Isaiah 36:7

‘But if you say to me, “We trust in Yahweh our God.' Is not this he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar?” '

But what if they claimed to trust in Yahweh? This was the second possibility. That they trusted in their God, Yahweh. And it is now that he reveals how efficient the Assyrian intelligence system was. For they had received reports on what Hezekiah had been doing in Judah and Jerusalem, in getting rid of high places and altars and insisting on worship in the one place on the one altar. And to them this suggested an insult to Yahweh. So did Judah really think that Yahweh would support such a king, this destroyer of His sanctuaries?

The Assyrians clearly saw what Hezekiah had done as an anti-Yahweh act, a belittling of Yahweh, for to them the more high places and the more altars and the more images the greater the appreciation of a god. What they did not appreciate was that the religion of Judah was totally different, a unifying religion, meeting at the one sanctuary which was alone valid (like the Tabernacle of old). It was a religion that avoided a proliferation of altars which could result in the introduction of innovations which would mar the purity of their beliefs and religious thought and behaviour, and would really belittle God. For their God was a unique God, the only God, and could not be proliferated.

But he may also well have known the resentment that the reforms had caused, and be playing on the fact in the hearing of the people. ‘And has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar?” ' This is a phrase guaranteed to stir up any grievance that there was, a dictatorial king demanding acknowledgement only of what he had established, rather than what they loved, the old traditions. He was not to know that that was what Yahweh had told him to do as well.