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and the house of his armor, and all that was found in his treasures; there was nothing in
his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not" (2 Kings 20:13).
- In Isaiah 39:2 we read, "Hezekiah rejoiced." Perhaps this is the better reading.
It was a disingenuous device when Hezekiah, in answer to the questioning of Isaiah,
sought to divert him by a reference to the "far country" whence the ambassadors had
come, as if flattering to Jewish national pride, and implying the acknowledged supremacy
of Jehovah's power. Such had not been the object of the prophet in asking about the
country of these strangers. By eliciting that they had come from Babylon, he would
indicate to Hezekiah that his inmost purpose in showing them all his treasures had been
read. But to know it was to pronounce the Divine disapprobation of any such alliance
against Assyria. This explains the severity of the punishment afterwards denounced upon
Hezekiah for an offense which otherwise might have seemed trivial. But this had clearly
appeared, that Hezekiah had not learned the lessons which his late danger and God-
granted recovery were intended to teach; nor did he learn them otherwise than in the
school of extreme anguish, after all his worldly policy had ended in defeat, his land been
desolated, and the victorious host of Assyria laid siege to Jerusalem. And this seems to be
the meaning of the reference in 2 Chronicles 32:25, 26, to the ungratefulness and the
pride of the king after his miraculous recovery, as well as of this other notice (ver. 31),
that in the matter of the ambassadors, God had left Hezekiah to himself, to try him, and
"know all that was in his heart."*
- Josephus also takes the same view of the object of the Babylonian mission (Ant. x. 2,
2).
But with God there was not any changeableness. As afterwards Isaiah denounced the
alliance with Egypt, so now he spoke the Divine judgment on the hoped-for treaty with
Babylon. So far from help being derived from such alliance, Israel's future doom and
misery would come from Babylon, and the folly of Hezekiah would alike appear and be
punished in the exile and servitude of his descendants. Thus in the sequence of God this
sowing of disobedience should be followed by a harvest of judgment. Yet for the present
would there be "peace and continuance" - till the measure of iniquity was filled. And
Hezekiah acquiesced in the sentence, owning its justice and grateful for its delay. Yet
here also we perceive shortcoming. Hezekiah did not reach up to the high level of his
father David in circumstances somewhat similar (2 Samuel 24:17), nor was his even the
humble absolute submission of Eli of old (1 Samuel 3:18).*
- Comp. Cheyne, u.s. I., p. 231.
But as throughout this history Isaiah appeared as the true prophet of God by the
consistency of his utterance of the Divine Will against all heathen alliances, by his
resistance to all worldly policy, however specious, and even by his bearing on the
(^)