Thoughts on 2 Kings 18

Today’s reading: 2 Kings 18; John 17

I love the irony of the Rabshakeh’s threat against Israel, and how it seems like God might even be using his threat to bolster Hezekiah’s faith.

Hezekiah rebelled against the king of Assyria, meaning he stopped paying tribute to him. When he initially rebelled, it was not that there was a standing army at his doorstep that he decided to fight, but that Judah had previously been subdued by Assyria, and had agreed to pay tribute to them in return for not being destroyed.

On the one hand, this kind of rebellion, while risky, was not too uncommon in the ancient world. Nobody wanted to be paying tribute to another nation, and at times there might be multiple nations they were having to pay tribute to. So if you, by some fortune, grew strong enough that you thought you could stop paying tribute and make enough of a stand against their army that it wouldn’t be worth coming after you, you would strongly consider rebelling. Or if you saw that country weakening or at war with someone else, such that they couldn’t afford to come after you, you might choose to rebel.

On the other hand though, Israel’s situation was different from every other nation’s situation. God had promised, from the beginning, that He would protect Israel and they would not have to pay tribute to anyone, but other nations would be praying tribute to them, if they trusted Him and stayed faithful to Him. So when we are told that Hezekiah rebelled against Assyria, in the midst of the recounting of all of his faithfulness toward Yahweh, it seems like he was rebelling rightly, trusting God to protect them from their enemies as He had promised He would.

However, after Hezekiah rebels, he evidently gets scared in the face of Assyrian threat, rather than continuing to trust in God, because he strips all the gold and silver out of the temple to try to get enough of an offering together to appease Assyria, which evidently fails to placate them given the threat that arrives at Jerusalem’s doorstep at the end of the chapter.

What’s great about this threat though is that, I think at least, God is using it to remind Hezekiah that he can count on Him.

When the Rabshakeh starts threatening Judah, it is clear he has done his homework. Not only does he make the threat in Hebrew, but he also knows what has been happening, religiously, in Judah. He knows and calls out that Hezekiah has been destroying all the high places and tearing down all the altars in the land of Judah, and in his mind, that is an affront to Judah’s gods. Obviously any god wants to be worshipped, and the more people worshipping him/her from more places, the better. So as he hears that Hezekiah has been tearing down these altars, clearly that can only mean they are cutting off the worship of their god, meaning they would be foolish to think their god would forgive them and protect them against Assyria. But even if Judah’s god would help them, he claims, it wouldn’t matter, because no other nation’s god has been able to stand against the Assyrians.

Instead of this threat instilling the fear he intends though, reminding them of how faithless Hezekiah has been to their god in tearing down his altars, this threat is a reminder to Hezekiah of his faithfulness to Yahweh. Yahweh is not just another god of another nation, but is the God of gods and King of kings, and what Hezekiah has done in tearing down the high places and altars around Judah has been done in faithfulness to Yahweh and has led the people back to increasing faithfulness as well. It is expressly because Hezekiah has done these things that he can most reasonably expect God to fight for and protect them against the Assyrian army.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we see here the sovereign hand of God at work on Hezekiah’s behalf. He clearly second guessed his choice to rebel against Assyria, and had to be questioning whether Yahweh would really protect them in this or not, and so God uses the very threat from Assyria that Hezekiah fears to remind him of how he has faithfully lead the nation back to Him, positioning them perfectly to be protected by their God.