And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
And it came to pass that night. These two last words are not contained in the parallel passages either of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 32:21) or of Isaiah (Isaiah 37:36). The latter passage reads simply, "Then the angel of the Lord went forth;" and as the phrase 'that day' is frequently used in a vague, indefinite sense (cf. Isaiah 4:1; Isaiah 26:1; Isaiah 27:1), so may "that night," meaning only that memorable night on which the destruction took place. Certainly the idea of its immediate occurrence is directly at variance with the limitation of time specified, 2 Kings 19:29. That the catastrophe was completed in one night is confirmed by Psalms 46:1-11 (a psalm which is generally regarded as composed at the time by Isaiah, or some devout inhabitant of Jerusalem), in 2 Kings 19:5 of which the words. "God shall help her, and that right early," are, in the Hebrew original, 'God shall help her at the turning of the morning.' The expression is exceedingly significant and striking, if it be viewed as pointing to that period of the night when the awful overthrow took place, the sight of which was discovered at the break of day (cf. Isaiah 17:14).
`Like the leaves of the forest, when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest, when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.'
The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand. The representation of an angel smiting the camp of the Assyrians expresses, according to the mental conception of the sacred historian, the suddenness, fatality, and widespread extent of the terrible visitation (cf. Acts 12:23).
And when they arose early in the morning ... they were all dead corpses. It was the miraculous interposition of the Almighty that defended Jerusalem; and, in the despair of help from human counsels or arms, which Hezekiah betrays on receiving the letter, nothing but a divine power could have rescued the kingdom of Hezekiah at that time from an immediate overthrow similar to those of Damascus and Samaria. As to the secondary agent employed in the destruction of the Assyrian army, some think (Berosus, quoted by Josephus, 'Antiquities,' b. 10:, ch. 2:, p. 48) that it was caused by the pestilence, to which may be ascribed the sickness of Hezekiah about the same time; or it might be that it was effected by a hot south wind, the Simoom, such as to this day often envelops and destroys whole caravans.
This conjecture is supported by various reasons: The destruction was during night: the officers and soldiers being in full security, were negligent, their discipline was relaxed, the camp-guards were not alert, or perhaps they themselves were the first taken off, and those who slept, not wrapped up, imbibed the poison plentifully. Others, among whom is Vitringa ('Commentary,' in loco), founding on Isaiah 30:30 (English version), and considering that 'the voice of Yahweh' denotes thunder (Psalms 29:1-11), are of opinion that the destruction was effected by a tempest of extraordinary violence, the hailstones being as destructive as at the battle of Beth-horon (Joshua 10:11).
Furthermore, that it took place in Judah, not in Egypt, appears from Isaiah 14:25. If this had been an evening of dissolute mirth (no uncommon thing in a camp) their joy (perhaps for a victory, or 'the first night of their attacking the city,' says Josephus), became, by its effects, one means of their destruction. This hypothesis proceeds on the assumption, which the text appears to warrant, that the destruction was accomplished in one night. Berosus, the Chaldean historian, and Herodotus (b. 2:, p. 141) agree with the apparent tenor of the sacred record, that the calamity occurred in one night. The former says that it happened on the first night of the siege of Jerusalem. The latter, who drew his account from the Egyptians, attributes it to a singular visitation. His words are, 'Sennacherib came against the Egyptian king, who was the priest of Vulcan, and that as he was besieging Pelusium, he broke up the siege for the following reason: The Egyptian priest prayed to his god, who heard him, and sent a judgment on the Arabian (erroneously for the Assyrian) king. A multitude of mice gnawed to pieces in one night both the bows and the other accoutrements of the Assyrians, and that it was on that account Sennacherib, when he had no armour left, hastily withdrew his army from Pelusium.' Herodotus thus lays the scene of the disaster in Egypt, misled by a national myth, which the vanity of his Egyptian informers, in ascribing it to their god, palmed upon him. But the sacred history, and Berosus along with it, represent the Assyrian soldiers as perishing by an invisible stroke.
As to the number of the slain, immense as the destruction was, there would be no extraordinary difficulty in ascertaining the precise amount. The scene in the morning would exhibit no trace of the wild disorder and universal confusion consequent upon a battle. The camp was in its normal state of orderly disposition, the common soldiers stretched upon their beds, unconscious of what had befallen them, the officers in their splendid tents, and the sentinels at their respective posts of duty, when they were overtaken by the sudden visitation which made them all dead corpses. The Jews, therefore, would soon learn the astounding intelligence; and Hezekiah, who would doubtless regard the dispensation as the accomplishment of Isaiah's prediction, would send out messengers to examine and report. When their first astonishment, mingled with the deepest feelings of reverential awe, and of thanksgiving for what was so unmistakeably a divine interposition in their behalf, had subsided, they would be able with ease, as well as with perfect accuracy in the circumstances, to take the tale of the slaughtered Assyrians, and bring it to Jerusalem. The report of the Jews would spread with the rapidity of lightning through all the cities of Philistia and Phoenicia, Syria, and Chaldea, which had suffered from the ruthless invader, as well as the people of Hezekiah; so that in all likelihood Berosus, in making his numerical statement at 185,000, was giving permanence to the popular tradition universally current among the tributary nations of the Assyrian empire.
