What is the context?
That night the angel of the Lord strikes down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. The narrator attributes the deliverance to the Lord’s action, not to a battle won by Jerusalem’s army.
Sennacherib withdraws and returns to Nineveh. Later, while worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, he is killed by two of his sons, who escape; Esar-haddon succeeds him.
The conclusion answers both the threat to Jerusalem and the earlier prediction of the king’s death in his own land. It does not say that the return and the assassination occur on the same day or explain the deaths in the camp by a named disease.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Wesley reads the outcome as showing the inability of the king’s chosen worship to protect him after his challenge to the Lord. The severe account must be retained as narrated. It does not grant later readers authority to kill opponents or establish a medical cause that the text does not identify.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.
Where can I study this further?
No deeper study linked yet.