V.15 To meet the demands of Sennacherib the temple was again raided. Silver was taken from the treasuriers and gold stripped from the doors and pillars (V.16) to be given to the king of Assyria.

In 721 BC Samaria fell and Israel was scattered.  That same year, Shalmaneser died and was succeeded by Sargon II (722-705 BC).  He campaigned in Gaza in 720 BC and Ashdod in 712 BC.  Sargon died in battle and was succeeded by Sennacherib (704-681 BC). 

Vs.2,7,8 Hezekiah (726-697 BC) began his reign at twenty-five years old.  He refused to knuckle under Shalmaneser or Sargon and even boldly campaigned against the Philistines himself, but not in alliance with Sargon. 

Hezekiah anticipated a future confrontation with the Assyrians and fortified Jerusalem.  He also constructed a tunnel from the Gihon spring to the Pool of Siloam to ensure an adequate water supply.  

Vs.14-16 However, when Sennacherib started to threaten, Hezekiah did not show the same faith or boldness that he did against the previous Assyrian rulers and tried to buy his way out of trouble.  Sennacherib was not buying it, and sent his lieutenant Rabshekeh to taunt, to threaten, and to persuade Hezekiah to yield.  And so, the test of faith was underway.

18:13 The way in which the Assyrians took the fenced cities of Judah but not Jerusalem matches what had happened in the days of Rehoboam – 2Chron 12:4-6 . Maybe the way Rehoboam humbled himself acted as a stimulus to the people in the days of Hezekiah.

V.17 The king of Assyria sent three individuals to meet Hezekiah.  In the KJV these three are named Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh.  They are not proper names but titles. 

Tartan was the title for the highest ranking officer in the Assyrian army - the commander-in-chief.  Rabsaris was the right-hand spokesman for the king (ambassador).  By the way, saris means eunuch in Akkadian, but that is not necessarily meant literally. However, subservience is implied.  Rabshakeh literally means cup-bearer, but the original duty had expanded to that of a commander in the field.

18:19-24 The Assyrian truly highlighted the issue with his repeated use of ‘trust’ in his speech. But this was also the challenge against the God of Israel. Hezekiah, of course, trusted the God of Israel who was the only God. That God was the only god was the point that the king of Assyria did not grasp.

V.4 Nehustan is a derogatory Hebrew term meaning an insignificant piece of bronze. About 700 years previous, Moses was commanded to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole.  This was done to save the Israelites from snakebite (Num 21:8,9).  It portended the saving power of the Lord Jesus, over death, when He was lifted up on the cross.  However, since the time of Moses, Israel had used the relic of the bronze snake as an idolatrous object of worship.

18:1 When Hezekiah came to the throne we are six hears away from the beginning of the siege of Samaria. The Assyrian threat loomed large in the early years of Hezekiah’s reign. He saw trusting in God as the solution to the Assyrian threat and began his preparations very early in his life.

V.25 Samaria had fallen; Israel had been taken captive and scattered by the Assyrians.  Judah and Jerusalem were now being menaced.  However, this threat would be averted.  

The people of Judah would have the experience of Israel, and their own near tragedy to consider.  Moreover, they knew that the prophets of Israel had been warning the northern kingdom for years about their impending doom. 

However, the lesson of Israel, and Hezekiah's close call, ultimately had no lasting impact on Judah.  Despite the warnings of the prophets, Judah would be overrun and Jerusalem would fall, 136 years after the fall of Samaria, in 586 BC.

18:33 the disdainful ‘Where are the gods’ echoes the vile question of Pharaoh – Exo 5:3 – the same fate awaited the king of Assyria as that the king of Egypt suffered – humiliation before the king of the whole earth.

V.1 Hezekiah (726-697BC) means Yah has strengthened or strength of Yah.

V.4 The copper serpent had seen functional service in the wilderness.  But, since that time it had become an idolatrous object of worship (Num 21:5-10). 

We must be careful not let traditional things of Christadelphia become larger than life, or take on meanings that were not originally meant.

V.7 Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father, had become subject to an annual tribute to Assyria.  It must have taken a great deal of faith and trust in Yahweh to make so bold a move.

V.8 The expression: from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city (KJV) seems to be proverbial and not indicative of geographical points, because the same expression is found elsewhere (2Kin 17:3).

V.9 Shalmaneser IV succeeded Tiglath-pileser to the throne in 727 BC.  He began the three-year siege of Samaria, but did not see it completed.  The siege was finished by Sargon. During the interim, Shalmaneser retired to Nineveh where he died.

