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2 Kings 18 Bible study: What confidence is this?
2 Kings 18 turns on one word: the book says Hezekiah "trusted in the LORD" (18:5), and Rabshakeh throws the same Hebrew verb back seven times. The king who broke the bronze serpent Moses had made (18:4) paid Assyria with the silver of the LORD's house (18:15), and his people met the mockery with silence, because he had said, "Don’t answer him" (18:36).
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“He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel, so that after him was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him.”
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“2 Kings 18 says Hezekiah broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.”
Is that in 2 Kings 18, or not? Make your call.
What's really going on
Right, according to all that David had done
Hezekiah began to reign "in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel" (18:1). "He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem" (18:2). Then comes a verdict 2 Kings hasn't given any king before him: "He did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, according to all that David his father had done" (18:3). Of Amaziah the book had said, "yet not like David his father" (14:3), and of Hezekiah's own father, "He didn’t do that which was right in the LORD his God’s eyes, like David his father" (16:2). Four kings of Judah before him did right, and each time the book added, "the high places were not taken away" (12:3, 14:4, 15:4, 15:35). Hezekiah "removed the high places, broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah" (18:4). In Hebrew, removed here and taken away in that refrain are the same verb, sur. He also "broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made" (18:4) (tap broke in pieces and Nehushtan).
Where it leads to Jesus
Mocked for trusting God to deliver
2 Kings 18:30leads toMatthew 27:43
Rabshakeh cried to the people on the wall, "Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us" (18:30), and "that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?" (18:35). At the cross, "the chief priests also mocking with the scribes, the Pharisees, and the elders, said" (Matthew 27:41), "He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’" (Matthew 27:43). Matthew doesn't cite 2 Kings 18, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared situation, not on shared words: in both, a trust that God will deliver is mocked aloud, before others who are listening (18:26-30; Matthew 27:39-43). Some see a likeness in that mockery. Others read each in its own setting: Rabshakeh spoke for the king of Assyria to the people on the wall of Jerusalem (18:26-28), and the LORD's answer in the next chapter was, "I will defend this city to save it" (19:34); the words at the cross were spoken of Jesus as he was crucified, and he "yielded up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50). 2 Kings is written in Hebrew and Matthew in Greek, and no link between the two chapters' words is claimed.
Honest questions
Questions people ask about 2 Kings 18
That was a taste
The rest of 2 Kings 18 is waiting in Favor
- On whom do you trust?
- Samaria's fall, told again
- "The LORD will deliver us"
- What Moses made, and what it became
- Isaiah tells it too
- 15 questions as you read
- 11 more Hebrew words
- A short check at the end
- Your notes, saved as you go
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The Hebrew word behind it
בָּטַחbatachsay ba-TAKH
Brown-Driver-Briggs: "trust", and "be confident". Strong's: "figuratively, to trust, be confident or sure". "He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel" (18:5): in Hebrew the verse puts "in the LORD, the God of Israel" first and the verb after. The verb comes eight times in this chapter, in seven verses: once in the book's own words of Hezekiah (18:5), and seven times in Rabshakeh's mouth (18:19, 18:20, 18:21 twice, 18:22, 18:24, 18:30). 2 Kings uses it nine times in all; the ninth is in the message the king of Assyria sends Hezekiah in the next chapter, "Don’t let your God in whom you trust deceive you" (19:10). 1 Kings never uses it. It is the verb of "Trust in the LORD with all your heart" (Proverbs 3:5).
For your group
2 Kings 18 Bible study questions
- 1Rabshakeh asks, "What confidence is this in which you trust?" (18:19). If someone asked you that about your own life this week, what would your honest answer be?
- 2The bronze serpent was made at the LORD's command (Numbers 21:8-9), and by Hezekiah's day "the children of Israel burned incense to it" (18:4). What good things, even things God has given, can people start to look to in his place? Is there one in your life?
- 3"The people stayed quiet, and answered him not a word; for the king’s commandment was, “Don’t answer him.”" (18:36). When is silence the right answer to someone mocking what you believe, and when is it not?
Leading a group? In Favor, everyone reads 2 Kings 18 during the week and answers these questions privately. Answers stay sealed until you meet, then appear together, and you can print the week's sheet.
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Questions
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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Hebrew and Greek words are checked against the original-language texts and public-domain lexicons. What we believe · Favor home