Isaiah 37:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
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 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
וַיִּקְרָאֵ֑הוּvai.yik.ra.'E.hu
H7121
to call out to (i.e. properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
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
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…
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…
1 Kings 8:38 What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart,…
1 Kings 9:3 And the LORD said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before me: I have hallowed this house, which t…
2 Chronicles 6:20-42 That thine eyes may be open upon this house day and night, upon the place whereof thou hast said that thou wouldest put thy name there; to h…
Psalms 27:5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a roc…
Psalms 62:1-3 Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 37:8-20
We may observe here, 1. That, if God give us inward satisfaction in his promise, this may confirm us in our silently bearing reproaches. God answered Hezekiah, but it does not appear that he, after deliberation, sent any answer to Rabshakeh; but, God having taken the work into his own hands, he quietly left the matter with him. So Rabshakeh returned to the king his master for fresh instructions. 2. Those that delight in war shall have enough of it. Sennacherib, without provocation given to him or warning given by him, went forth to war against Judah; and now with as little ceremony the king of Ethiopia goes forth to war against him, Isa 37:9. Those that are quarrelsome may expect to be quarr…
spread--unrolled the scroll of writing. God "knows our necessities before we ask Him," but He delights in our unfolding them to Him with filial confidence (Ch2 20:3, Ch2 20:11-13).
John Gill on Isaiah 37:14
And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it,.... Or books (k), in which the above things were written; and everyone of these he read, as Kimchi interprets it; though the Targum is,
"he took the letters from the hand of the messengers, and read one of them;''
that is, as Kimchi's father explains it, in which was the blasphemy against God; this he read over carefully to himself, observed the contents of it, and then did with it as follows:
and Hezekiah went up unto the house of God; the temple, the outward court of it, further than that he could not go:
and spread it before the Lord; not to read it, as he had done, or to acquaint him with the contents of i…
Hezekiah took the letters. The Prophet now shews what kind of refuge Hezekiah had amidst so great calamities. He immediately went into the Temple, to lament before the Lord the calamity which: he could not remove, and to "cast upon him" (Psalm 55:22) his grief and his anxieties. [51] Nor was this a blind or confused lamentation, but the pious king wished to move God by his tears and complaints to render assistance. We are taught by his example that, when we are sore pressed, there is nothing better than to east our burden into the bosom of God. All other methods of relief will be of no avail, if this single method be wanting.
And spread them before Jehovah. In "spreading the letters before…
The Church Fathers
(Verses 14ff.) And Hezekiah took the letters from the hand of the messengers, and he read them, and he went up to the house of the Lord, and he spread them out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, saying: Lord, God of hosts, God of Israel, who resides above the cherubim, you are the only God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, Lord, and hear; open your eyes, Lord, and see. And hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he sent to blaspheme the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made the lands and regions of the desert; and they have given their gods to the fire: for they were not gods, but the work of the hands of men, wood and stones; and they have destroyed them. And now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand: and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that You alone are God. Against the blasphemies of King Sennacherib, Ezechias took up his arms. And he goes again to the Temple, and spreads his letters before the Lord. Before, he had remained silent, for he did not dare to open his mouth in the Temple, terrified by the fear of the Lord, nor to offer free prayers to God. But now, because he had already heard Isaiah saying, 'Do not be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the boys of the king of Assyria blasphemed me,' and so on, he boldly prays to the Lord and asserts that God alone is the living one, whom we understand to be idols, the images of the dead. And he brings forth this point: Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have deserted the lands and regions of their gods and have given their gods to the fire. For they were not gods, but the works of human hands, wood and stone. And they shattered them, as proven in many histories, which write that the kings of Persia came to Greece and destroyed and plundered the temples of the Greeks. And he demands revenge, so that by this occasion, all kingdoms might know that God alone is able to free his own from danger.
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
Egypt — The land of the Nile and the pyramids, the oldest kingdom of which we have any record, holds a place of great significance in Scripture. The Egyptians belonged to the white race, and their original…
Church · HOUSE OF THE LOR — HOUSE OF THE LOR
Letters · Rabshakeh to Hezekiah — Rabshakeh to Hezekiah
Libnah · .Sennacherib besieged; his army — .Sennacherib besieged; his army
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).
This intimidating message, which declared the God of Israel to be utterly powerless, was conveyed by the messengers of Sennacherib in the form of a latter. "And Hizkiyahu took the letter out of the hand of the messengers, and read it (K. read them), and went up to the house of Jehovah; and Hizkiyahu spread it before Jehovah." Sephârı̄m (the sheets) is equivalent to the letter (not a letter in duplo), like literae (cf., grammata). ויּקראהוּ (changed by K. into m- ') is construed according to the singular idea. Thenius regards this spreading out of the letter as a naivetי; and Gesenius even goes so far as to speak of the praying machines of the Buddhists. But it was simply prayer without word…
When he received Sennacherib’s boastful threat, Hezekiah returned to the Temple and prayed for rescue. His prayer stands in contrast to Ahaz’s response to danger decades earlier (see ch 7).
Rashi on Isaiah 37:13
He exiled [them] and twisted [them] (וְעִוָּה הֵנַע) The king of Assyria exiled him and twisted him; he destroyed them and exiled them from their place.
