29. tumult--insolence.
hook in ... nose--Like a wild beast led by a ring through the nose, he shall be forced back to his own country (compare [Job 41:1], 2; [Eze 19:4]; ; ). In a bas-relief of Khorsabad, captives are led before the king by a cord attached to a hook, or ring, passing through the under lip or the upper lip, and nose.
30. Addressed to Hezekiah.
sign--a token which, when fulfilled, would assure him of the truth of the whole prophecy as to the enemy's overthrow. The two years, in which they were sustained by the spontaneous growth of the earth, were the two in which Judea had been already ravaged by Sennacherib ([Is 32:10]). Thus translate: "Ye did eat (the first year) such as groweth of itself, and in the second year that ... but in this third year sow ye," &c., for in this year the land shall be delivered from the foe. The fact that Sennacherib moved his camp away immediately after shows that the first two years refer to the past, not to the future [Rosenmuller]. Others, referring the first two years to the future, get over the difficulty of Sennacherib's speedy departure, by supposing that year to have been the sabbatical year, and the second year the jubilee; no indication of this appears in the context.
31. remnant--Judah remained after the ten tribes were carried away; also those of Judah who should survive Sennacherib's invasion are meant.
33. with shields--He did come near it, but was not allowed to conduct a proper siege.
bank--a mound to defend the assailants in attacking the walls.
34. (See [Is 37:29], ; [Is 29:5-8]).
35. I will defend--Notwithstanding Hezekiah's measures of defense ([2Ch 32:3-5]), Jehovah was its true defender.
mine own sake--since Jehovah's name was blasphemed by Sennacherib ([Is 37:23]).
David's sake--on account of His promise to David ([Psa 132:17], ), and to Messiah, the heir of David's throne ([Is 9:7]; ).
36. Some attribute the destruction to the agency of the plague (see on [Is 33:24]), which may have caused Hezekiah's sickness, narrated immediately after; but [Is 33:1], , proves that the Jews spoiled the corpses, which they would not have dared to do, had there been on them infection of a plague. The secondary agency seems, from [Is 29:6]; , to have been a storm of hail, thunder, and lightning (compare [Ex 9:22-25]). The simoon belongs rather to Africa and Arabia than Palestine, and ordinarily could not produce such a destructive effect. Some few of the army, as [2Ch 32:21] seems to imply, survived and accompanied Sennacherib home. Herodotus (2.141) gives an account confirming Scripture in so far as the sudden discomfiture of the Assyrian army is concerned. The Egyptian priests told him that Sennacherib was forced to retreat from Pelusium owing to a multitude of field mice, sent by one of their gods, having gnawed the Assyrians' bow-strings and shield-straps. Compare the language ([Is 37:33]), "He shall not shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields," which the Egyptians corrupted into their version of the story. Sennacherib was as the time with a part of his army, not at Jerusalem, but on the Egyptian frontier, southwest of Palestine. The sudden destruction of the host near Jerusalem, a considerable part of his whole army, as well as the advance of the Ethiopian Tirhakah, induced him to retreat, which the Egyptians accounted for in a way honoring to their own gods. The mouse was the Egyptian emblem of destruction. The Greek Apollo was called Sminthian, from a Cretan word for "a mouse," as a tutelary god of agriculture, he was represented with one foot upon a mouse, since field mice hurt corn. The Assyrian inscriptions, of course, suppress their own defeat, but nowhere boast of having taken Jerusalem; and the only reason to be given for Sennacherib not having, amidst his many subsequent expeditions recorded in the monuments, returned to Judah, is the terrible calamity he had sustained there, which convinced him that Hezekiah was under the divine protection. Rawlinson says, In Sennacherib's account of his wars with Hezekiah, inscribed with cuneiform characters in the hall of the palace of Koyunjik, built by him (a hundred forty feet long by a hundred twenty broad), wherein even the Jewish physiognomy of the captives is portrayed, there occurs a remarkable passage; after his mentioning his taking two hundred thousand captive Jews, he adds, "Then I prayed unto God"; the only instance of an inscription wherein the name of God occurs without a heathen adjunct. The forty-sixth Psalm probably commemorates Judah's deliverance. It occurred in one "night," according to [2Ki 19:35], with which Isaiah's words, "when they arose early in the morning," &c., are in undesigned coincidence.
they ... they--"the Jews ... the Assyrians."