V.10 This occurred in 721 BC.

V.13 Sennacherib (704-682 BC) was the son of Sargon.  Sennacherib came up against Judah in his third year, 701 BC.  This could not have been in Hezekiah’s fourteenth year.  Hezekiah’s fourteenth year was 712 BC, and Sennacherib came to power only in 704 BC.  And so, the fourteenth year must be a copyist’s error.  The text should read: ... the twenty-seventh year of Hezekiah’s reign.

V.14 The Assyrian account of the same event contains an greater amount of gold and silver.  But, the chronicles of Ancient Near East kingdoms often exaggerated such things to boost national pride.

18:15 The taking of the fenced cities of Judah is the background to Isa 8:7-8

2Kin 18:3-6 - Hezekiah is considered by some a type of Christ; Hezekiah's sweeping reforms perhaps echo the work of Christ at his first advent (Col 2:13-15). 

2Kin 18:4 - "brasen serpent" - in Moses' day it was on a pole (Num 21:8-9;John 3:14-15) and thus was a type of the flesh crucified but in this instance there is no reference to the pole so perhaps it is symbolic of the flesh uncrucified that was being wrongly worshipped.

2Kin 18:9 - "Shalmaneser" [(8022) means "fire-worshipper"].

2Kin 18:13,17,29,36 - Hezekiah is considered by some a type of Christ; the invasion of Sennacherib and the threats perhaps echo the opposition Christ received though he didn't answer back (Acts 4:26-27;Mark 15:5).

2Kin 18:17 - "fullers" [Heb. "kabas" (3526) means "to wash, to trample, to wash by treading, to be washed"]. A tunnel diverted water from the Spring of Gihon into a pool within the city walls (2Chron 32:1-4). 

2Kin 18:18 - "Eliakim" [(471) means "God raises, God sets up, God establishes, God of raising"]; Eliakim is thought by some to be a type of Christ (Isa 22:20-25); [2Kin 18:37 - (Eliakim was) "...over the household..."].

2Kin 18:31 - having one's own vine and fig tree is perhaps an echo of a return to the land and the millenial day of rest (Mic 4:4).

2Kin 18:32 - "...The LORD will deliver us"; "bread"; "wine" [Heb. "tiyrosh" (8492) means "new wine, freshly pressed wine"].

V.14 One of the abominations that Ezekiel saw was women weeping for Tammuz. 

According to the pagan beliefs of fertility cults, Tammuz was betrayed by his lover Ishtar (the same as Astarte, the Queen of Heaven), and thus died each fall.  The decaying vegetation at the fall of the year was testimony to this event, and thus a cause of mourning. 

 Interestingly, during their stay in Babylon, the Jews adopted some Babylonian months into their calendar which remained after the exile. One month was Tammuz (June/July), a time of lush vegetation and summer fruit.  This is in keeping with the annual revival of Tammuz, only to suffer death once more in the fall.

V.16 - with their backs turned toward the temple of the Lord they had symbolically turned away from God

Today’s prophecy was given to Ezekiel a year and a month after the previous ones (see Eze 1:1,2 and Eze 8:8). It’s interesting to note that the elders of Judah were in Ezekiel’s presence, probably hoping he would have a message for them. He did. God brought him in vision to Jerusalem, and showed him four different horrors which were done in Jerusalem, all recorded in today’s chapter.  These series of visions then go on until Eze 11:24,25. 

8:1  The ‘elders’ who went to listen to Ezekiel might well have been the same elders who were spoken to by Jeremiah – Jer 19:1  - If so they had heard about the judgment that would come and yet they were still rebelling against God.

8:11The word ‘ancients’ is the same word translated ‘elders’ in verse 1. Whilst the ‘elders’ are sitting before Ezekiel in Babylon he sees what their counterparts are actually doing in Jerusalem.

V.3 Ahaz had removed Yahweh's altar and placed it north of the Syrian altar that he had made (2Kin 16:14).  The idol, an Asherah pole, had been placed closeby. This pole was, in all likelihood, a successor to the one that Josiah had destroyed. 

V.11 Shaphan was the priest who read the newly-discovered book of the Law to Josiah.  It is ironic, then, that Shaphan's son, Jaazaniah, was one of the idolaters. 

8:12 The myth that ‘the Lord seeth not’, echoed again in Eze 9:9 we may never actually say those words but from time to time our behaviour indicates that it is what we think.

