And then, “In those days”, just when Hezekiah had been so marvelously lifted up by this Divinely-wrought deliverance, he was smitten with an illness that brought him face to face with death. Through Isaiah, who just before had given him the message of deliverance for his city and people, he was told to prepare for his end. Unlike Asa, one of his predecessors, who when diseased “sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians”, he did go straight to the Lord and with tears besought for his life. He was heard and 15 further years were granted to him.
He asked for a sign that he should recover, as the last verse of the chapter tells us, and a remarkable sign was given. That the shadow on the sun dial should go ten degrees backward was entirely contrary to nature, but it was a sign befitting the fact that God was about to reverse Hezekiah’s sickness, so that contrary to the nature of his disease, it should end in life and not death. A plaster of figs does not usually cure a virulently septic boil, but it did in this case as an act of God.
Unbelievers may of course refuse this story of the sun dial incident, just as they do the incident of the long day, recorded in Joshua 10:13, when the apparent course of the sun was arrested. It is worthy of note that in Joshua the sun, “hasted not to go down about a whole day.” The ten degrees of Hezekiah’s time may have completed a whole day. He who established the course of the solar system can accelerate or retard it, if it pleases Him so to do.
The Apostle Paul has told us, in Romans 5:3-5, what excellent results in the hearts and lives of saints are produced by tribulation, since it leads to the in-shining of the love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. A faint foreshadowing of this we find in the writing of Hezekiah after he was recovered which writing is preserved for us in verses 10-20.
It begins on notes of great mournfulness, occupying five verses, but it ends on songs which are to fill the rest of his life. The change of tone begins when he recognized the affliction as coming from the hand of God. Moreover he discovered, as verse 16 shows, that what threatened death to his body brought life to his spirit, which is more important than the body.
Verse 17 too is full of instruction. It expresses what unconverted folk have sometimes found, as well as saints, when deeply tried or near to death. Hezekiah did not then concern himself with “my kingdom”, or “my wealth”, but “my soul”. He also become conscious of “my sins”, and that there was a “pit of corruption” into which his sins threatened to cast his soul. This must have been a very acute spiritual experience for him; and so it is equally for us.
But on the other hand he made some very joyous discoveries. First, he discovered that on God’s part there was “love to my soul”, though he could not have known that with the fullness that has only been revealed in Christ. Yet it led to the further discovery that God had dealt with his sins, though he could not have known that with the finality that the Gospel brings to us. In his day there was “the remission [i.e. passing over] of sins that are past” (Rom. 3:25); that is, the sins of saints who lived before full atonement was made by Christ on the cross. Still he knew that God had cast all his sins behind His back; and since God does not move in circles but rather straight forward through the eternal ages, what He casts behind His back is there forever, and not as He said to Ephraim in Hosea 7:2, “before My face.”
Consequently he had the happy assurance that his soul was delivered from the doom that threatened it. The pit of corruption he would never see. What a wonderful experience was brought to Hezekiah by this violent sickness! Since his day many a saint has found a period of sickness, or of loss in other ways, to be an occasion of rich spiritual gain; many a sinner has been laid low to be broken in spirit and humbled for eternal blessing.
But, before we leave this chapter, there is another sobering reflection; for 2 Kings 21:1 reveals that his son Manasseh, who succeeded him, was only 12 years old when he began to reign; that is, he was born after Hezekiah’s recovery, as the result of his added 15 years of life. And this Manasseh reigned for 55 years and did such evil in and with the nation that the Babylonian captivity had to be inflicted upon them, as is shown so plainly in 2 Kings 21:10-16. Let us learn from this that we may earnestly beseech God for something that we regard as a favor, and it may be granted us, and yet we may have subsequently to discover that the “favor” we demanded carried with it consequences that were by no means favorable.
And this reflection is deepened when we read chapter 39. The Assyrian having been smitten of God, the revived city of Babylon began to lift up its head, though more than a century had to pass before it became the predominant power. Hezekiah had been magnified in the sight of surrounding peoples by the miraculous destruction of the Assyrian army, and also by his own miraculous recovery; hence the complimentary embassage from Merodachbaladan, which pleased him much and led to a display of his pride.
We are told quite definitely in 2 Chronicles 32:25, 26, and 31 That God’s kind deliverances led to the heart of Hezekiah being lifted up with pride, and that God permitted the testing of these men from Babylon to “try him”, and to “know all that was in his heart.” The Babylonians, whether they knew it or not, set a trap, and into it he fell, displaying for his own glory all that God had permitted him to acquire. Hence the solemn message Isaiah had to bring him, of coming judgment from Babylon on his sons and people.
Nor does the last verse of our chapter present Hezekiah to us in a very favorable light. He evidently cared much more for his own personal success and comfort than for the welfare of his posterity or of his nation. He had been favored of God, but he passes from our view too much wrapped up in his own blessings, too little concerned for others on whom the judgment was to fall.
Thus these four historical chapters, whilst recording God’s merciful intervention both for the nation and for Hezekiah personally, show us quite plainly that there was nothing in the people nor in the best of their kings that would avert the more immediate judgment on Jerusalem, that in the earlier chapters Isaiah had foretold.
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