If thou say to me, We trust in the Lord. "The Assyrians," it has been observed, "had a good intelligence department" (Cheyne). It was known to Sennacherib that Hezekiah had a confident trust, which seemed to him wholly irrational, in Jehovah—the special God of his people.
It was also known to him that Hezekiah, in the earlier portion of his reign (2 Kings 18:4), had "removed the high places" and broken down the altars, where Jehovah had for centuries been worshipped throughout the length and breadth of the land.
He concludes that, in so doing, he must have offended Jehovah. He is probably ignorant of the peculiar proviso of the Jewish Law, that sacrifice should be offered in one place only, and conceives that Hezekiah has been actuated by some narrow motive, and has acted in the interests of one city only, not of the whole people.
Ye shall worship before this altar. The parallel passage of 2 Kings (2 Kings 18:22) has "this altar in Jerusalem." The brazen altar in the great court of the temple is, of course, meant. Hezekiah had cleansed it front the pollutions of the time of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 29:18), and had insisted on sacrifice being offered nowhere else (2 Chronicles 29:21-35; 2 Chronicles 30:15-24; 2 Chronicles 31:1, etc.
). Such a concentration of worship was unknown to any of the heathen nations, and may well have been unintelligible to them.