V.1 Here, Ezekiel begins a prophecy that continues into the next four chapters.

V.2 This is the same man that Ezekiel describes in Eze 1:27.

V.3 We are not told what exactly the image (idol) of jealousy was.

V.10 The phrase creeping things refers to the gods that the Egyptians worshipped.  Yahweh’s plagues in Egypt countered some of those gods.

V.11 Seventy men (elders), as a pattern of leadership, started with Moses (Num 11:16).

Shaphan had been the scribe who brought and read the Book of the Law to Josiah (2Kin 22:10-14).  Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan had shown total disregard for the Book of the Law.  He had become the leader of a group of spiritual rebels.

V.16 Sun worship originated in Persia. This event was particularly abominable because it took place in the inner court of the temple.

If you were trying to describe to a child the depths of the heart of an adult, where love was kept, and hatred nurtured, where ideas sprang forth and the deepest secrets guarded; how would you begin to put it into words? And if not words, what picture would you use?

God rose to this challenge by giving Solomon the pattern of the temple, so that men and women could visualise how one ought to keep God set apart, holy, in each ones heart and mind. So when God had to explain to Ezekiel what was wrong with Israel and Judah, he used that same temple image. This was an image, or reflection, of what went on in the heart of the nation of Israel. It was the fact that God had been replaced in the hearts and minds of the people that made God so angry and hurt.

For us gentiles who have no temple this is easy to understand. But to them it was almost impossible to seperate the image (temple) from the true (the heart and mind). So Jesus proposed pulling down that temple so that finally people would understand how to worship his Father in spirit and in truth (John 2:13-21, 4:22-24, Isa 56:7, Heb 13:10-15)

8:3 Imagine the scene. The elders are sitting before Ezekiel and all of a sudden he goes into a trance. They sit amazed as he does not communicate anything to them. Then, eventually, he speaks – Eze 11:25

V.43 It is important to note that the public preaching proclamation of Jesus was that of the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).  The Kingdom is the hope of all true Christians, promised to those who love and obey the Lord (James 2:5). 

This kingdom, which will be a real kingdom on earth, has been promised of old (Dan 2:44).  The faithful throughout the ages shall inherit it (Luke 13:28,29).  Jesus will return to earth to take possession of His kingdom (Luke 1:32,33; Acts 1:11). 

The Gospel contains two parts: the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ (Acts 8:12).  One must believe both parts to be a true follower of Christ. 

4:33  The healing of the man with the unclean spirit' is the first miracle that Luke records that Jesus performed. The man typifies Israel in their sinful state. Just as the man was healed Jesus will heal the nation.

4:23  In saying “whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country” we learn that whilst Luke presents this event as following on immediately after the temptations in the wilderness it was not the next event in Jesus’ life. He had been preaching in Capernaum and healing.

4:23  In saying “whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country” we learn that whilst Luke presents this event as following on immediately after the temptations in the wilderness it was not the next event in Jesus’ life. He had been preaching in Capernaum and healing.

Vs.5,9 We have just read how Ezekiel was transported, in the spirit, to Jerusalem (Eze 8:3).  As part of His temptation, Jesus was similarly transported, in vision, to see the kingdoms of the world; and the temple in Jerusalem.  Jesus knew He had unlimited power, and could indulge any whim (John 3:34).  However, He chose to resist any temptation with the use of scripture (He used Deuteronomy).

4:25-27 Here, so early on in the ministry of Jesus, we see an indication that the gospel was to be taken to the gentiles.

Vs.18,19 See Isa 61:1,2.

V.21 This verse proves that Jesus, and His activities, were prophesied in the Old Testament. And so, any follower of Jesus must understand the Old Testament (Luke 24:44).

V.28 Although true according to scripture, any allusion to the Gentiles was not welcomed by the Jews.

V.30 A miracle was performed whereby Jesus could pass through the hostile crowd.

V.31 Capernaum became the residence, and center of operations, of Jesus.

V.32 the word power (KJV) is better translated authority (ESV).

V.43 It should be clearly noted that Jesus preached the kingdom of God.  One cannot be a true follower of Jesus without understanding and believing the kingdom of God (on earth).

4:44 In saying that Jesus ‘preached in the synagogues of Galilee’ we learn something of the way that Jesus became known. Everyone would go to the synagogue every sabbath and so he would get a high exposure providing a speedy basis for making himself known to the people.