The Story of Hezekiah and the Letter in the Bible

An empire that has never lost is standing outside Jerusalem, and its spokesman is shouting up at the men on the wall in their own language so everyone can understand him.

The king of Judah does something with the threat that nobody expects. He does not answer it, and he does not hide it. He carries it into the temple and opens it out in front of God.

The Story of Hezekiah and the Letter

In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. Hezekiah sent word admitting he had offended and asking him to withdraw, and paid an enormous ransom, stripping the silver from the house of the LORD and cutting the gold off the temple doors.

It bought nothing. The king of Assyria sent officers from Lachish to Jerusalem with a great host, and Rab-shakeh stood by the conduit of the upper pool and made a speech. What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? Egypt, he said, is a bruised reed that will go into your hand and pierce it.

Then he turned the argument on God. Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? He ended with the line that made the whole thing blasphemy rather than diplomacy: who among all the gods of the countries has delivered their country out of mine hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand?

Hezekiah’s officials had asked him to speak in the Syrian language so the people on the wall would not understand. He refused, and spoke louder, in the Jews’ language. The people held their peace and answered him not a word, because the king’s commandment was to answer him not.

When Hezekiah heard it he rent his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD. He sent to Isaiah the prophet with a message that sounds like exhaustion: this day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy, for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. Isaiah sent back word not to be afraid of the words he had heard.

Then a letter came. Sennacherib wrote directly, repeating the taunt and naming more conquered gods. Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it, and went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. His prayer does not argue with the letter’s facts. It agrees with them. The kings of Assyria really have destroyed those nations and burned their gods, he says, for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Then he asks one thing: save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.

What the Story of Hezekiah and the Letter Teaches Us

Hezekiah had already tried paying. He emptied the treasury and stripped gold off the temple doors, and the army came anyway. The prayer in chapter 19 is not his first move, it is what is left after the obvious move failed, which is worth noticing before treating him as a model of instant faith.

The prayer is unusual because it concedes the enemy’s evidence. Sennacherib’s list of defeated gods was accurate, and Hezekiah says so. What he disputes is the category: those were wood and stone, and the God of Israel is not on that list.

Spreading the letter out before the LORD is one of the plainest pictures of prayer in the Old Testament. He does not summarize the threat or soften it. He puts the actual document down and leaves it open.

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