Isaiah 38
WHAT we have been reading in chapter 37 is an indication of the end of the Assyrian of the future day, though he will be allowed to capture Jerusalem and shed the blood of some of its inhabitants. In that time Jerusalem and Judah will be visited as never before because of sin.
And now in chapter 38 we have both history and a picture of what is to come in the story of Hezekiah’s illness, apparently unto death. Israel in the coming day will be brought low, as it were to death, in order that God may work in them a great and necessary spiritual change.
Hezekiah’s grief over the thought of death is in remarkable contrast to the apostle Paul’s expressed desire to depart (Phil. 1:21-2421For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. (Philippians 1:21‑24)); but we must remember that the hopes of Israel are earthly; their great desire will be to live to see the Messiah reigning as king of the land; so Hezekiah mourned that he should not (if he died) see God in the land of the living (verse 11); “the living, the living, he shall praise Thee” (verse 19).
The Epistle to the Hebrews makes clear the difference between Israel under the law, and the present dispensation of grace; a few passages from it will suffice:
“That through death He (Christ) might annul him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and might set free all those who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage.” Chapter 2:14, 15.
“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the corners thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins? . . . For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins . . . He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Chapter 10:1-22.
Israel must be delivered from outward enemies, as we have before seen; they must also know deliverance from the power of death working in them. For all that, they will not have the faith or the experience of the Christian, properly speaking; nor will they be changed from the natural to the spiritual body before the Millennial kingdom begins, but only at its end.
Death should never be a dread-prospect for the Christian; it is release, as 2 Timothy 4:66For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. (2 Timothy 4:6) is properly read; — “the time of my release is come.” And in 2 Corinthians 5:1-81For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 5Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 6Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7(For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:1‑8) is the apostle’s expression of confidence always, and pleasure in the thought of being absent from the body and present with the Lord.
God is however presenting in His Word Hezekiah as an example or foreshadowing of the quickening of the Jews in the latter days. It will take place, in at least the Jewish remnant, before the delivery from outward enemies is accomplished.
ML 11/19/1933