Sennacherib Attacks Judah

                                                                         2 Kings 18:13-25

 

November 2, 2021

 

 

 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.  And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.  And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house.   At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria.   And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Washer's Field.   And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.

And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours?   Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?   Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.   But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it, not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem”?   Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses if you are able on your part to set riders on them.   How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?   Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”’”

What has happened, is this the same King that we read earlier these words; “And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done.”  Tomorrow we will get the rest of the story.  This we know something has changed and God does not change.

 

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice