Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 19-21.

I have always wanted to write about God’s answer to Sennacherib through Isaiah, but could not figure out how to comment on the poetry Isaiah spoke in.  Today I am going to try to make my thoughts on it coherent.  In composing his message, Sennacherib thought he was belittling Hezekiah and Jerusalem, but he went beyond that.  Sennacherib told Hezekiah that God was deceiving him when He told Hezekiah that would not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.  Sennacherib told Hezekiah that the gods of other nations had failed to deliver those other nations, so therefore God would be unable to deliver Jerusalem.  God answered through Isaiah by telling Sennacherib that he did not know Who he was ridiculing and blaspheming.  That Sennacherib thought he had succeeded by his own power.  Sennacherib had reached great heights of power and thought that nothing and no one could stop him from reaching any goal to which he aspired.  God answered that by informing Sennacherib that He had planned Sennacherib’s rise to power long ago, and now He had brought it to pass.  Everything Sennacherib had accomplished was merely carrying out God’s plans.  Further God knew where Sennacherib was, and when he went out and when he went back in, and how he raged insolently against God.  This is the negative counterpart to Psalm 121. There God promised that He would watch over those who put their trust in Him.  Here what God tells Sennacherib is a warning to those who defy Him.  He says that He will put a hook in his nose and lead him back the way he had come.  For those of you who, like me, have never worked with large livestock that are manipulated by rings in their noses, I have another image that may help understand this.  I am sure you have seen videos of women, usually a mother or a wife, who grabs someone by their nose and pulls them around in a direction they did not want to go.  Imagine that, only more painful.  At some point, those who defy God will experience God putting a hook in their nose and dragging them somewhere they do not want to go.  While those of us who put our trust in Him will experience the protection described in Psalm 121.  And in both cases, it does not matter where we have gone, nor when, we will not be outside of God’s power.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.