewise adds the outward expressions of repentance, the rending of the clothes and wearing sackcloth; adversity does not fall out to us by chance, but is the method by which God arouses us to repentance. Sackcloth and ashes will be of little avail, if they be not preceded by the inward feelings of the heart.

Wesley: Hezekiah mourns and sends to Isaiah to pray for them. Eliakim, Shebna, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth go to Isaiah after the house of the LORD in v. 1.

Hezekiah sends his chief officials and senior priests, all in sackcloth, to Isaiah. The king’s first move in the crisis is repentance and prayer.

Calvin: this message was not intended merely to invite Isaiah to join with him in lamentation, but to request some consolation from his doctrine. And indeed to no purpose shall prayers be poured into the air, if they do not rest on the word of God. It was therefore a proof of sincere piety in Hezekiah, that, while he was earnestly employed in prayer, he at the same time added a confirmation of his hope, that he might not yield to temptation. He follows the method appointed by God, when he wishes to hear God speaking by the mouth of the Prophet.

Wesley: the children—we are like a poor travailing woman in great extremity, having no strength left to help herself, and to bring forth her infant into the world. We have attempted to deliver ourselves from the Assyrian yoke; and had carried on that work to some maturity, and as we thought, brought it to the birth; but now we have no might to finish. We have begun an happy reformation, and are hindered by this insolent Assyrian, from bringing it to perfection.

Hezekiah’s image is a woman in labor without strength to deliver. Wesley reads it as a confession that every human effort has failed.

Calvin (on v. 2): the message was not intended merely to invite Isaiah to join in lamentation, but to request consolation from his doctrine. Unbelievers are exceedingly noisy in their prayers, and yet they flee from God by despising or disregarding his promises.

Wesley: for the remnant—for Judah, which is but a remnant, now the ten tribes are gone: for Jerusalem, which is but a remnant, now the defenced cities of Judah are taken.

Hezekiah asks Isaiah to pray for the remnant—Judah after the northern tribes are gone, Jerusalem after the fortified towns have fallen. The request rests on the hope that God has heard the insult to his own name.

Calvin: this word perhaps, therefore, does not imply doubt, but is equivalent to an expression which we commonly use, if it be possible, when we venture to hope and promise to ourselves something. Hezekiah was convinced that nothing is hidden from God; he only asks whether God determines to call in question the blasphemy of this filthy dog; he wishes God to hear effectually. When he desires that prayer should be offered for the remnant of the people that was left, this circumstance was fitted powerfully to move the Lord; the nearer we appear to be to destruction, so much the more warmly and earnestly ought we to implore that he would render assistance to us.

Hezekiah’s officials carry the king’s plea to Isaiah. In the crisis the king turns first to the prophet and to prayer.

Calvin: as the Prophet formerly related that the pious king had no other refuge than to consult the mouth of the Lord, so he now shews that he did not consult in vain; for he received the consolation which he desired. Instructed by this example, if we seek relief from him by pouring our cares and anxieties into the bosom of God, our hope shall never be disappointed.

Wesley notes that the history is inserted here to explain and confirm some of the foregoing predictions.

The first word from the LORD is “Don’t be afraid.” God takes the insults personally—they were aimed at him, not merely at Hezekiah—and he will answer them himself.

Calvin: Isaiah begins by saying that he gives the reply in the name of God. Fear not: when he bids him “not fear,” he exhorts Hezekiah to be of a courageous or, at least, a calm disposition; all who trust in God, and expect from him deliverance from their distresses, rise superior to all fears by the exercise of patience. He plainly declares that God conducts his own cause which he has undertaken to defend. By calling them servants, he presents in a stronger light the baseness of the action.

Wesley (on v. 6): he comforts them, v. 6, 7.

God promises a rumor that will send Sennacherib home, and a sword that will find him there. Both are fulfilled at the end of the chapter (vv. 9, 37–38).

Calvin: it is a highly appropriate metaphor that there is in the hand of God a wind or whirlwind to drive Sennacherib in another direction. To compare wicked men to straw or chaff is a mode of expression frequently employed in Scripture, because God easily drives them wherever he thinks proper. Others translate it, “I will put my Spirit in him,” as if the Prophet were speaking of a secret influence of the heart; but that is a forced interpretation. This is the wind by the raising of which Sennacherib was suddenly driven away; for a report which he heard about the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia constrained him to return to his own country. He who subdued other men’s cities and kingdoms shall not be able to defend his own country, but shall be destroyed and perish in it.

