PART II. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EVENTS IN THE REIGN OF HEZEKIAH (CH. 36-39.).
SECTION I. SENNACHERIB'S ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE JUDAEA, AND HIS OVERTHROW (Isaiah 36:1-22; Isaiah 37:1-38.).
EXPOSITION
IF the Book of Isaiah be regarded as the result of a gradual accretion (see the General Introduction), whether that accretion is to be ascribed to the action of the prophet himself or to that of later editors, we may equally consider the present chapters (ch. 36-39.) to have been originally an "Appendix," attached, as furnishing illustration to the preceding prophecies, and at one time terminating the book. They will thus stand to the preceding chapters in much the same relation as that in which the last chapter of Jeremiah stands to the rest of that prophet's work, differing only in the fact that they are almost entirely the prophet's own composition. Isaiah wrote the history of the reign of Hezekiah for the general "Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah" (2 Chronicles 32:32). From this "book" the account of the reign which we have in 2 Kings (18-20.) is almost certainly taken (2 Kings 20:20). The close verbal resemblance between the present chapters and those in Kings, and the differences, which are chiefly omissions, are best accounted for by supposing that both are abbreviations of a more extensive narrative. such as that composed for the original "Book of the Chronicles" probably was. The abbreviation here inserted may have been made either by the prophet himself, or by a "co-editor." The point is one which is not very important, and which it is quite impossible to determine, unless arbitrarily.