Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Kings 19:26

"Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as grain blasted before it is grown up." — 2 Kings 19:26 (ASV)

Of small power.— Literally, short-handed. (Isaiah 59:1.) Keil compares the well-known title of Artaxerxes I, Longimanus, the “long-handed,” as if that epithet meant far-reaching in power. Thenius says that a frightened man draws in his arms (?)

As the grass ... —It may be better to omit as. They were field growth and green herbage; grass of the roofs and blasting before stalk. The sense seems imperfect unless we supply the idea of withering away, as in Psalm 37:2; Psalms 90:5–6; Psalms 129:6; and Isaiah 40:5, 7. Instead of the word blasting, the parallel text (Isaiah 37:27) has field—a difference of one letter. Thenius adopts this and corrects stalk to east wind, which involves no great change in the Hebrew. We thus obtain the appropriate expression: and a field before the east wind.