Isaiah 36:2 - Exposition

And the King of Assyria sent Rabshakeh … with a great army . It is inconceivable that, immediately after the grant of terms of peace and their acceptance, Sennacherib should have renewed the war; there must have been an interval, and a fresh provocation. The interval can have been only a short one, since Hezekiah died in b.c. 697. It may have been a couple of years, or perhaps no more than a year, or possibly only a few months. The fresh provocation probably consisted in an application for aid, made by Hezekiah to Tir-hakah, or to the subordinate Egyptian kings, which is glanced at in Isaiah 36:6 . The Assyrian annals, which never record any reverse or defeat, are wholly silent as to this second expedition. The only profane confirmation of it is to be found in Herodotus (2.141). From Lackish . Laehish, an ancient city of the Amorites ( Joshua 10:5 ), was assigned by Joshua to the tribe of Judah ( Joshua 15:39 ), and seems to have been still a Jewish possession ( 2 Kings 14:19 ). It occupied "a low round swell or knoll" in the Shefelch, or low tract between the Judaean highland and the Mediterranean, and lay near, if not directly on, the direct route which armies commonly followed in their march from Syria into Egypt. The site is now known as Um-Lakis ; it lies between Gaza and Ajlan (Eglon), about two miles west of the hitter. Sennacherib represents himself as engaged in its siege on a bas-relief in the British Museum (see Layard, 'Monuments of Nineveh," second series, pl. 21). The conduit of the upper pool (see the comment on Joshua 7:3 ). The spot was that at which Isaiah had been commanded to meet Ahaz some forty years previously. It was probably on the north side of Jerusalem, not tar from the Damascus gate.