2 Chronicles 32:9 - Exposition

The passage beginning with this verse and ending with 2 Chronicles 32:21 represents the much fuller parallel (2Ki 18:17-19:37), fifty-eight verses in all This much greater fulness is owing to the greater length at which the language of defiance on the part of Sennacherib and his appointed officers is narrated, and the matter of his subsequent letter; also the prayer of Hezekiah; and his application to Isaiah, with the reply of the latter to it. On the other side, there is very little additional in our narrative, a few words heightening the effect in our verses 18, 20, 21, constituting the whole of such additional matter. The vague mark of time, after this , with which our present verse opens, merely says that in due course of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, and attack of the fenced cities (verse 1), he proceeds to send his servants and his insolent defiances to the metropolis, Jerusalem itself. The three words in italics, "himself laid "siege," should evidently give place to the single word "remained" or "was;" i.e. he and all his host with him remained at, or opposite to, Lachish, while his servants went to defy Jerusalem in his name.