ישעיהו, פרק ל״ז, פסוק כ״א

When a monarch seeks divine intervention during a national crisis, the response does not always arrive directly. God answers the king's heartfelt prayer, but the message is delivered through a prophet. Because the king was not a prophet himself, he could not receive the divine response on his own. Instead, Isaiah receives the message from God and is tasked with delivering it to the royal court [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

The message itself focuses directly on the king's plea. The primary approach among commentators is that the prophecy is given specifically as a response to the subject of the king's request regarding Sennacherib [מצודת דוד, שד״ל, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Furthermore, the prayer is answered precisely because its core focus was directed toward God and aimed at defending His honor [מלבי״ם].

The historical record of this event appears in both the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Kings, with a slight variation in the text. In the parallel account in Kings, God's message explicitly concludes with an affirmation that He has heard the prayer. In Isaiah, this concluding affirmation seems to be missing, leaving the thought slightly open-ended. While some suggest this omission was simply to keep the text brief, this idea is rejected, as the broader narrative of these events is not written in a shortened style. Interestingly, ancient translations of the Book of Isaiah, such as the Septuagint and the Syriac versions, do include the explicit confirmation that God heard the prayer, mirroring the text found in the Book of Kings [שד״ל].