2 Kings 19:19 - Exposition

New therefore, O Lord our God. Hezekiah draws the strongest possible contrast between Jehovah and the idols. Sennacherib had placed them upon a par ( 2 Kings 18:33-35 ; 2 Kings 19:10-13 ). Hezekiah insists that the idols are "no gods," are "nothing"—at any rate are mere blocks of wood and stone, shaped by human hands. But Jehovah is "the God of all the kingdoms of the earth" ( 2 Kings 19:15 ), the Maker of heaven and earth ( 2 Kings 19:15 ), the one and only God ( 2 Kings 19:19 )—answering to his name, self-existing, all-sufficient, the groundwork of all other existence. And he is "our God " — the special God of Israel, bound by covenant to protect there against all enemies. I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand ; i.e. "do that which this proud blasphemer thinks that thou canst not do" ( 2 Kings 18:35 ); show him that thou art far mightier than he supposes, wholly unlike those "no-gods," over whom he has hitherto triumphed—a "very present Help in trouble"—potent to save. That all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God. The glory of God is the end of creation; and God's true saints always bear the fact in mind, and desire nothing so much as that his glory should be shown forth everywhere and always. Moses, in his prayers for rebellious Israel in the wilderness, constantly urges upon God that it will not be for his glory to destroy or desert them ( Exodus 32:12 ; Numbers 14:13-16 ; Deuteronomy 9:26-29 ). David, in his great strait, asks the destruction of his enemies, "that men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth" ( Psalms 83:18 ); and again ( Psalms 59:13 ), "Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth." Hezekiah prays for a signal vengeance on Sennacherib, not for his own sake, not even for his people's sake, so much as for the vindication of God's honor among the nations of the earth—that it may be known far and wide that Jehovah is a God who can help, the real Ruler of the world, against whom earthly kings and earthly might avail nothing. Even thou only. It would not satisfy Hezekiah that Jehovah should be acknowledged as a mighty god, one of many. He asks for such a demonstration as shall convince men that he is unique, that he stands alone, that he is the only mighty God in all the earth.