A few years after Samaria fell and the kingdom of Israel was led into exile, the Assyrians turned their attention to Judah where Hezekiah was reigning (after his father Ahaz died) and Isaiah the prophet was preaching God’s message. Sennacherib the ruthless commander of the Assyrian army,
This would surely have meant the immediate fall of Jerusalem, and Judah would have gone the same way as the northern kingdom. The Assyrians, however, were not to have their way. It would be many years later, under a new superpower
This reprieve for Judah was God’s response to the humility and righteousness of Hezekiah the king and of Isaiah the prophet. Under their combined leadership Judah was purged of evil. The LORD therefore saved the small kingdom, weak as it was, against the might of Sennacherib’s army. Sennacherib demonstrated that he was a master of warfare both psychological and material. He made the serious mistake, however, of boasting against the LORD. So the LORD’s angelic warriors showed him, in one dreadful night, that the power of God, not Assyria,
When everything looks as grim as it can possibly look, you do what Hezekiah did. "He spread it before the LORD. Then Hezekiah prayed to the LORD" It worked for Hezekiah. "Indeed for peace I had this bitterness, but you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit".
"But as for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not bow to my yoke, forty-six of his strong walled towns, and innumerable smaller villages in their neighbourhood, I besieged and conquered by stamping down earth ramps and then by bring up battering rams, by the assault of foot soldiers, by breaches, by tunnelling and military engineering operations. I made to come out from them 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, innumerable horses, mules, donkeys, camels, large and small cattle, and counted them as spoils of war. He himself I shut up like a caged bird within Jerusalem his royal city. As for Hezekiah, the awful splendour of my lordship
(From Sennacherib’s inscription on a