2 Kings 18:30
Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.
The verse stands in the closing portion of Kings that runs from the breaking up of Samaria in chapter seventeen toward the Babylonian captivity of Judah, covering the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Within that closing record it belongs to the large portion given to the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, who were good kings and devoted men of God notwithstanding their mistakes.
It is part of the account of Hezekiah's reign and his remarkable experiences in his trouble with Assyria, specifically Sennacherib's invasion of Palestine and siege of Jerusalem. The Assyrian king's cylinder gives a confirmatory account of that invasion and siege.
In the verse the Assyrian king's representative and spokesman, the envoy, warns the people not to trust Hezekiah's assurance that the Lord would surely deliver them and Jerusalem from the hand of the king of Assyria, because the city would not escape. The warning was Sennacherib's attempt to undermine Hezekiah and the people's trust in the Lord by denying that He would deliver them. That boast reflected the Assyrians' mistaken belief that the Lord was no stronger than the gods of the nations they had defeated.
The claim was false, for God is a friend to His people when they are in trouble and delivers those who trust Him. He did deliver Hezekiah and Jerusalem through a miraculous intervention, showing He is more mighty than the nations' powerless gods. Chapter eighteen gives the setting of the Assyrian campaign against Jerusalem, but the account considered alongside 2 Kings 19, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 37 does not place the Assyrian army near Jerusalem when the angel struck 185,000 men, since the army was with the king at Libnah. The verse is therefore part of the historical context used to reject the destruction of the Assyrian army as the fulfillment of Isaiah 30:33.
Hezekiah spread the threatening letter before the Lord and prayed about his trouble in 2 Kings 19:15-19, and God's people may spread their troubles before God in the same way now. Learning faith and self-denial and how to trust God now prepares children to meet the coming time of trouble and be delivered, while the wicked will pray then and will not be delivered.