Wesley: returned—to the king, to give him an account of the treaty; leaving behind him the army under the other commanders.

Rabshakeh returns to report while the army stays behind. Sennacherib has moved on from Lachish to Libnah, still campaigning in Judah.

Calvin: he now declares how Rabshakeh, without doing anything, returned to his king, not to the same place where he had left him; for he understood that he had raised the siege of Lachish, and had departed into Egypt for the purpose of attacking Libnah. Though God restrained the violence of the tyrant by a new war, in order to give some relief to the Jews, yet he did not wish to conquer the tyrant by the hand of man, but only to shew openly and, as it were, to display on a theater his unconquerable pride.

Wesley: Sennacherib, called away against the king of Ethiopia, sends a blasphemous letter to Hezekiah.

Rumor of Tirhakah’s army draws Sennacherib away, as Isaiah had said (v. 7), but he sends a letter to keep up the pressure. The threat moves from the wall to the page.

Calvin: from what follows we may conjecture the reason why the king of Assyria suddenly departed from Judea; for the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia had formed a league with each other against Sennacherib. These kings did not intend to provide for the safety of Judea at their own loss, but looked to themselves. The king of Assyria, being involved in so hazardous a war, sends messengers to Hezekiah, to induce him by terrors and threatenings to surrender. His rage and cruelty, indeed, are not abated, but are restrained so that they can do no harm.

Sennacherib now calls God himself a deceiver. The insult sets up Hezekiah’s prayer: the question is no longer only Jerusalem’s safety but the honor of the LORD’s name.

Calvin: how shocking is this blasphemy, to speak of God the Author of truth, and to accuse him of falsehood and deceit, as if he actually imposed on his people! What is left to God when his truth is taken away, for nothing is more absolutely his own? These promises, therefore, the tyrant meets by this blasphemy,—“Let not thy God deceive thee.” And thus he exalts himself against God, as if God were not sufficiently powerful to defend Jerusalem, and as if his own power were greater, not only than all the power of men, but even than the power of God himself.

The letter repeats the argument from Assyria’s record: every other land fell, so why not Jerusalem? It leaves God out of the reckoning.

Calvin: here we ought to observe a twofold comparison; for he compares Hezekiah to other kings of Judah who preceded him, because he was inferior to them, and yet they were vanquished by the kings of Assyria; and Sennacherib, on the other hand, having obtained greater power than all the rest, is more daring and insolent. The other comparison is that of the kings of Assyria, and Sennacherib himself, with the idols of the nations; for if the idols could not protect the nations that adored them, consequently neither will the God of Israel defend the nation by which he is adored.

Calvin refuses to let “shall you be delivered?” be weighed with idols.

Wesley observes that the history runs almost word for word with 2 Kings 19.

Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Eden were conquests, and their gods had failed. The list is accurate as history and false as theology.

Calvin: Gozan. This place is mentioned in 2 Kings 17:6, and 18:11. We may infer that it was a town in Media; it is enough that, with regard to Jerusalem, it lay in an easterly direction. Haran is often mentioned in Scripture; it is more generally believed to have been in Mesopotamia, and this is confirmed by the journeyings of Abraham. He endeavors to prove this by examples, because he has vanquished nations which were under the protection of other gods, and draws an argument from the power of his ancestors,—“They conquered the gods of other nations, and I am far superior to my ancestors; therefore the God of Israel will not conquer me.”

Wesley: Sennacherib sends a blasphemous letter to Hezekiah. Where is the king of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, or Ivvah?

The letter lists kings who have vanished, meaning the king of Judah will be next. It is a threat built on Assyria’s track record.

Calvin: thus do wicked men commonly exalt themselves more and more in prosperity, so that at length they forget that they are men, and not only claim for themselves, but even think that they surpass, Divine Majesty. Setting aside all distinction between right and wrong, satisfied with the mere power of doing injury, they glory in their own crimes and those of their ancestors. If Satan taunt us with the destruction of many nations, we must attend to the difference of our condition; because, although we are liable to similar calamities, still we have assured hope of our salvation, of which they are destitute.

Calvin does not let “where is the king” pass as one more idol-proof.