Isaiah 36:17 - Exposition

Until I come and take you away . It was so much thee usual policy of Assyria to remove to a new locality a conquered people, which had given them trouble, that Rabshakeh felt safe in assuming that the fate in store for the Jews, if they submitted themselves, was a transplantation. Sargon had transported the Israelites to Gozan and Media ( 2 Kings 18:11 ), the Tibarcni to Assyria, the Commageni to Susiana. Sennacherib himself had transported into Assyria more than two hundred thousand Aramaeans. It might be confidently predicted that, if he conquered them, he would transplant the Jews. Rabshakeh tries to soften down the hardship of the lot before them by promises of a removal to a land equal in all respects to Palestine. To a land like your own land . This was certainly not a general principle of Assyrian administration. Nations were removed from the far north to the extreme south, and vice versa , from arid to marshy tracts, from fertile regions to comparative deserts. The security of the empire, not the gratification of the transported slaves, was the ruling and guiding principle of all such changes. A land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. The writer of Kings adds, "a land of oil olive and of honey." (On the productiveness of Palestine, see Numbers 13:27 ; Numbers 14:7 ; Deuteronomy 1:23 ; Deuteronomy 8:7-9 ; Deuteronomy 11:11 , Deuteronomy 11:12 .)