36:7
The enemy then foresees the response of Judah, “we now trust in the Lord”. The commander declares that Hezekiah’s removal of the high places was removing the places where God was worshipped, and so were an offence against God. In fact, the high places were places of idol worship, and were a constant thorn in Israel’s side, a constant source of failure. So Hezekiah had done a good thing. Far from weakening his standing with God, this had strengthened it. When we renew our commitment to God it may sometimes involve abandoning fruitless habits or practices. There may be times when we think “if only we had not stopped doing ...”. We should not fear, if we acted in obedience to the Lord we did the right thing.
36:8,9
The commander now mocks the Israelites. He challenges them to find two thousand riders, mocking the military strength of Jerusalem compared with the might of the Assyrians. Previously Judah had looked to Egypt to bolster her lack of military hardware. When we don’t rely upon God, but upon other things we become weak. But what happens when we do turn to God? We are still so weak in ourselves, nothing much seems to have changed. When we repent and turn to God we abandon our previous crutches. These could be things ike wrong relationships, wrong ways of getting money, using drink or drugs to get us through the day. When we repent we seemingly have nothing. But that is not true, for we have all of God! But we are so used to looking to ourselves for assessing how we are doing, and we see the same weakness and needs as before. But when we have turned to God we are no longer just dependent upon ourselves, we are God dependent. Judah would look at herself and see the same military weakness that she saw before. Yet the outcome of the battle was that Assyria, not Jerusalem, was defeated.
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