2 Kings 19:35, commentary and pictures

The deliverance belongs to the lifetime of Isaiah, who was called to his prophetic mission while still a young man as Uzziah's reign was drawing to a close and Jotham was already bearing many of the burdens of state. It belongs to a time of peculiar peril to the people of God, when divine protection was being removed from the southern kingdom. Assyrian forces were about to overspread the land of Judah, encamping before its chief cities and again and again invading it, while Judah was also invaded by the combined armies of northern Israel and Syria, Samaria fell, and the ten tribes of Israel were scattered among the nations.

That very night after God promised to defend Jerusalem, deliverance came as a miraculous interposition that saved Jerusalem from downfall when besieged by the Assyrian armies sent to take it. The stroke came after Sennacherib reproached and blasphemed God and threatened Israel. The angel of the Lord went out and in one night struck down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp, including all the mighty men of valor and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. The event shows God protecting His people through angels acting under His command, demonstrating their power to carry out God's purposes against His enemies and to act swiftly in judgment.

Tidings of the terrible judgment reached Sennacherib while he was still guarding the approach to Judea from Egypt and struck him with fear, so he hastened to depart and returned with shame of face to his own land, where he had only a short reign. In harmony with prophecy of his sudden end, he was assassinated by his own household and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead. The stroke made the God of the Hebrews prevail over the proud Assyrian and vindicated the honor of Jehovah in the eyes of the surrounding nations. In Jerusalem it filled the people with holy joy because their earnest entreaties mingled with confession of sin and tears and their whole trust in God's power to save in great need had not failed them, so the temple courts resounded with solemn praise to God who breaks the weapons of battle, casts the mighty into dead sleep, saves the meek, and restrains wrath.

It shows how easily angels could have destroyed the tormentors of Jesus, but they did not act because they were not commanded to do so. The same divine power that in one night laid low the Assyrians was seen again when a vast invading army fled in supernatural terror before the Hussites, making the verse an example of divine power against an oppressor. The crusading armies opposing the Bohemians were thus scattered by sudden terror like the Assyrian forces.