(35-37) THE CATASTROPHE. SENNACHERIB’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 così colà dove si puote
Ciò che si vuole; e più 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 Judæa, 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 Chaldæa 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.”)