The account of Hezekiah’s life in 2 Kings begins with his revolt against Sennacherib and the humiliation of the king because of his lack of trust, followed by the invasion of Judah. This is because the account here presents to us the careers of kings placed under responsibility. God’s discipline toward Hezekiah on this occasion shows him that only trust in the Lord is able to sustain him. Next we find Sennacherib’s attack against Jerusalem, where Hezekiah’s absolute confidence in the Lord is put to the proof and comes forth victorious.
In the account in Chronicles, we find the kings and the people viewed according to the counsels of God and His sovereignty in working out His purposes in spite of man’s failure. Judah is nothing more than a little insignificant remnant, confined to Jerusalem; the history of Sennacherib’s attack against Jerusalem is much briefer here than in the other two accounts.
In Isaiah we have the history of Hezekiah from the prophetic point of view. Three facts only are set forth in detail there: Sennacherib’s attack and Hezekiah’s grievous illness, followed by the visit of the ambassadors, which sets forth prophetically Babylon’s rise and fall in relation to Judah. In this account Hezekiah is in some respects a type of the Messiah, but in many other respects a type of the godly Jewish remnant.
The Things That Remained
After the Assyrian’s threats against him, Hezekiah goes up to the house of the Lord a first time. As it appeared, little was left to this poor king; all Judah was sacked, and the Assyrian army was besieging the only city still remaining standing. Did they have any resource, this weak “remnant that is left” (2 Kings 19:4)? Yes, indeed! They still had Jehovah’s temple, His beloved city, Mount Zion, and the prophet, the bearer of the word of God! The flesh might become discouraged, but amid this indescribable disaster, faith possessed everything that gave it firm assurance. It hearkens to the voice of the prophet and closes its ear to the blaspheming voice of the enemy’s servants. It gathers around the Lord’s anointed king.
Not that this confidence excluded a recognition of the extreme danger which pressed upon the heart: They wear sackcloth and rend their garments in token of affliction, of humiliation and of mourning. But the danger drives Hezekiah and his people towards the house of God to receive counsel, strength and consolation. “This day is a day of trouble and of rebuke and of reviling; for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth” (2 Kings 19:3). In such times, as well as in our own day, our part is deep humiliation. Like the little remnant in Judah, we have to feel reproach and express it by our tears over the state of Christendom. But one thing suffices the afflicted remnant and ought to suffice us: The Lord is there, and it is He, not ourselves, that has been defied.
The Word of the Lord
“Be not afraid,” said Isaiah, “of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Behold, I will put a spirit into him and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land” (2 Kings 19:6-7). The word of the Lord is fulfilled to the letter. The news that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, who had seized Egypt, was advancing against him when his own objective was precisely the conquest of Egypt caused him to depart suddenly to meet him.
But before his departure, Sennacherib sends a written message to Hezekiah. He had previously sent his spokesmen with this message to the people: “Let not Hezekiah deceive you ... neither let Hezekiah make you rely upon Jehovah” (2 Kings 18:29-30 JND). Now he says to Hezekiah, “Let not thy God, upon whom thou reliest, deceive thee” (2 Kings 19:10), likening Him to the false gods that he, the Assyrian, had destroyed. It was a direct “reproach” against the “living God.” The rage that filled the Assyrian monarch, hindered in his project and wounded in his pride, now shows itself in its true character. It is the God of Israel whom he opposes.
The Name of the Lord
Hezekiah goes up to the house of the Lord a second time. It is no more a question of humiliation like the first time, but one of a direct attack upon the name of the Lord whom Hezekiah honors. God must take account of this letter. The king places God’s cause into God’s own hands, but he knows that to honor His name, the Lord will save His humbled people. “Now, Jehovah our God, I beseech thee, save us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou, Jehovah, art God, Thou only” (2 Kings 19:19 JND).
Then Isaiah causes the king to know the word of the Lord pronounced against the Assyrian. Hezekiah bears upon his heart the interests of God, and God justifies the character and honor of His beloved ones, guilty but humbled, when these justify His personal honor and character. The Assyrian had been the rod of the wrath of God, but he had become proud of his success and had not feared to lift himself up against God. The Lord said, “Because thy raging against Me and thine arrogance is come up into Mine ears, I will put My ring in thy nose, and My bridle in thy lips, and I will make thee go back by the way by which thou camest” (2 Kings 19:28 JND).
The Assyrian should not enter the city nor shoot arrows into it nor cast a bank against it; nevertheless the enemy army was surrounding it at that very moment. But God intervened because of His name and because of David His servant, toward whom He would neither revoke His covenant nor His promises (2 Kings 19:32-34).
Judgment of the Enemy
The very night of this prophecy the camp of the Assyrians was smitten. In the morning they were all dead bodies. “The stouthearted are made a spoil, they have slept their sleep; and none of the men of might have found their hands. At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep. ... When God rose up to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth” (Psa. 76:5-6,9). It will be thus also that the Assyrian of the end time, the king of the North, shall meet his judgment: “Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; and he shall go forth with great fury to exterminate, and utterly to destroy many. And he shall plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the mountain of holy beauty; and he shall come to his end, and there shall be none to help him” (Dan. 11:44-45). He himself, the head of his army, suffers the sentence pronounced against him by the prophet (2 Kings 19:37). His sons smite him with the sword as he was bowed down in the house of Nisroch his god. He had said to Hezekiah, “The Lord will not deliver you,” but his god Nisroch was incapable of delivering him when he worshipped before him.
Progress
In all this we follow the progress of the man of God and the reward which his trust in the Lord receives. At the beginning he rebels against the Assyrian when perhaps, lacking knowledge of his own heart, he could have mistaken confidence in himself for confidence in God alone. Then he loses his confidence before the enemy, but God uses the discipline to remove from him all his self-confidence. In this trial Hezekiah, humbled by the state of his people, seeking no support within his own heart, commits all to God. His confidence increases in the measure that the trial grows. He no longer thinks of himself nor of his people, except to judge them; he seeks only the glory of the Lord, linking the salvation of Israel to this glory, however. God answers him by showing him that Jerusalem, the son of David, and the beloved remnant occupy His thoughts exclusively. He delivers His people by judgment, answering the humble prayer “the remnant that is left” addresses to Him by the mouth of the prophet (2 Kings 19:4).
H. L. Rossier (adapted)