A FOREGLEAM OF DIVINE MERCY AT HAR–MAGEDON

9. After Samaria’s destruction, how did the situation become most challenging to Jehovah with respect to Jerusalem?

⁹ In 740 B.C.E. Jehovah used the Assyrian World Power as his “ax” to chop down the adulterous, idolatrous “house of Israel.” Its royal residence at Jezreel was emptied, its capital at Samaria was overthrown, the surviving Israelites were carried away into exile in distant provinces of Assyria. (Isa. 10:15) This produced a threat for Jerusalem, where King Hezekiah of the royal family of David reigned over the two-tribe kingdom of Judah. Eight years later the military hosts of Assyria invaded the land of Judah and began reducing its cities. The invading Assyrian king, Sennacherib, had plenty of bows, swords, war equipment, chariot horses and horsemen with him. In what way, now, would Jehovah’s mercy to the house of Judah be shown? The situation became most challenging to Jehovah.

10, 11. How did Jehovah now save the house of Judah to exalt his own name?

¹⁰ While besieging the city of Libnah, Sennacherib sent his God-defying ultimatum to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, some twenty miles away. In indignation Jehovah inspired his prophet Isaiah to give a defiant message for the Assyrian delegation before Jerusalem’s walls to take back to blasphemous Sennacherib. After this king got the warning message, Jehovah saved Judah to exalt his own name.

¹¹ “And it came about on that night,” as the record in 2 Kings 19:35-37 tells us, “that the angel of Jehovah proceeded to go out and strike down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When people rose up early in the morning, why, there all of them were dead carcasses. Therefore Sennacherib the king of Assyria pulled away and went and returned, and he took up dwelling in Nineveh. And it came about that as he was bowing down at the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, themselves struck him down with the sword, and they themselves escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son began to reign in place of him.”