Therefore their inhabitants were of small power
Or, "short of hand" F21; it was not in the power of their hands to help themselves, because the Lord took away their strength, having determined that they should be destroyed for their sins; otherwise it would not have been in the power of Sennacherib to have subdued them; this takes off greatly from the king of Assyria's triumph, that they were a weak people, whom he had conquered, and were given up into his hands by the Lord, according to his purposes, or he had never been lord over them: they were dismayed and confounded;
not so much at the sight of Sennacherib's army, but because the Lord had dispirited them, and took away their natural courage from them, so that they became an easy prey to him: they were as the grass of the field:
which has no strength to stand before the mower: and as the green herb;
which is easily cropped with the hand of man, or eaten by the beasts of the field: as the grass on the housetops:
which has no matter of root, and is dried up with the heat of the sun: and as corn blasted before it be grown up;
before it rises up into anything of a stalk, and much less into ears; so the Targum,
``which is blasted before it comes to be ears;''all which represent the feeble condition of the people overcome by him; so that he had not so much to glory of, as having done mighty things.