Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Angel of Yahweh Went Out
Isaiah 37:21-38
21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Yahweh, the God of Israel says, ‘Because you have prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, · WEB
An empire is told it was a tool all along, and is led home by the nose.
The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and ridiculed you. The daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at you Isaiah 37:22.
The answer opens with contempt, and the one doing the laughing is the city under siege. Its walls are surrounded and it is described as a girl tossing her head at him.
Whom have you defied and blasphemed?... Against the Holy One of Israel Isaiah 37:23.
With the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains... I will cut down its tall cedars Isaiah 37:24.
The Assyrian's boast is quoted back to him, and it is the boast of chapter ten — logging, conquest, rivers dried up by walking through them.
Have you not heard how I have done it long ago, and formed it in ancient times? Now I have brought it to pass, that it should be yours to destroy fortified cities Isaiah 37:26.
The reply, and it is the theological center of the narrative. Every conquest the empire is proud of was assigned to it. What Assyria experienced as its own competence was a commission issued long before, and the reason its victims had little power Isaiah 37:27 is stated in the same breath.
But I know your sitting down, your going out, your coming in, and your raging against me Isaiah 37:28.
The phrasing is the hundred and thirty-ninth psalm's Psalms 139:2, applied to an emperor. Nothing about him is unobserved.
Therefore I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way by which you came Isaiah 37:29.
The image is what Assyrian reliefs show being done to prisoners — a ring through the lip, a rope, a man led. The empire that led nations away on hooks is turned around on one.
This shall be the sign to you: You will eat this year that which grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from it; and in the third year sow and reap Isaiah 37:30.
The sign is agricultural and it is a promise about time. Two years of eating what comes up on its own — the fields have not been sown because of the invasion — and in the third year, normal farming. It is a guarantee that there will be a third year.
The remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward Isaiah 37:31.
He will not come to this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither will he come before it with shield, nor cast up a mound against it Isaiah 37:33.
Four specific military actions ruled out, and none of them happened. The Assyrian records list forty-six towns of Judah taken and Hezekiah shut up like a bird in a cage — and no capture of the cage.
Then Yahweh's angel went out and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies Isaiah 37:36.
One verse. No description of how, and the whole account is written from the point of view of people who woke up and looked.
As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him with the sword Isaiah 37:38.
The end came twenty years later, in a temple, at the hands of his own children — and the god he was worshiping is named, which is the account's last comment on the argument at the wall.
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