Biblion Bible Commentary
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Sennacherib at the Wall
2 Chronicles 32:1-23
1 After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, entered into Judah, encamped against the fortified cities, and intended to win them for himself. · WEB
The invasion arrives immediately after the reform, and the propaganda outside the wall attacks the reform as the reason for the danger.
The opening clause is deliberately jarring. After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came 2 Chronicles 32:1.
Not despite. The faithfulness is named, the invasion follows it, and no explanation is offered for the sequence. This book has spent thirty chapters showing seeking rewarded and forsaking punished, and here it records the most thorough reformer since Solomon facing the largest army in the world immediately afterward. The pattern is not a formula, and the writer does not pretend it is.
Hezekiah's response is entirely practical. Springs stopped so the besiegers find no water; the broken wall rebuilt and raised; a second wall outside it; weapons made in quantity; captains appointed 2 Chronicles 32:3–6. Prayer comes later in the chapter, and it does not replace any of this.
His speech at the gate is short and its argument is a comparison of resources. There is a greater one with us than with him. An arm of flesh is with him, but Yahweh our God is with us 2 Chronicles 32:7–8. And the effect is recorded in an unusual phrase: the people rested themselves on the words of Hezekiah.
The Assyrian message is a work of propaganda and repays close reading, because its central argument is aimed at the reform itself. Hasn't the same Hezekiah taken away his high places and his altars, and commanded Judah and Jerusalem, saying, 'You shall worship before one altar, and you shall burn incense on it'? 2 Chronicles 32:12.
The demolition of the shrines is presented to the people on the wall as evidence that their king has stripped them of protection. The most obedient act of the reign is turned into the accusation. It is a shrewd line precisely because it appeals to the instinct the reform was built to correct — that more altars mean more safety.
The rest is an argument from precedent, repeated four times: no god of any nation delivered its people, how much less will your God deliver you 2 Chronicles 32:15. The reasoning is sound if its premise holds, and the premise is stated in the writer's own summary of the mistake: they spoke of the God of Jerusalem as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the work of men's hands 2 Chronicles 32:19.
That is the error the song at the ark had named centuries earlier — the gods of the peoples are idols, but Yahweh made the heavens 1 Chronicles 16:26. Sennacherib's induction from many cases is undone by the fact that his sample contained nothing of the kind he now faces.
The answer is given in one verse and there is no battle in it. A king and a prophet prayed because of this, and cried to heaven 2 Chronicles 32:20; an angel is sent; the officers of the camp are cut off; and the king goes home with shame of face and is killed by his own sons in the temple of his god 2 Chronicles 32:21.
The man who had asked which god could deliver anyone was murdered in the house of the one he trusted.
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