The commentator Alec Motyer calls the first 2/3 (chapters 1-37) of Isaiah “The Book of the King”. My Sunday School teacher suggests it can be related as “a tale of two kings”: Ahaz and Hezekiah, who were successive kings of Judah, the Southern kingdom. Ahaz was king of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) from 735 BC to 715 BC; Hezekiah, his son, was king from 715 BC to 686 BC.
These individuals and events are confirmed by sources outside of Scripture, by the way. As Kenneth Kitchen relates in his masterful “On the Reliability of the Old Testament”:
Nature of the Sources: The sources themselves show clear affinities in the kind of records used. Ancient kingdoms (large and small) did maintain running records (daybooks, etc.), exactly as were the annals (or daybooks) of Israel and Judah that are regularly cited as references by Kings and Chronicles. … What has survived in the rest of the ancient Near East, as in Kings and Chronicles, is a series of special interest works that have drawn upon the running records… (and he lists them, pg 63, emphasis in original).
During those days, the middle east was a cauldron of anxiety, as kingdoms made war on other kingdoms, and kings made alliances based on who they thought was going to be “the winner” in the various struggles over time. Of course, all of these changed over time, and the records of these kings and their emissaries is long and complicated.
The message of Isaiah to these kings of Judah was, “who are you going to trust? Are you going to trust in foreign kings and alliances? Or are you going to trust me?”
Here is how Ahaz handled things:
Compromise with Assyria
At that time King Ahaz sent to the kings of Assyria for help. For again the Edomites had come and attacked Judah and carried away captives. The Philistines also had invaded the cities of the lowland and of the Negev of Judah, and had taken Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, and Soco with its villages, Timnah with its villages, and Gimzo with its villages, and they settled there. For the Lord humbled Judah because of Ahaz king of Israel, for he had brought about a lack of restraint in Judah and was very unfaithful to the Lord. So Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria came against him and afflicted him instead of strengthening him. Although Ahaz took a portion out of the house of the Lord and out of the palace of the king and of the princes, and gave it to the king of Assyria, it did not help him.
Now in the time of his distress this same King Ahaz became yet more unfaithful to the Lord. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which had defeated him, and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But they became the downfall of him and all Israel. Moreover, when Ahaz gathered together the utensils of the house of God, he cut the utensils of the house of God in pieces; and he closed the doors of the house of the Lord and made altars for himself in every corner of Jerusalem. In every city of Judah he made high places to burn incense to other gods, and provoked the Lord, the God of his fathers, to anger. (2 Chronicles 28:16-25)
Hezekiah, his son, faced similar volatility. The Chronicler says of him, “He did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done” (2 Chron. 29:2). But maybe it took him a while to get to it.
The Assyrian king that Hezekiah faced was named Sennacherib. Sennacherib had an emissary, messenger, whom he sent with the following message, after a lot of give-and-take. And here is Isaiah’s account of it:
[the messenger of the king of Assyria said to Hezekiah]: “‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, destroying them completely. So will you be spared? Did the gods of those nations which my fathers have destroyed deliver them, even Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, and of Hena and Ivvah?’” (Isaiah 37: 10-13)
In effect, Assyria was mocking Hezekiah for even thinking that he could turn to YHWH. Hezekiah had a better response:
Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord saying, “O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to reproach the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated all the countries and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God.” (Isaiah 37:14-20)
This was an effective prayer:
Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken against him:
Among other things, that includes a prophecy:
“… I know your sitting down
And your going out and your coming in
And your raging against Me.
“Because of your raging against Me
And because your arrogance has come up to My ears,
Therefore I will put My hook in your nose
And My bridle in your lips,
And I will turn you back by the way which you came. (From Isaiah 37:21-29)
And the payoff:
“Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, ‘He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield, or throw up a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he will not come to this city,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake.’” (Isaiah 37:33-35).
And Jerusalem was protected, according to this prophecy. In the end, the Angel of the Lord “went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, all of these were dead. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home…” While he was “worshiping in the house of Nisrosh his god”, his sons “killed him with the sword” (Isaiah 37:36-38).
This was a two-fold prophecy, having been prophesied earlier, with somewhat less detail, but startling specificity, in Isaiah 10:12, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.”
This is why Scripture is Scripture. Just as Jesus told the Pharisees what he was going to do before he did it, when he both healed the paralytic and forgave his sins:
And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?” Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, “Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’; or to say, ‘Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.” And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mark 2 5-12)
The apostles clearly would have understood this connection with Isaiah.
The latest understanding of the universe is that there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and there are likely trillions of galaxies. Something for us to explore in eternity. Nothing is too hard for YHWH. The one who created all this has a special emphasis on our tiny planet.
“The king’s heart”, indeed, is “like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Proverbs 21:1). We have no reason to doubt that this is the very way that God sees things today, as well.
God promises in history what he will do, then he does it, and the written record for us gives us a very clear picture, and leaves us with a very clear understanding of what this God is like, the God whom we worship.
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