James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
2 Kings 19:37
THE DEATH OF SENNACHERIB
‘As he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god … his sons smote him with the sword.’
If we consider (1) the character of Sennacherib’s life, and compare with that (2) the character of his death, we shall discover both the reason and the instruction of the text.
I. The character of his life.—Two things had distinguished it towards man—excessive violence and much pride. This King Sennacherib, perhaps, of all the Assyrian sovereigns, was the most successful, and so, the worst. Probably, therefore, it is his portrait which one sees most frequently on the slabs. At any rate, they help to furnish us with a true idea of his life. Take a succession of those causeless conflicts, those captured cities, those butchered prisoners, those blinded sovereigns, those streaming executions, and you have the deeds of his reign. Take, next, the triumphant pride with which he exults over them, and you have the full criminality of those deeds.
The tide of his oppression came at last to the land of Judea—especially dangerous ground. For here he came in contact with a ‘peculiar people,’ the family which God was educating for the benefit of mankind. This added both to the enormity and to the importance of the crime. How to the enormity, if he did not know what he was doing? Because he knew sufficient to know more. Sennacherib was well aware that he was fighting not against Hezekiah, but Jehovah. This ought to have led him to inquire. Instead of this, he says in effect, ‘Be the Lord Jehovah Who He may, I am not to be checked.’
Consider, also, the effect of his language and conduct on the Jews. How did his sin appear in their eyes? Considering their position and destiny, this was of importance to the world. And, in their eyes, it is clear that his offence involved the most direct and daring challenge to all they adored. Would the Lord’s House be overthrown, or the waves be driven back? Would this great conqueror conquer Jehovah, or would he, instead, and at last, himself he subdued? All the faith of Judah stood by, and all the unborn faith of Christianity stood behind it, to observe the result.
II. The character of Sennacherib’s death.—Having seen the nature of his challenge, we have now to notice how it was taken up. God replied, first, to his pride. ‘Who can stand,’ the king had said, ‘before me?’ God answered this wicked boast, not in battle, not by spoken rebuke, but, as it was prophesied, by a ‘blast.’ In the morning the once mighty sovereign is in a camp of dead men. Where is the terrible army which he had previously relied on? What has he now left to be proud of? What can he do now, except return home, humiliated and alone?
God replied, next, to his violence and bloodshed. After the king had returned to his own kingdom and city, the weapon which he had so often employed on others was employed on himself. As the prophet had foretold, he died by the ‘sword.’ This man of unnatural cruelty, with a horrible kind of fitness, died by unnatural hands. He was slain by his sons, who, brothers in hatred and cruelty, and worthy inheritors of his nature, consented together in this deed, and so doubled the guilt upon each. How often we see this! The instruments of the sinner’s punishment brought into being by himself!
Lastly, Jehovah answered the man’s blasphemy and profaneness. The challenge had been delivered certainly within sight of God’s House, in the ears and language of the people who sat on the wall. No answer came at the time. God, Who sometimes waits to be gracious, often delays to destroy. But the answer, when it did come, was most conclusive. In the king’s own city, in the temple of his own idol, while engaged in the very act of worship, the blow descended upon him. If safe anywhere, he thought, it was there; but there it was, on the contrary, just there, that he died. ‘Where is the God’ he had boasted, ‘who can deliver from me?’ ‘Can thine own god protect thyself?’ replied the silent stroke of God’s hand.
It is unnecessary to point out the importance of such a lesson to the Jews. So significant an incident was well worthy of being commemorated among them. And, if the story was all this to them, not less of course, is it to us, who are taught by their experience, and are the inheritors of their faith. ‘Evil shall hunt the wicked to overthrow him.’ We see (just as they did) the conclusion of such a ‘hunt’ in our text—we see how God and the impenitent sinner must come face to face at the last—how such a man prepares his own torments, and creates his own executioners, and sends up against heaven the very bolts which come down again perforce on himself. These are truths much forgotten, and, therefore, to be often insisted on, in these days. There is a way of preaching the Saviour as though there was nothing from which to be saved. This grand Old Testament history, rising up out of those distant Assyrian ruins, may help to deliver us from such a delusion. Doubtless there is a Saviour; but there is a need for Him, too; there is such an awful reality as ‘the wrath to come.’ Doubtless there is a ‘City of Refuge’; but that is not all. The ‘avenger of blood’ is behind us; and if we do not flee to it, we are lost.
Rev. W. S. Lewis.
Illustration
‘Contrast the two kings, Sennacherib and Hezekiah—the godless and the just. Sennacherib, who sees himself in peril and obliged to retreat by the approach of Tirhakah, does not on that account become more modest or more humble, but only more obstinate and arrogant. That is the way with godless and depraved men. In distress and peril, instead of bending their will and yielding to the will of God, they only become more stubborn, insolent, and assuming. Hezekiah, on the contrary, who was in unprecedented trouble and peril, was thereby drawn into more earnest prayer. He humbled himself under the hand of God, and sought refuge in the Lord alone. He went into the House of God and poured out his soul in prayer.’