Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man,.... That is, the Assyrian army under Sennacherib their king, which besieged Jerusalem in Hezekiah's time; which, as soon as the people were brought to a sense of their sin, and repentance for it, and cast away their idols as a proof of it, were utterly destroyed; but not in battle, not by the sword of Hezekiah, or any of his valiant generals:
and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him; neither the sword of a general, nor of a private soldier, nor indeed of any man, but of an angel; see 2 Kings 19:35:
but he shall flee from the sword; from the drawn sword of the angel, who very probably appeared in such a form as in 1 Chronicles 21:16 which Sennacherib king of Assyria seeing, as well as the slaughter made in his army by him, fled from it; in the Hebrew text it is added, "for himself" y; he fled for his life, for his own personal security; see
and his young men shall be discomfited; his choice ones, the flower of his army: or "melt away" z, through fear; or die by the stroke of the angel upon them: the sense of becoming "tributary" seems to have no foundation.
y לו "fugiet sibi", Pagninus, Montanus, Cocceius; "fuga consulet sibi", Junius Tremellius. z למס יהיו "in liquefactionem, erunt", Vatablus "colliquescent", Piscator.