2 Kings 19:19

Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

2 Kings 19:19. Now therefore, save us out of his hand — For if we be conquered, as other lands have been, they will say that thou art conquered, as the gods of those lands were; but, Lord, distinguish thyself by distinguishing us; and let all the world know, and be made to confess, that thou art the Lord, the self-existent God, even thou only, and that all pretenders to divinity are vanity and a lie. Let it be observed here, that the best pleas in prayer are those which are taken from God’s honour, and the concerns thereof; and therefore the Lord’s prayer begins with, Hallowed be thy name, and concludes with, Thine is the glory.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

19:8-19 Prayer is the never-failing resource of the tempted Christian, whether struggling with outward difficulties or inward foes. At the mercy-seat of his almighty Friend he opens his heart, spreads his case, like Hezekiah, and makes his appeal. When he can discern that the glory of God is engaged on his side, faith gains the victory, and he rejoices that he shall never be moved. The best pleas in prayer are taken from God's honour.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

If the mighty army of the great Assyrian king were successfully defied by a petty monarch like Hezekiah, it would force the surrounding nations to confess that the escape was owing to the protecting hand of Yahweh. They would thus be taught, in spite of themselves, that He, and He alone, was the true God.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2Ki 19:14-34. Hezekiah's Prayer.

14-19. Hezekiah received the letter … and went up into the house of the Lord—Hezekiah, after reading it, hastened into the temple, spread it in the childlike confidence of faith before the Lord, as containing taunts deeply affecting the divine honor, and implored deliverance from this proud defier of God and man. The devout spirit of this prayer, the recognition of the Divine Being in the plenitude of His majesty—so strikingly contrasted with the fancy of the Assyrians as to His merely local power; his acknowledgment of the conquests obtained over other lands; and of the destruction of their wooden idols which, according to the Assyrian practice, were committed to the flames—because their tutelary deities were no gods; and the object for which he supplicated the divine interposition—that all the kingdoms of the earth might know that the Lord was the only God—this was an attitude worthy to be assumed by a pious theocratic king of the chosen people.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard it,.... The report of Rabshakeh's speech, recorded in the preceding chapter:

that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth; rent his clothes because of the blasphemy in the speech; and he put on sackcloth, in token of mourning, for the calamities he feared were coming on him and his people: and he went into the house of the Lord; the temple, to pray unto him. The message he sent to Isaiah, with his answer, and the threatening letter of the king of Assyria, Hezekiah's prayer upon it, and the encouraging answer he had from the Lord, with the account of the destruction of the Assyrian army, and the death of Sennacherib, are the same "verbatim" as in Isaiah 37:1 throughout; and therefore the reader is referred thither for the exposition of them; only would add what Rauwolff (t) observes, that still to this day (1575) there are two great holes to be seen, wherein they flung the dead bodies (of the Assyrian army), one whereof is close by the road towards Bethlehem, the other towards the right hand against old Bethel.

(t) Travels, par. 3. ch. 22. p. 317.

Geneva Study Bible

Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the {m} kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.

(m) He shows the reason the faithful desire God to deliver them: that is, that he may be glorified by their deliverance.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

19. Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us] The R.V. puts ‘I beseech thee’ after ‘save thou us’ that being the order of the Hebrew sentence. There is no Hebrew in Isaiah for ‘I beseech thee’.

that all the kingdoms of the earth may know] It is remarkable how the loftiest souls among the Jews felt that their nation was meant to be God’s witness to the rest of the world. Such sentiments are found not seldom in the prophecies and psalms. Cf. also 1 Samuel 18:4-6 and the marginal references there. That case, which is David’s conquest of Goliath, may be aptly compared with this. For all men would understand if Sennacherib now were conquered it was not by the power of Jerusalem only, but by the hand of Him who had put His name there, just as David had said ‘The battle is the Lord’s’.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19. - New therefore, O Lord our God. Hezekiah draws the strongest possible contrast between Jehovah and the idols. Sennacherib had placed them upon a par (2 Kings 18:33-35; 2 Kings 19:10-13). Hezekiah insists that the idols are "no gods," are "nothing" - at any rate are mere blocks of wood and stone, shaped by human hands. But Jehovah is "the God of all the kingdoms of the earth" (ver. 15), the Maker of heaven and earth (ver. 15), the one and only God (ver. 19) - answering to his name, self-existing, all-sufficient, the groundwork of all other existence. And he is "our God" - the special God of Israel, bound by covenant to protect there against all enemies. I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand; i.e. "do that which this proud blasphemer thinks that thou canst not do" (2 Kings 18:35); show him that thou art far mightier than he supposes, wholly unlike those "no-gods," over whom he has hitherto triumphed - a "very present Help in trouble" - potent to save. That all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God. The glory of God is the end of creation; and God's true saints always bear the fact in mind, and desire nothing so much as that his glory should be shown forth everywhere and always. Moses, in his prayers for rebellious Israel in the wilderness, constantly urges upon God that it will not be for his glory to destroy or desert them (Exodus 32:12; Numbers 14:13-16; Deuteronomy 9:26-29). David, in his great strait, asks the destruction of his enemies, "that men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth" (Psalm 83:18); and again (Psalm 59:13), "Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth." Hezekiah prays for a signal vengeance on Sennacherib, not for his own sake, not even for his people's sake, so much as for the vindication of God's honor among the nations of the earth - that it may be known far and wide that Jehovah is a God who can help, the real Ruler of the world, against whom earthly kings and earthly might avail nothing. Even thou only. It would not satisfy Hezekiah that Jehovah should be acknowledged as a mighty god, one of many. He asks for such a demonstration as shall convince men that he is unique, that he stands alone, that he is the only mighty God in all the earth. 2 Kings 19:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

After the challenge, to observe the blasphemies of Sennacherib, Hezekiah mentions the fact that the Assyrians have really devastated all lands, and therefore that it is not without ground that they boast of their mighty power; but he finds the explanation of this in the impotence and nothingness of the gods of the heathen. אמנם, truly, indeed - the kings of Asshur have devastated the nations and their land. Instead of this we find in Isaiah: "they have devastated all lands and their (own) land" - which is evidently the more difficult and also the more original reading, and has been altered in our account, because the thought that the Assyrians had devastated their own land by making war upon other lands, that is to say, had depopulated it and thereby laid it waste, was not easy to understand. "And have cast their gods into the fire, for they are not gods, but works of human hands, wood and stone, and have thus destroyed them." Hezekiah does not mention this as a sign of the recklessness of the Assyrians (Knobel), but, because Sennacherib had boasted that the gods of no nation had been able to resist him (vv. 12, 13), to put this fact in the right light, and attach thereto the prayer that Jehovah, by granting deliverance, would make known to all the kingdoms of the earth that He alone was God. Instead of ונתנוּ we have in Isaiah ונתון, the inf. absol.; in this connection the more difficult and more genuine reading. This also applies to the omission of אלהים (2 Kings 19:19) in Isaiah 37:20, since the use of Jehovah as a predicate, "that Thou alone art Jehovah," is very rare, and has therefore been misunderstood even by Gesenius. By the introduction of Elohim, the thought "that Thou Jehovah art God alone" is simplified.