God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 32:16-21 Lord Byron and me

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, June 4, 2025

16 Then his servants said even more things against the LORD God and against his servant Hezekiah. 17 The king also wrote letters to taunt the LORD, the God of Israel, and saying this against him: “Just as the gods of the peoples of the other lands did not rescue their people from my hand, so the god of Hezekiah will not rescue his people from my hand.” 18 Then they called out loudly in the Jewish language to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to terrify them and make them afraid in order to capture the city. 19 They spoke about the God of Jerusalem the same way they did about the gods of the other peoples of the world, which are the work of men’s hands. 20 King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz prayed about this, crying out to heaven. 21 Then the LORD sent an angel, who annihilated all the mighty warriors and the commanders and princes in the camp of the Assyrian king. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace. And when he went into the house of his god, some of his sons from his own body struck him down there with the sword.

When the men of Judah and Benjamin cowered in the Valley of Elah, they were taunted by the Philistines who belittled them and called them cowards, and worse. But when a shepherd boy brought his older brothers their dinner at the battlefield and heard the Philistine champion taunt the Lord, the God of Israel, he had had enough. He volunteered, young as he was, to go and face the giant with nothing but his sling and a few stones and the experience he brought having fought a lion and bear to defend his father’s flocks.

Now it was an Assyrian king who taunted the Lord, the God of Israel, through a few petty princelings, since the king was busy elsewhere, not all that far from that same Valley of Elah. Now it was Hezekiah, a descendant of that shepherd boy David, and Isaiah the prophet, who had had enough of the taunting. They prayed. They cried out to heaven.

The Lord sent two answers down to earth. The first was a message for the prophet Isaiah to give to the king. It is recorded in 2 Kings 19 and in Isaiah 37. The prophecy ends with these words: “This is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city. He will not shoot an arrow there. He will not advance against it with a shield, and he will not build a siege ramp against it. He will go back by the same route that he came, and he will not enter this city, declares the LORD. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David” (Isaiah 37:33-35).

God sent another answer. That was to send his angel and bring down the Assyrian army by their thousands to death in the field. One hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian warriors, mighty soldiers, officers, princes, and charioteers, were dead in the field. God’s holy angel had killed them. In the face of this miracle, Sennacherib stopped his siege of Lachish, called what warriors were left alive close to him, and retreated. Back north once again, past Samaria, through Galilee, up to Damascus and around the fertile crescent, past the old capital of Asshur to his new favored city of Nineveh he went.

There at home, a few years later, Sennacherib was murdered by two of his sons while his heir was away. I must admit that I myself wrote a poem about Sennacherib’s death without knowing that a better poet, Lord Byron, had written about the destruction of Sennacherib’s army. So I will climb to a dizzying height of arrogance and quote Byron’s poem here in its strong four-line stanzas, followed by my own with its own stanzas and couplets. Do not judge me too severely.

“The Destruction of Sennacherib”
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

  The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

  Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

  For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

  And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

  And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

  And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

“The Death of Sennacherib”

  Son of Sargon, where are your sons today?
Your chosen heir, Nadin-Shumi, died young,
The boy so dashing: the new-chosen one,
But where are his brothers while he is away?
  Come, back, O come,
New-chosen son!

  Listen to your warriors and your princes’ jeers—
Your wicked and treacherous sons
approach with flashing glint of bronze
And the help of your very own charioteers.
  Treachery, sin in the house of Nisroch
Murder upon the sacred rock.

  O where then are you, Urad-Mullissu?
Your father’s blood stains your hands
His crown crashing on Assyrian sands
The guilt upon your brother Sharezar and you!
  His blood spilled like slaughtered lamb or kid!
Death for the blood of Sennacherib!

This text teaches us to rely on God above all things. When he is blasphemed, we stand up for him and pray for his help. For when we are attacked, we trust in him, and he sends us help in the moment and in the distant future. His mercy endures forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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