2 Kings 18:22
But if ye say unto me, We trust in the LORD our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem? But if ye say unto me, We trust in the LORD our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?
The verse belongs to the history of Judah after the ten tribes had been swept away. It is part of the biblical account of Sennacherib's invasion of Palestine and siege of Jerusalem, an account corroborated by Sennacherib's cylinder, and beyond that setting the verse itself is not further explained. The verse records Sennacherib's claim that Hezekiah had taken away the high places and altars and had said to Judah and Jerusalem that they should worship before the altar in Jerusalem. Those high places had been devoted to idol worship, so Hezekiah's reform centered worship on one altar and one God, which peoples who depended on many gods regarded as foolish.
The Assyrian spokesman used Hezekiah's removal of the high places and altars to attack Judah's trust in the Lord, claiming it undermined their worship, in an attempt to frighten Jerusalem and portray its God as powerless like the handmade gods of the nations. That claim was not to be accepted, for the story in 2 Kings 18 and 19 shows God is a friend to his people in trouble and delivers those who trust him by miraculous intervention to save the city.
Taken with 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 37, the setting of Hezekiah's conflict with Assyria shows the Assyrian army was with the king at Libnah and not near Jerusalem when the angel struck down 185,000, so that slaughter cannot fulfill Isaiah's prophecy of Tophet prepared for the king. As Hezekiah spread the enemy's threatening letter before the Lord and prayed, believers may spread their troubles before God. Learning faith, self-denial, and trust in God now prepares children to meet the coming time of trouble without being overwhelmed.