37. dwelt at Nineveh--for about twenty years after his disaster, according to the inscriptions. The word, "dwelt," is consistent with any indefinite length of time. "Nineveh," so called from Ninus, that is, Nimrod, its founder; his name means "exceedingly impious rebel"; he subverted the existing patriarchal order of society, by setting up a system of chieftainship, founded on conquest; the hunting field was his training school for war; he was of the race of Ham, and transgressed the limits marked by God ([Ge 10:8-11, 25]), encroaching on Shem's portion; he abandoned Babel for a time, after the miraculous confusion of tongues and went and founded Nineveh; he was, after death, worshipped as Orion, the constellation (see on [Job 9:9]; [Job 38:31]).
38. Nisroch--Nisr, in Semitic, means "eagle;" the termination och, means "great." The eagle-headed human figure in Assyrian sculptures is no doubt Nisroch, the same as Asshur, the chief Assyrian god; the corresponding goddess was Asheera, or Astarte; this means a "grove," or sacred tree, often found as the symbol of the heavenly hosts (Saba) in the sculptures, as Asshur the Eponymus hero of Assyria ([Ge 10:11]) answered to the sun or Baal, Belus, the title of office, "Lord." This explains "image of the grove" ([2Ki 21:7]). The eagle was worshipper by the ancient Persians and Arabs.
Esar-haddon--In [Ezr 4:2] he is mentioned as having brought colonists into Samaria. He is also thought to have been the king who carried Manasseh captive to Babylon ([2Ch 33:11]). He built the palace on the mound Nebbiyunus, and that called the southwest palace of Nimroud. The latter was destroyed by fire, but his name and wars are recorded on the great bulls taken from the building. He obtained his building materials from the northwest palaces of the ancient dynasty, ending in Pul.
Chapter 38
Is 38:1-22. Hezekiah's Sickness; Perhaps Connected with the Plague or Blast Whereby the Assyrian Army Had Been Destroyed
1. Set ... house in order--Make arrangement as to the succession to the throne; for he had then no son; and as to thy other concerns.
thou shall die--speaking according to the ordinary course of the disease. His being spared fifteen years was not a change in God's mind, but an illustration of God's dealings being unchangeably regulated by the state of man in relation to Him.
2. The couches in the East run along the walls of houses. He turned away from the spectators to hide his emotion and collect his thoughts for prayer.
3. He mentions his past religious consistency, not as a boast or a ground for justification; but according to the Old Testament dispensation, wherein temporal rewards (as long life, &c., [Ex 20:12]) followed legal obedience, he makes his religious conduct a plea for asking the prolongation of his life.
walked--Life is a journey; the pious "walk with God" ([Ge 5:24]; [1Ki 9:4]).
perfect--sincere; not absolutely perfect, but aiming towards it ([Mt 5:45]); single-minded in walking as in the presence of God ([Ge 17:1]). The letter of the Old Testament legal righteousness was, however, a standard very much below the spirit of the law as unfolded by Christ ([Mt 5:20-48]; [2Co 3:6], 14, 17).
wept sore--Josephus says, the reason why he wept so sorely was that being childless, he was leaving the kingdom without a successor. How often our wishes, when gratified, prove curses! Hezekiah lived to have a son; that son was the idolater Manasseh, the chief cause of God's wrath against Judah, and of the overthrow of the kingdom ([2Ki 23:26], ).
4. In [2Ki 20:4], the quickness of God's answer to the prayer is marked, "afore Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him"; that is, before he had left Hezekiah, or at least when he had just left him, and Hezekiah was in the act of praying after having heard God's message by Isaiah (compare [Is 65:24]; [Psa 32:5]; [Da 9:21]).
5. God of David thy father--God remembers the covenant with the father to the children ([Ex 20:5]; [Psa 89:28], ).
tears--([Psa 56:8]).
days ... years--Man's years, however many, are but as so many days ([Ge 5:27]).
6. In [2Ki 20:8], after this verse comes the statement which is put at the end, in order not to interrupt God's message ([Is 38:21], ) by Isaiah ([Is 38:5-8]).
will deliver--The city was already delivered, but here assurance is given, that Hezekiah shall have no more to fear from the Assyrians.
7. sign--a token that God would fulfil His promise that Hezekiah should "go up into the house of the Lord the third day" ([2Ki 20:5], ); the words in italics are not in Isaiah.