No notice, as might be expected, is found in the Ninevite inscriptions of this terrible catastrophe. The Assyrian monarchs were accustomed to record in minute detail the successes of the national arms, but they carefully abstained from the smallest allusion to any reverse. But the omission of a full record of this second expedition, so contrary to the invariable practice, the established usage, of those sovereigns to narrate the transactions of their own reigns, is very significant; and although Sennacherib has not registered the miraculous destruction of his vast army, the abandonment of all further attempts to prosecute his enterprise against Jerusalem is in itself a most intelligible indication that he felt himself no longer in a condition to make an attack on that city. 'The events of the following year of Sennacherib present a marked contrast to the detailed and magniloquent descriptions of the preceding periods. They are confined to a few meagre lines, and refer exclusively to an expedition against the Chaldees, which Sennacherib does not seem even to have conducted in person' (Rawlinson's 'Outlines,' p. 37).
The narrative of this great campaign, so memorable for that miraculous interposition of Yahweh which rescued the kingdom of Judah from otherwise inevitable ruin, and dealt a fatal blow to the Assyrian empire, is, in the chapter before us, scanty and imperfect, being continued, in fact, only so far as was necessary to show the bearing of the expedition upon the interest of Jerusalem and Judah. Some parts of it are involved in considerable obscurity. It is impossible to determined whether Sennacherib had actually taken Lachish, when he despatched Rab-shakeh, Rabsaris, and Tartan, with a large contingent of troops against Jerusalem, to intimidate Hezekiah;-whether Rab-shakeh withdrew these troops from Jerusalem when he returned himself to Sennacherib's headquarters;-whether, if they were left before the walls of Jerusalem, to commence a regular siege of that metropolis, it was this portion of the soldiers which perished so awfully, or the main body of the Assyrian army;-whether Sennacherib, having, as he says in his annals, signally defeated the Egyptians at Lachish, had penetrated into Egypt, and having heard of Tirhakah the Ethiopian's junction of his forces to those of the native king, Sethos (or Zet), he formed the determined purpose to encounter him, but on hearing the report of the sudden and mysterious loss of his army, he was struck with uncontrollable awe, and hastily fled, as Josephus says, out of Egypt, back to his own country; these and other questions of a similar kind, it is impossible, from the succinct account of the sacred historians, to answer with confidence.
But we may learn from it all that it is important and necessary know. 'We see that in the regular advance of the Assyrian power, it had reached the point at which Sennacherib could cease to temporize with Judah, and might proceed completely to absorb the tributary state into the empire. The kingdom of Samaria had already followed the fate of Damascus in this respect; the taking of Ashdod had not only opened the road to Egypt, but also turned the position of Judah; the plunder of No-ammon had sharpened the appetites of the northern invaders for new campaigns and conquests; and if Sennacherib thought it well to try and intimidate Hezekiah and his people into surrendering cities, which even Tartan himself would have had difficulty in taking, until they were starved out, we may infer from the insolent way in which he still avows his ultimate intentions, if they did surrender, that he really had no fear for the result, even though he should be obliged to fight Tirhakah, with Judah unconquered, and assisting the Egyptians.
The justness of the belief, which (as we learn from Herodotus) was held by the Egyptians as well as by the Hebrews, that nothing but an interposition of God's hand could at this moment have broken the great Assyrian power, is confirmed by this conduct of Sennacherib and his messenger, no less than by the despair of help from human counsels, or of arms, which Hezekiah manifests on receiving the report of the message and the letter by which it was afterward followed. The conviction that the Lord of Israel was strong enough, and no less willing, to keep his convenant, by defending the nation against all its enemies, had no doubt supported Hezekiah hitherto; but it would have been insufficient, in this moment, to meet the terrible feeling that he was now in the actual presence and power of the representative of irresistible arbitrary force, unless a higher truth had come to sustain this lower one, and he had realized (as men only do realize in some extremity of their own helplessness) that there was an absolute Will retaining the mastery over that irresistible force, however crushing it might seem; and that the Lord of Israel, who "dwelt between the cherubims," was himself the God, the only God, of all the kingdoms of the earth, and so of this Assyrian kingdom among the rest' (Strachey, 'Hebrew Politics,' p. 274). It was the living power of this truth which supported the heart of Hezekiah himself, and which being communicated through his royal example, together with the exhortations and assurances of Isaiah to the court and inhabitants of Jerusalem, enabled them all to stand still in faith and patience until, like the Israelites pursued by Pharaoh and his host at the Red Sea, they saw the salvation of God.