2 Kings 19:25

"Hast thou not heard how I have done it long ago, and formed it of ancient times? now I have brought it to pass, that it should be thine to lay waste fortified cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as grain blasted before it is grown up. But I know thy sitting down, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy raging against me. Because of thy raging against me, and because thine arrogancy is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest."

"Hast thou not heard how I have done it long ago" (2 Kings 19:26)? Sennacherib, along with all the ancient world, should have been fully aware of what God had done for Israel in his deliverance of them from Egypt and in his driving out the reprobate nations of Canaan before the chosen people.

"I brought it to pass, that it should be thine to lay waste fortified cities" (2 Kings 19:26). Assyria, like all other evil nations, was used by God, merely as a tool, such as a razor or a saw, in order to punish and destroy other wicked peoples. That God indeed had actually nurtured and protected Assyria until that day when God would use them to destroy Northern Israel is inherent in what he did for Nineveh through the prophet Jonah. The mission of Jonah, resulting in the temporary conversion of Assyria, was for the specific purpose of preserving them until the destruction of Northern Israel. Jonah apparently had some premonition of this, and that accounts for his bitter unwillingness to preach to Nineveh.

What a fool, therefore, was Sennacherib who imagined that all of his exploits were due simply to his personal power and ability.

"I will put my hook in his nose" (2 Kings 19:28). "This is a further detail of what God prophesied in 2 Kings 19:7, above."[17] This is a characteristic of the inspired writings which we have frequently noted. In every mention of a given event, prophecy, or instruction, some significant detail, not previously mentioned, is added.

"One may still see, in a place called Khorsabad, old Assyrian sculptures in which captives were led before the king, by a cord attached to a hook or ring passing through the under lip, the upper lip, or the nose."[18] Thus, in this promise to put a hook in his nose, God is giving a pledge that he will treat this beast of a man in exactly the way he had treated others. The sculptures show the Assyrians leading both men and animals in such a manner.[19]