2 Chronicles 32:15

32:1-23 Those who trust God with their safety, must use proper means, else they tempt him. God will provide, but so must we also. Hezekiah gathered his people together, and spake comfortably to them. A believing confidence in God, will raise us above the prevailing fear of man. Let the good subjects and soldiers of Jesus Christ, rest upon his word, and boldly say, Since God is for us, who can be against us? By the favour of God, enemies are lost, and friends gained.

2 Chronicles 32:15 . How much less shall your God deliver you — Seeing I have destroyed so many nations, and some of them stronger than you, in spite of all their gods, it is not probable that your God should defend you? inasmuch as none of the others could defend their worshippers.

Verse 15. - The urgency of Sennacherib's appeal to the people was of course his way of trying to save work of actual siege, fighting, etc., to himself and his army. The how much less of the message of Sennacherib probably meant that his estimate of the your God i.e. the God of Israel, was measured partly by the comparative smallness and unwarlike character of the nation of Judah, when set side by side with the great heathen nations, and partly by the spiritual and invisible character and being of God, little intelligible to such a one as Sennacherib. 2 Chronicles 32:15

Now therefore let not Hezekiah deceive you, nor persuade you on this manner, neither yet believe him: for no god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people out of {i} mine hand, and out of the hand of my fathers: how much less shall your God deliver you out of mine hand? (i) When man has prosperity, he swells in pride, and thinks himself able to resist and overcome even God himself.

(15) Neither yet believe him. — And believe him not. How much less . . . deliver you.—Rather, much less will your gods deliver you; or, much more will your gods not deliver you. (Comp. Isaiah 37:10-11.) According to ancient conceptions the gods of strong nations were strong gods. Now the Assyrians had vanquished stronger nations than Judah, and therefore, as they ignorantly supposed, stronger deities than the God of Judah. (Some Hebrew MSS. and all the versions have the verb in the singular, which gives the sense, “much less will your god deliver you.”)

The description of Sennacherib's all-conquering power: cf. 2 Kings 18:35 ; Isaiah 36:20 , and Isaiah 37:11-13 . "Who is there among all the gods of these peoples, whom my fathers utterly destroyed, who could have delivered his people out of my hand, that your God should save you?" The idea is, that since the gods of the other peoples, which were mightier than your God, have not been able to save their peoples, how should your God be in a position to rescue you from my power? This idea is again repeated in 2 Chronicles 32:15 , as a foundation for the exhortation not to let themselves be deceived and misled by Hezekiah, and not to believe his words, and that in an assertative form: "for not one god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people, ... much less then (כּי אף) your gods: they will not save you;" and this is done in order to emphasize strongly the blasphemy of the Assyrian generals against the Almighty God of Israel. To communicate more of these blasphemous speeches would in the chronicler's view be useless, and he therefore only remarks, in 2 Chronicles 32:16 , "And yet more spake his (Sennacherib's) servants against God Jahve, and against His servant Hezekiah;" and then, in 2 Chronicles 32:17 , that Sennacherib also wrote a letter of similar purport, and ( 2 Chronicles 32:18 ) that his servants called with a loud voice in the Jews' speech to the people of Jerusalem upon the wall, to throw them into fear and terrify them, that they might take the city.

What they called to the people is not stated, but by the infinit. וּלבהלם ליראם it is hinted, and thence we may gather that it was to the same effect as the blasphemous speeches above quoted (יראם, inf. Pi., as in Nehemiah 6:19 ). - On comparing 2 Kings 18 and 19, it is clear that Sennacherib only sent the letter to Hezekiah after his general Rabshakeh had informed him of the fruitlessness of his efforts to induce the people of Jerusalem to submit by speeches, and the news of the advance of the Cushite king Tirhakah had arrived; while the calling aloud in the Jews' language to the people standing on the wall, on the part of his generals, took place in the first negotiation with the ambassadors of Hezekiah. The author of the Chronicle has arranged his narrative rhetorically, so as to make the various events form a climax: first, the speeches of the servants of Sennacherib; then the king's letter to Hezekiah to induce him and his counsellors to submit; and finally, the attempt to terrify the people in language intelligible to them. The conclusion is the statement, 2 Chronicles 32:19 : "They spake of the God of Jerusalem as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, the work of the hands of man;" cf. 2 Kings 19:18 .