2 Kings 19:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
2 Kings 19:14
And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.
to take (in the widest variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
letter
הַסְּפָרִ֛יםha.se.fa.Rim
H5612
properly · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
hand
מִיַּ֥דmi.Yad
H3027
a hand (the open one (indicating power · preposition + noun, common both genders singular construct
messengers
הַמַּלְאָכִ֖יםha.mal.'a.Khim
H4397
a messenger · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
read
וַיִּקְרָאֵ֑םvai.yik.ra.'Em
H7121
to call out to (i.e. properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
Hezekiah
חִזְקִיָּ֖הוּchiz.ki.Ya.hu
H2396
Chizkijah · proper noun, a man's name
up
וַיַּ֙עַל֙vai.Ya.'al
H5927
to ascend · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
house
בֵּ֣יתbeit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct
LORD
יְהוָ֔הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
spread
וַיִּפְרְשֵׂ֥הוּvai.yif.re.Se.hu
H6566
to break apart · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
before
לִפְנֵ֥יlif.Nei
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 37:14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the LORD, and spread i…
Psalms 91:1-2 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalms 123:1-4 Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens.
1 Kings 8:28-30 Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, whi…
Ezra 9:5 And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my…
Psalms 74:10-11 O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 2 Kings 19:8-19
Rabshakeh, having delivered his message and received no answer (whether he took this silence for a consent or a slight does not appear), left his army before Jerusalem, under the command of the other generals, and went himself to attend the king his master for further orders. He found him besieging Libnah, a city that had revolted from Judah, Kg2 8:22. Whether he had taken Lachish or no is not certain; some think he departed from it because he found the taking of it impracticable, Kg2 19:8. However, he was now alarmed with the rumour that the king of the Cushites, who bordered upon the Arabians, was coming out against him with a great army, Kg2 19:9. This made him very desirous to gain Jerus…
HEZEKIAH'S PRAYER. (2Ki. 19:14-34)
Hezekiah received the letter . . . and went up into the house of the Lord--Hezekiah, after reading it, hastened into the temple, spread it in the childlike confidence of faith before the Lord, as containing taunts deeply affecting the divine honor, and implored deliverance from this proud defier of God and man. The devout spirit of this prayer, the recognition of the Divine Being in the plenitude of His majesty--so strikingly contrasted with the fancy of the Assyrians as to His merely local power; his acknowledgment of the conquests obtained over other lands; and of the destruction of their wooden idols which, according to the Assyrian practice, were commi…
Spread it before the Lord - The temple was considered to be God's dwelling-place; and that whatever was there was peculiarly under his eye. Hezekiah spread the letter before the Lord, as he wished him to read the blasphemies spoken against himself.
John Gill on 2 Kings 19:1
And it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard it,.... The report of Rabshakeh's speech, recorded in the preceding chapter:
that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth; rent his clothes because of the blasphemy in the speech; and he put on sackcloth, in token of mourning, for the calamities he feared were coming on him and his people: and he went into the house of the Lord; the temple, to pray unto him. The message he sent to Isaiah, with his answer, and the threatening letter of the king of Assyria, Hezekiah's prayer upon it, and the encouraging answer he had from the Lord, with the account of the destruction of the Assyrian army, and the death of Sennacherib, are the same…
The Church Fathers
Faith unguarded is armed by God. Hezekiah, through the power of faith, proved stronger with his puny force than Sennacherib, king of Babylon and rich Nineveh, with his thousands. Sennacherib had enlisted the forces of Assyria and the realm of the Medes. Laying waste with his huge legions all the neighbouring kingdoms, he proceeded towards the city sacred to the Lord and against it alone concentrated his whole massive war machine. But as he made preparations for this, God hindered him, for warfare delayed his unholy designs. He sent to Jerusalem a letter brusque in its arrogant threats. Hezekiah received it with grief and bore it to the Lord before the altar. There in prostrate prayer accompanied by his people in mourning black, he read out those harsh words and bedewed the letter with abundant tears, and so he prevailed on God. By prayer alone, though absent from the scene, he won a shattering victory over the Assyrians, who suffered a grievous death when God warred on them. This favour he won was so considerable that he did not even clap eyes on the enemy he conquered. Once his tears of complaint had passed above the constellations, once his lament from a humble heart had risen beyond the stars and his devoted words had assailed the ears of highest Father, the lofty doors of heaven swung open and a winged angel glided down, breathing the fragrant air on his smooth descent. Armed with the sword of the Word, he smote that wicked army, and glorying in the silent slaughter of the sleeping foe, he brought simultaneous death to one hundred and eighty thousand men. A single night was the accomplice engagement on that scale. Next morning the king arose still threatening but then took flight with his depleted column, wretched because his army was thus stripped of its slaughtered soldiers. He fled from Hezekiah, though the prophet was far removed in another district, and though he had only recently in his presence threatened to clap his fetters on him. At that time Isaias was mediator for Hezekiah.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Prayer — Is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him. Prayer may be oral or mental, occasional or constant, ejaculatory or…
Sennacherib — Sin (the god) sends many brothers, son of Sargon, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria (B.C. 705), in the 23rd year of Hezekiah. “Like the Persian Xerxes, he was weak and vainglorious, cowardly…
Assyria · Sennacherib king of: Prayed against by Hezekiah — Sennacherib king of: Prayed against by Hezekiah
Jerusalem · Calamities of, mentioned: Besieged but not taken by Sennacherib — Calamities of, mentioned: Besieged but not taken by Sennacherib
Letters · Sennacherib to Hezekiah — Sennacherib to Hezekiah
Shekinah · in the Holy of Holies — in the Holy of Holies
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Hezekiah's prayer. - Kg2 19:14. Hezekiah took the letter, read it, went into the temple and spread it out before Jehovah, to lay open its contents before God. The contents of the letter are given in Kg2 19:10-13 in the form of the message which the ambassadors delivered to Hezekiah from their king, because the ambassadors communicated to Hezekiah by word of mouth the essential contents of the writing which they conveyed, and simply handed him the letter as a confirmation of their words. ספרים, like litterae, means a letter; hence the singular suffix attached to ויּפרשׂהוּ, whereas in the case of ויּקראם, which stands nearer, the suffix follows the number of the noun to which it refers. The s…
Hezekiah received Sennacherib’s blasphemous letter and immediately took it to theinto the house of the Lord’s Temple. His prayer to God was a lament of praise (19:15) and petition (19:16-19).
Rashi on 2 Kings 19:13
He exiled and twisted. The king of Ashur exiled and twisted them.6Alternatively, this refers to Eretz Yisroel.—Radak
