Isaiah 37:26

"Hast thou not heard how I have done it long ago, and formed it of ancient times? now have I 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, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as a field of grain 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 has 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 ..." (Isaiah 37:26). "Jehovah is here the speaker";[9] and the message is addressed to Sennacherib. He is not to believe for a moment that his conquests were due to any special ability on his part, but to the fact that God was merely using him as an instrument, such as a saw, or a razor, and that his conduct was so offensive to God that he would be sorely punished and that God would use another instrument to punish him, and that he would be rewarded with the same kind of cruel and inhumane punishment he had so ruthlessly meted out to his unfortunate victims.

Douglas pointed out that, "Isaiah 37:29 here is God's explanation a little more fully of what he had already prophesied in Isaiah 37:7."[10] As we have frequently observed this procedure of adding details with each subsequent mention of prophesies or commandments in the word of God is followed throughout the Bible.

"I will put my hook in his nose ..." (Isaiah 37:29).. Assyrian sculptures represent both captives and beasts as being led in this manner."[11] Some of these ancient sculptures may be seen at a place called, "Khorsabad, where captives are led before the king by a cord attached to a hook or ring passing through the underlip, the upper lip, or the nose."[12] The ear was also used for such purposes. Archer noted that animals, especially bulls, were led in this manner, and that God here promised to humiliate Assyria by treating her like a wild beast, "And compelling her to return home with her objectives unrealized."[13]