Bible Strands
2 Kings 19:23
Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest outposts, the densest of its forests.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses the Assyrian monarch, quoting his own boastful declaration during the siege of Jerusalem. The passage functions as Yahweh’s direct rebuttal to the enemy’s pride.
The words — חֵרַ֣פְתָּ֔ (che.Raf.ta) translates literally as “you have taunted,” and רִכְבִּ֖ (rikh.bi) means “my chariotry.” These terms anchor the verse in the king’s claim of military supremacy.
The thread — The boast is contrasted in Psalms 20:7 with reliance on God’s name, while Isaiah 10:18 declares that the very forests he boasts of felling will be completely destroyed.
Why it lands — It demands acknowledgment that human conquest operates only within divine permission. The text requires the reader to stop attributing power to instruments of war and recognize God’s sovereign control over history.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 18:17 Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced up to Jerusalem and stationed themselves by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.
- Psalms 20:7 Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
- Isaiah 10:18 The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man.
- 2 Kings 18:23 Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!
- 2 Kings 18:33 Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
- 2 Chronicles 26:10 Since he had much livestock in the foothills and in the plain, he built towers in the desert and dug many cisterns. And since he was a lover of the soil, he had farmers and vinedressers in the hill country and in the fertile fields.
- 2 Chronicles 32:17 He also wrote letters mocking the LORD, the God of Israel, and saying against Him: “Just as the gods of the nations did not deliver their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”
- Isaiah 10:7 But this is not his intention; this is not his plan. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off many nations.
- Isaiah 10:14 My hand reached as into a nest to seize the wealth of the nations. Like one gathering abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth. No wing fluttered, no beak opened or chirped.’”
- Isaiah 37:24 Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest heights, the densest of its forests.