Isaiah 31:3

"Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit: and when Jehovah shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together."

The New Testament use of the word "flesh" for the lower element in human life does not appear in this passage. "It is the weak and mortal in contrast with the immortal and omnipotent,"[5] which is stressed here.

Kelley called this, "One of the truly great texts of the Old Testament."[6] It puts the children of God up against a very simple test. The brute strength and material power of Egypt in contrast with the eternal, spiritual power of the Almighty God. It must be one or the other! To choose material rather than spiritual power is failure.

Just at this point, there seems to have been a change in the strategy of the Assyrians. Hezekiah had evidently expected that Assyria would attack Jerusalem "on the way to" the destruction of Egypt and Ethiopia; but it appears that the attack came "on the way back to Assyria," after the defeat of Egypt in the battle of Eltekeh, a site some forty miles southwest of Jerusalem, but a battle in which Egypt apparently participated. There had to be some good reason why the Jews of Jerusalem discarded their idols; and, although Isaiah's preaching certainly had a lot to do with the change, the disaster at Eltekeh could also have had something to do with it. Barnes commented thus:

"The whole narrative respecting the invasion of Sennacherib would lead to the conclusion that, at first, Hezekiah himself joined in the purpose of seeking that alliance with Egypt, but that afterward he was led to abandon it, and to use all his influence to induce his people to rely upon aid from God."[7]