Tophet was a place near Jerusalem, in which the idolatrous Israelites used cruelly to offer up their children to Moloch, 2 Chronicles 28:3, 2 Chronicles 33:6; see also Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 19:6; and it may be put synecdochically for any place of torment or misery; and particularly it is put for hell, as well in the writings of the ancient Jewish doctors as in Holy Scripture, as Matthew 18:8,9 Matthew 23:15 Mark 9:43,44. And so this place may be understood either,
1. Literally, of Tophet in the valley of Hinnom, in which the Assyrian host was either slain by the angel, as Josephus reports, or buried or burnt. For although the Assyrians did not make any great attempt upon Jerusalem, Isaiah 37:36, yet Rabshakeh came very near it with a great army, Isaiah 36:2. Or,
2. Figuratively, of hell. Is ordained; or, was ordered or prepared. And it might be said, in some sort, to be prepared by Hezekiah for this end, by the care which he took to purge this and other places abused to idolatry, which made them more fit to receive so great a favour mid deliverance from God. But for hell, that doubtless was ordained or prepared by God for the punishment of impenitent sinners. Of old, Heb. from yesterday; which phrase is sometimes used of a time but lately past, as 2 Samuel 15:20 Job 8:9, and sometimes of any time past, without limitation. For the king; for the king of Assyria; either,
1. For the kings, the singular number being put for the plural, whereby he may understand the princes or chief commanders of the host, by comparing Isaiah 10:8, Are not my princes altogether kings ? Or,
2. For Rabshakeh, the general of this army, who, according to the style of Scripture, might very well be called king. Or,
3. Sennacherib, for whom this place might be said to be ordained or prepared, partly because it was ordained for the destruction of his host; nothing being more ordinary, both in sacred and profane writers, than to entitle the king or general of the army to all the victories procured, or losses or slaughter sustained, by his army; and partly because the sudden destruction of the Assyrian army, supposed to be in this place, was the occasion of the conspiracy of that king's sons, and so of the king's death. But if this Tophet design hell, this is emphatically denounced against him, to intimate, that although he escaped that sudden plague which cut off his army, yet there was a more terrible judgment appointed for him, which he should be utterly unable to escape. He; the Lord, who is oft designed by this pronoun, as in the next foregoing verse, and elsewhere; and who is expressed in the following words. Or it is an indefinite expression, for, it is made deep and large. Hath made it deep and large, capable of receiving vast numbers; whereby he intimates that he designed to make a great and general destruction of the Assyrians; and withal, that it was a vain and foolish confidence which the Assyrians had in their numerous host, seeing the greatest numbers of God's enemies are wholly unable, either to oppose him, or to save themselves from his wrath and power. The pile thereof is fire and much wood; whereby he further implies that he intended to make a great slaughter among them. And he alludes in this phrase to the ancient custom, either of burning sacrifices, and particularly of burning children to Moloch, or of burning the dead bodies of men. The breath of the Lord, the immediate hand of God, or his word of anger: See Poole on "Isaiah 30:28". Like a stream of brimstone; he seems to allude to that shower of fire and brimstone, Genesis 19:24. Doth kindle it; the pile of fire and wood now mentioned.