Assyria was on his doorstep and ready to butcher Jerusalem like it had already done throughout the land.  The Rabshakeh has been mocking God, Hezekiah and invoked fear in the soldiers.  It was a crisis point.  Surrender and they would be at the mercy of Assyria, carried off and who knows what would happen.  Resist and they would be butchered in the way that Assyria knew best.  And they were masters at human butchery.

So what did Hezekiah do?  He tore his clothes in grief and went to the temple.  Then he sent word to Isaiah to pray for them.

Isaiah did pray and sent the message back to Hezekiah to not be afraid, that the Rabshakeh would return to Assyria.

Soon after the king of Assyria had left Lachish and had heard that the king of Cush (Ethiopia) was marching against him.  But he wasn’t finished yet with Jerusalem.  He sent a letter of threat to mock and discourage Jerusalem, reminding him that no nation’s gods had saved them.

Hezekiah then took this letter to the Lord.  He spread it out, gave thanks to the LORD, and acknowledged him as the one true God.  Then he asked the LORD to save them.

Isaiah heard from the Lord that the LORD had heard the prayer of Hezekiah and that Assyria would be destroyed for its mockery.  God would treat them as Assyria had treated the nations–by putting a hook through their nose and mouth and leading them back.

The sign to Jerusalem that this would happen is that the first year (702 BC) they would just whatever was available in the land.  The second year they would eat from what the seeds of that would produce.  The third year (700 BC) they would plant and reap like normal.  This probably took place within the city walls as to step out of them would be dangerous.

This wasn’t a fast deliverance or a fast siege.  The Assyrians were on their doorstep for several years.  But the LORD promised he would not enter their city.  The LORD would defend it.

And after several the LORD did just that.  In one night a plague broke out among the Assyrians.  In it 185,000 soldiers died.  Which is significant and tells you the sheer build-up of the troops.  But when the Israelites woke up, it was an army of the dead.  So Sennacherib broke camp and returned to Nineveh.

While in Nineveh, his sons struck him down the sword and then escaped.  Eventually another son would take his place as king.

Why does this resonate so deeply with me?  It’s the tremendous faith of Hezekiah.  If the LORD would not have come through for his covenant people, the suffering would have been the very worst that one man could inflict on another.  Especially for Hezekiah.  We know from the reliefs that opposing army officers and kings were skinned alive slowly, stretched between two stakes and left to die a horrible death.  Hezekiah did not let his fear triumph over his faith.

But what struck me more this time than the other times is that the deilverance from Assyria was really not an overnight deal.  Several years hundreds of thousands of soldiers were camping outside of Jerusalem’s gates.  The fear for those years must have been immense, yet in one night it was over.  One night!

Sometimes our own sufferings last so many years without deliverance.  Why so long?  I don’t know.  But the Lord can deliver quickly and when he does so, there is great joy.