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immediately preceded the campaign of Sennacherib. The narrative itself offers no special
difficulties. As Hezekiah lay sick* the prophet Isaiah was directed to go and bid him set
his house in order (2 Samuel 17:23), since his illness would terminate fatally.
- The disease was probably a carbuncle - certainly, not pestilence.
The announcement was received by the king with the utmost alarm and grief. We have
here to remember the less clear views entertained under the Old Testament, before the
LORD by His coming and Resurrection had "brought life and immortality to light
through the Gospel." Indeed, our own experience teaches the gradual unfolding of truth
with our growing capacity for its perception. And any anticipation of fullest truth would
neither have been in accordance with the character of the preparatory dispensation and
the training under it, nor have done honor to the new Revelation which was to follow.
Indeed, even now many of us learn slowly the joy of "departing," nor yet this without
constant reference to that which is joined to it, the presence with the Lord, of which they
of old knew not. Thus it was neither fatalism nor resignation to the inevitable, but faith,
when they laid them down to sleep content with the assurance that sleeping or waking
they were still with the LORD, and that it was well in this also to leave themselves
implicitly in the hands of the covenant-keeping God. And so we can from every point of
view understand it, that the Psalmist should have prayed, "O my God, take me not away
in the midst of my days" (Psalm 102:24), and that Hezekiah "turned his face to the wall*
and prayed.. .and wept with great weeping."
- In token of sadness, as if to look away from everything else, and to concentrate all
thought on one's grief. So also Ahab (1 Kings 21:4), although in a very different spirit.
For, assuredly, this being taken away in the midst of his days and of his work, would
seem to him not only a mark of God's disfavor, but actual punishment. It is from this
point of view, rather than as the expression of self-righteousness, that we regard the
language of Hezekiah's plea. And apart from this there was not anything blameworthy
either in the wish that his life should be spared, or in the prayer for it, although here also
we cannot but mark the lower stand-point of those under the Old Testament. The prayer
of Hezekiah, as for the present we simply note, was heard. Before Isaiah had passed "the
middle city" he was Divinely directed to return to the king with the message that his
request was granted, and to add to the promise of lengthened days the assurance of the
safety of the kingdom of David and of Jerusalem in anticipation of those dangers
which must have been foreseen as threatening the near future.
- The suggestion of Josephus and of some of the fathers: that the grief of Hezekiah was
caused or increased by the circumstance that, at the time, he had not a son to succeed
him, is not only wholly improbable but unsupported. The Rabbis however put it still more
realistically, and explain: "thou shalt die" - in this world, "and not live" - in the world to
come, because Hezekiah had neglected the command in not having children.
(^)