f. It was this letter
perhaps a royal autograph--which Hezekiah took into the temple and there
"spread it before the Lord," praying God to "bow down his ear and hear;
to open his eyes and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which had
sent to reproach the living God." Upon this Isaiah was commissioned to
declare to his afflicted sovereign that the kings of Assyria were mere
instruments in God's hands to destroy such, nations as He pleased, and
that none of Sennacherib's threats against Jerusalem should be
accomplished. God, Isaiah told him would "put his hook in Sennacherib's
nose, and his bridle in his lips, and turn him back by the way by which
he came." The Lord had said, concerning the king of Assyria, "He shall
not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it
with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the
same shall he return, and shall not come into this city. For I will
defend this city, to save it, for my own sake, and for my servant
David's sake."

Meanwhile it is probable that Sennacherib, having received the
submission of Libnah, had advanced upon Egypt. It was important to crush
an Egyptian army which had been collected against him by a certain
Sethos, one of the many native princes who at this time ruled in the
Lower country before the great Ethiopian monarch Tehrak or Tirhakah, who
was known to be on his march, should effect a junction with the troops
of this minor potentate. Sethos, with his army, was at Pelusium; and
Sennacherib, advancing to attack him, had arrived within sight of the
Egyptian host, and pitched his camp over against the camp of the enemy,
just at the time to when Hezekiah received his letter and made the
prayer to which Isaiah was instructed to respond. The two hosts lay down
at night in their respective stations, the Egyptians and their king full
of anxious alarm, Sennacherib and his Assyrians proudly confident,
intending on the morrow to advance to the combat and repeat the lesson
taught at Raphia and Altaku. But no morrow was to break on the great
mass of those who took their rest in the tents of the Assyrians. The
divine fiat had gone forth. In the night, as they slept, destruction
fell upon them. "The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp
of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." A
miracle, like the destruction of the first-born