8. bring again--cause to return ([Jos 10:12-14]). In [2Ki 20:9], , the choice is stated to have been given to Hezekiah, whether the shadow should go forward, or go back, ten degrees. Hezekiah replied, "It is a light thing (a less decisive miracle) for the shadow to go down (its usual direction) ten degrees: nay, but let it return backward ten degrees"; so Isaiah cried to Jehovah that it should be so, and it was so (compare [Jos 10:12], ).
sundial of Ahaz--Herodotus (2.109) states that the sundial and the division of the day into twelve hours, were invented by the Babylonians; from them Ahaz borrowed the invention. He was one, from his connection with Tiglath-pileser, likely to have done so ([2Ki 16:7], ). "Shadow of the degrees" means the shadow made on the degrees. Josephus thinks these degrees were steps ascending to the palace of Ahaz; the time of day was indicated by the number of steps reached by the shadow. But probably a sundial, strictly so called, is meant; it was of such a size, and so placed, that Hezekiah, when convalescent, could witness the miracle from his chamber. Compare [Is 38:21], with [2Ki 20:9], where translate, shall this shadow go forward, &c.; the dial was no doubt in sight, probably "in the middle court" ([2Ki 20:4]), the point where Isaiah turned back to announce God's gracious answers to Hezekiah. Hence this particular sign was given. The retrogression of the shadow may have been effected by refraction; a cloud denser than the air interposing between the gnomon and dial would cause the phenomenon, which does not take from the miracle, for God gave him the choice whether the shadow should go forward or back, and regulated the time and place. Bosanquet makes the fourteenth year of Hezekiah to be 689 B.C., the known year of a solar eclipse, to which he ascribes the recession of the shadow. At all events, there is no need for supposing any revolution of the relative positions of the sun and earth, but merely an effect produced on the shadow ([2Ki 20:9-11]); that effect was only local, and designed for the satisfaction of Hezekiah, for the Babylonian astronomers and king "sent to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land" ([2Ch 32:31]), implying that it had not extended to their country. No mention of any instrument for marking time occurs before this dial of Ahaz, 700 B.C. The first mention of the "hour" is made by Daniel at Babylon ([Da 3:6]).
9-20. The prayer and thanksgiving song of Hezekiah is only given here, not in the parallel passages of Second Kings and Second Chronicles. [Is 38:9] is the heading or inscription.
22. house of the Lord--Hence he makes the praises to be sung there prominent in his song ([Is 38:20]; Psa 116:12-14, 17-19).
Chapter 39
Is 39:1-8. Hezekiah's Error in the Display of His Riches to the Babylonian Ambassador
1. Merodach-baladan--For a hundred fifty years before the overthrow of Nineveh by Cyaxares the Mede, a succession of rulers, mostly viceroys of Assyria, ruled Babylon, from the time of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. That date is called "the Era of Nabonassar." Pul or Phallukha was then expelled, and a new dynasty set up at Nineveh, under Tiglath-pileser. Semiramis, Pul's wife, then retired to Babylon, with Nabonassar, her son, whose advent to the throne of Babylon, after the overthrow of the old line at Nineveh, marked a new era. Sometimes the viceroys of Babylon made themselves, for a time, independent of Assyria; thus Merodach-baladan at this time did so, encouraged by the Assyrian disaster in the Jewish campaign. He had done so before, and was defeated in the first year of Sennacherib's reign, as is recorded in cuneiform characters in that monarchs palace of Koyunjik. Nabopolassar was the first who established, permanently, his independence; his son, Nebuchadnezzar, raised Babylon to the position which Nineveh once occupied; but from the want of stone near the Lower Euphrates, the buildings of Babylon, formed of sun-dried brick, have not stood the wear of ages as Nineveh has.
Merodach--an idol, the same as the god of war and planet Mars ([Jr 50:2]). Often kings took their names from their gods, as if peculiarly under their tutelage. So Belshazzar from Bel.
Baladan--means "Bel is his lord." The chronicle of Eusebius contains a fragment of Berosus, stating that Acises, an Assyrian viceroy, usurped the supreme command at Babylon. Merodach- (or Berodach-) baladan murdered him and succeeded to the throne. Sennacherib conquered Merodach-baladan and left Esar-haddon, his son, as governor of Babylon. Merodach-baladan would naturally court the alliance of Hezekiah, who, like himself, had thrown off the yoke of the Assyrian king, and who would be equally glad of the Babylonian alliance against Assyria; hence arose the excessive attention which he paid to the usurper.
sick--An additional reason is given ([2Ch 32:31]). "The princes of Babylon sent to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land"; namely, the recession of the shadow on Ahaz' sundial; to the Chaldean astronomers, such a fact would be especially interesting, the dial having been invented at Babylon.
2. glad--It was not the mere act, but the spirit of it, which provoked God ([2Ch 32:25]), "Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him, for his heart was lifted up"; also compare [2Ch 32:31]. God "tries" His people at different times by different ways, bringing out "all that is in their heart," to show them its varied corruptions. Compare David in a similar case ([1Ch 21:1-8]).
precious things--rather, "the house of his (aromatic) spices"; from a Hebrew root, to "break to pieces," as is done to aromatics.
silver ... gold--partly obtained from the Assyrian camp ([Is 33:4]); partly from presents ([2Ch 32:23], ).