2 Kings 19:35

[See comments on 2 Kings 19:1]

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

That night; either, 1. In the night following this message of the prophet to Hezekiah; or, 2. In that famous night when God destroyed the Assyrians, it was done in this manner. For such expressions are oft used of an indefinite and uncertain time, as that day is frequently taken, as 26:1 27:1, &c. Smote in the camp, with pestilence, or some other sudden and mortal stroke. The camp of the Assyrians; either before Libnah, or in some other place near Jerusalem, where they were encamped.

2 Kings 19:35 And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they [were] all dead corpses.Ver. 35. That night.] When the Assyrians were fitting themselves to assault Jerusalem, when in their conceits and hopes they had already devoured it, and were even fetching their blow at all the Jews at once, as if they had all had but one neck to cut off. That the angel of the Lord.] One of God’ s mighties. Went out, and smote.] By a plague, as 2 Samuel 24:16; the Hebrews say, by a fire burning in their breasts and stifling them; and that Sennacherib himself hardly escaped, having his head and beard singed, according to Isaiah 33:11-12. Sure it is that his leaders and chief captains were cut off, and Rabshakeh, likely, among, if not above the rest, for his abominable blasphemies against the God of Israel. A hundred fourscore and five thousand.] By a like dreadful hand of God, fifty-two thousand men of Heraclius the Greek Emperor’ s army were found dead in one night, without any apparent executioner, after that he had turned Monothelite, and incestuously married Martius, his own brother’ s daughter, making a law that others might do the like, Anno Christi 610. Herodotus in his second book relates of Sennacherib’ s defeat and death, something like this here related: but, either through ignorance of the full truth, or else by the instigation of the devil, to elude and impair the credit of the holy Scriptures, he applieth that to Sethon king of Egypt and priest of Vulcan, which properly belongeth to Hezekiah king of Judah, servant and favourite of the true God. Diabolus operum Dei Mimus est, et Momus. And when they arose, &c.] Such as escaped and survived. The Vulgate hath it, When he (Sennacherib) arose in the morning, he saw. It is said of Heraclius, that upon that sad sight of his soldiers, so slain as above, he presently fell sick and died: though others write that his incest was punished with a strange priapism, which, together with a dropsy, ended his days

(35-37) THE . ’S RETREAT, AND HIS “VIOLENT END.(35) And it came to pass (in) that night.—This definition of time is wanting in the parallel text; but it is implied by the phrase in the morning (Isaiah 37:36; 2 Kings 19:35). The night intended can hardly be the one which followed the day when the prophecy was spoken (see 2 Kings 19:29). The expression “in that night,” may perhaps be compared with the prophetic “in that day,” and understood to. mean simply “in that memorable night which was the occasion of this catastrophe.” (Theuius sees in this clause an indication that the present section was derived from another source, probably from the one used by the chronicler in 2 Chronicles 32:20-23. Reuss thinks this confirmed by the fact that neither the prediction in 2 Kings 19:7, nor that of 2 Kings 19:21-34, speaks of so great and so immediate an overthrow.) The angel of the Lord went out.—The destroying angel, who smote the firstborn of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:12-13; Exodus 12:23), and smote Israel after David’s census (2 Samuel 24:15-17). These passages undoubtedly favour the view that the Assyrian army was devastated by pestilence, as Josephus asserts. Others have suggested the agency of a simoom, a storm with lightning, an earthquake, &c. In any case a supernatural causation is involved not only in the immense number slain, and that in one night (Psalms 91:6), but in the coincidence of the event with the predictions of Isaiah, and with the crisis in the history of the true religion: “Vuolsi cosμ colΰ dove si puote Ciς che si vuole; e piω non dimandare.” In the camp of the Assyrians.—Where this was is not said. That it was not before Jerusalem appears from 2 Kings 19:32-33; and the well-known narrative of Herodotus (ii. 141) fixes Egypt, the land of plagues, as the scene of the catastrophe. “Of the details of the catastrophe, which the Bible narrative is content to characterise as the act of God, the Assyrian monuments contain no record, because the issue of the campaign gave them nothing to boast of; but an Egyptian account, preserved by Herodotus, though full of fabulous circumstances, shows that in Egypt, as well as in Judζa, it was recognised as a direct intervention of Divine power. The disaster did not break the power of the great king, who continued to reign for twenty years, and waged many other victorious wars. But none the less it must have been a very grave blow, the effects of which were felt throughout the empire, and permanently modified the imperial policy; for in the following year Chaldζa was again in revolt, and to the end of his reign Sennacherib never renewed his attack upon Judah” (Robertson Smith).And when they arose early.—The few who were spared found, not sick and dying, but corpses, all around them. (Comp. Exodus 12:33 : “They said, we be all dead men.”)

Verse 35. That night] The very night after the blasphemous message had been sent, and this comfortable prophecy delivered. The angel of the Lord went out] I believe this angel or messenger of the Lord was simply a suffocating or pestilential WIND; by which the Assyrian army was destroyed, as in a moment, without noise confusion or any warning. 1Kg 20:30. Thus was the threatening, 2Kg 19:7, fulfilled, I will send a BLAST upon him; for he had heard the rumour that his territories were invaded; and on his way to save his empire, in one night the whole of his army was destroyed, without any one even seeing who had hurt them. This is called an angel or messenger of the Lord: that is, something immediately sent by him to execute his judgments. When they arose early] That is, Sennacherib, and probably a few associates, who were preserved as witnesses and relaters of this most dire disaster. Rab-shakeh, no doubt, perished with the rest of the army.

35. And it came to pass that night] For this the record in Isaiah has only ‘Then’. It would appear from the history that the destruction of his army took place before Sennacherib himself could have reached Jerusalem. the angel of the Lord went out] R.V. went forth. The R.V. assimilates to Isaiah. In 2 Chronicles 32:21 the record is, ‘The Lord sent an angel which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land’. and when they [R.V. men] arose early] The number of the slain (185,000) was exceeding great, and the Chronicler’s statement makes the loss more terrible by saying that among those destroyed were all the leaders of the host.

The camp of the Assyrians - Which was now moved to Pelusium, if we may trust Herodotus; or which, at any rate, was at some considerable distance from Jerusalem.

SMITING AND FLIGHT OF THE — ’S DEATH, 2 Kings 19:35-37.That night — Apparently the night that succeeded the day on which Isaiah sent his oracle to Hezekiah.