Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 36-38.
I love the various accounts of Sennacherib’s aborted invasion of the Kingdom of Judah. Today I want to look at how Sennacherib’s field commander pretended at first to have some respect for God, while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding about what God commanded His people. Often today the enemies of those who serve God use similar tactics. First, he refers to the Pharaoh of Egypt “splintered reed of a staff,” echoing the warnings prophets repeatedly gave against relying on Egypt. Then he questions Hezekiah’s claim that God would defend Jerusalem based on the fact that Hezekiah had dismantled the shrines throughout the land in order to insist that people worship God in Jerusalem. This shows that the field commander is not aware of God’s command to the Israelites that they worship Him at a central location. However, when Hezekiah’s advisors asked him to speak in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, he reacts by calling to the people on the wall that no other god was able to save their people, therefore God will be unable to save His people. By doing this, the field commander reveals that his original argument questioning Hezekiah’s faith was disingenuous. He did not believe that God would hold Hezekiah’s actions against Hezekiah because he did not believe God had any power. In the same way, many people today make arguments against how Christians practice their faith based on a misunderstanding of what Christians believe, and then reveal they don’t actually think the argument matters anyway because they do not believe that God exists. Sennacherib followed up his field commander’s blasphemy with a letter supporting it. God responded to the arrogance of the Assyrians by reminding His people that He had planned, and had His prophets declare, their actions long before they had arisen as a power.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
