1. The Assyrian threat chs. 36-37

In chapters 7-8 Isaiah tried to persuade King Ahaz to trust God in the face of the Syro-Ephraimitic threat against Judah. Ahaz refused to do so and instead turned to Assyria for help, with disastrous results. Ahaz's son, Hezekiah, faced a similar challenge during his reign, but this time the threat came from Assyria. Hezekiah learned from his father's failure and from Isaiah's preaching, made the right choice, and trusted the Lord. The result was deliverance. Thus chapters 36-37 contrast with chapters 7-8.

"Here we are presented with a historical test to demonstrate once and for all whether Jehovah is the one true God, the Sovereign over all the earth."³⁴⁶

". . . chapters 36-37 put the rock of history under the fabric of eschatology."³⁴⁷

"This is history at its best, no dull recital of statistics and dates but an account which enables us to sense the haughty arrogance of the Assyrian and the chilling clutch of despair at the hearts of the Israelites."³⁴⁸

 The Rabshakeh's challenge 36:1-37:7

This section demonstrates Hezekiah's commitment to God, but the next one (37:8-35) shows an even stronger commitment by the king to commit his own fate and the fate of his people to God. The present section stresses Assyrian pride and its result: divine judgment (cf. 10:15-19).³⁴⁹

 King Hezekiah's challenge 37:8-35

 The Lord's deliverance 37:36-38

Isaiah had predicted that God would break Assyria's power in the Promised Land (14:24-27). This short section records how He miraculously fulfilled that promise. This divine act of massive proportions settled the issue of Assyria's fate and provided the crowning demonstration that Yahweh controls world history. He will always fulfill His promises.

37:36 The Lord Himself slew 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers in one night. Evidently this was an act of the angel of the Lord similar to the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn before the Exodus (Exod. 12:12-13, 23; cf. 2 Sam. 24:1, 15-16; Luke 12:20).³⁶⁹The verb "to smite"implies smiting with a disease.³⁷⁰

37:37 Sennacherib, the great "king of Assyria"(cf. 36:4, 13), then returned to Assyria having lost a large part of his army and having heard a rumor about the advancing Ethiopian king (vv. 7-9). He lived in Nineveh for 20 years before his death, and he conducted other military campaigns, but none in Palestine.

37:38 Ironically, it was while worshipping in the temple of his idol in Nineveh that God affected Sennacherib's assassination, whereas it was while worshipping the true God in His temple in Jerusalem that God moved to spare Hezekiah's life. The Babylonian royal chronicles recorded the assassination of Sennacherib and the accession of Esarhaddon in 681 B.C.³⁷¹It was not the Assyrian way to record their national disasters, so it is understandable that archaeologists have discovered no Assyrian accounts of Sennacherib's humiliations.