37:1-38 This chapter is the same as 2Ki 19

Verse 8. - Rabshakeh... found the King of Assyria warring against Libnah. Libnah was a town at no great distance from Lachish (Joshua 10:31; Joshua 15:39-42). It was also near Mareshah (Joshua 15:42-44), and must therefore have belonged to the more southern portion of the Shefeleh, and probably to the eastern region, where the hills sink down into the plain. The exact site is very uncertain, and still remains to be discovered. Sennacherib's object in moving upon Libnah is doubtful; but it would seem, from his monuments, that he had captured Lachish (Layard, 'Nineveh and Babylon,' pp. 149-152), and had gone on to Libnah, as the next stronghold on the way to Egypt.

So Rabshakeh returned,.... To the king of Assyria his master, to give him an account how things went at Jerusalem, and that he could get no direct answer from the king of Judah, and to consult with him what was proper to be done in the present situation of things; leaving the army before Jerusalem, under the command of the other two generals. For that he should take the army with him does not seem reasonable, when Hezekiah and his people were in such a panic on account of it; besides, the king of Assyria's letters to Hezekiah clearly suppose the army to be still at Jerusalem, or his menacing letters would have signified nothing; and after this the destruction of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem is related:

and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah; a city in the tribe of Judah, Joshua 10:29, and lay nearer to Jerusalem than Lachish, where Rabshakeh left him; so that he seemed to be drawing his army towards that city, on which his heart was set. Josephus (u) makes him to be at this time besieging Pelusium, a city in Egypt, but wrongly; which has led some into a mistake that Libnah and Pelusium are the same:

for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish; where he was, when he sent him to Jerusalem, Isaiah 36:2, having very probably taken it.

(u) Antiqu. l. 10. c. 1. sect. 4.

8. returned—to the camp of his master.

Libnah—meaning "whiteness," the Blanche-garde of the Crusaders [Stanley]. Eusebius and Jerome place it more south, in the district of Eleutheropolis, ten miles northwest of Lachish, which Sennacherib had captured (see on [766]Isa 36:2). Libnah was in Judea and given to the priests (1Ch 6:54, 57).

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