Humiliating Judgments
Isaiah 37:36
Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand…


After such boastings and threatenings as the Rabshakeh had uttered, it was utterly humiliating to lose his army without fighting a battle, to be compelled to take a miserable remnant home, as a circumvented, disgraced general. It was all the more humiliating if Sennacherib himself headed the army at the later stage. "The greatest men cannot stand before God. The great King of Assyria looks very little when he is forced to return, not only with shame, because he cannot accomplish what he had projected with so much assurance, but with terror and fear, lest the angel that had destroyed his army should destroy him; yet he is made to look still less when his own sons, who should have guarded him, killed him."

I. GOD'S JUDGMENTS OFTEN TAKE SURPRISING FORMS. Anything so overwhelming as this even his people, with all their experience, could not have imagined. God's ways of judgment are never exhausted.

II. GOD'S JUDGMENTS ALWAYS HAVE A PRECISE FITNESS. This humiliation was exactly the thing for a people so proud, boastful, and over-confident as the Assyrians. The high looks of the proud God will abase.

III. GOD'S JUDGMENTS CARRY SOLEMN WARNINGS TO THOSE WHO HEAR OF THEM. They say, "Who art thou that repliest against God?" "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." - R.T.





Parallel Verses
KJV: Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

WEB: The angel of Yahweh went out and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.




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