1 In those days Hezekiah was ill and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, The Lord says, Put your house in order, for your death is near.
Now when Ahithophel saw that his suggestion was not acted on, he got his ass ready, and went back to his house, to the town where he came from, and having put his house in order, he put himself to death by hanging; so he came to his end and was put in the resting-place of his father.
And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the chief priests, dressed in haircloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
In those days Hezekiah was ill and near death; and he made prayer to the Lord, and the Lord in answer gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not do as had been done to him; for his heart was lifted up in pride; and so wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. But then, Hezekiah, in sorrow for what he had done, put away his pride; and he and all Jerusalem made themselves low, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come on them in Hezekiah's life-time.
In those days Hezekiah was ill and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, The Lord says, Put your house in order; for your death is near. And Hezekiah, turning his face to the wall, made his prayer to the Lord, saying, O Lord, keep in mind how I have been true to you with all my heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah gave way to bitter weeping. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, Go to Hezekiah, and say, The Lord, the God of David, your father, says, Your prayer has come to my ears, and I have seen your weeping: see, I will give you fifteen more years of life. And I will keep you and this town safe from the hands of the king of Assyria: and I will keep watch over this town. And Isaiah said, This is the sign the Lord will give you, that he will do what he has said: See, I will make the shade which has gone down on the steps of Ahaz with the sun, go back ten steps. So the shade went back the ten steps by which it had gone down. The writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, after he had been ill, and had got better from his disease. I said, In the quiet of my days I am going down into the underworld: the rest of my years are being taken away from me. I said, I will not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living: I will not see man again or those living in the world. My resting-place is pulled up and taken away from me like a herdsman's tent: my life is rolled up like a linen-worker's thread; I am cut off from the cloth on the frame: from day even to night you give me up to pain. I am crying out with pain till the morning; it is as if a lion was crushing all my bones. I make cries like a bird; I give out sounds of grief like a dove: my eyes are looking up with desire; O Lord, I am crushed, take up my cause. What am I to say? seeing that it is he who has done it: all my time of sleeping I am turning from side to side without rest. O Lord, for this cause I am waiting for you, give rest to my spirit: make me well again, and let me come back to life. See, in place of peace my soul had bitter sorrow. but you have kept back my soul from the underworld; for you have put all my sins out of your memory. For the underworld is not able to give you praise, death gives you no honour: for those who go down into the underworld there is no hope in your mercy. The living, the living man, he will give you praise, as I do this day: the father will give the story of your mercy to his children. O Lord, quickly be my saviour; so we will make my songs to corded instruments all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord. And Isaiah said, Let them take a cake of figs, and put it on the diseased place, and he will get well. And Hezekiah said, What is the sign that I will go up to the house of the Lord?
Whenever I say anything about uprooting a nation or a kingdom, and smashing it and sending destruction on it; If, in that very minute, that nation of which I was talking is turned away from its evil, my purpose of doing evil to them will be changed. And whenever I say anything about building up a nation or a kingdom, and planting it; If, in that very minute, it does evil in my eyes, going against my orders, then my good purpose, which I said I would do for them, will be changed.
And Jonah first of all went a day's journey into the town, and crying out said, In forty days destruction will overtake Nineveh. And the people of Nineveh had belief in God; and a time was fixed for going without food, and they put on haircloth, from the greatest to the least. And the word came to the king of Nineveh, and he got up from his seat of authority, and took off his robe, and covering himself with haircloth, took his seat in the dust. And he had it given out in Nineveh, By the order of the king and his great men, no man or beast, herd or flock, is to have a taste of anything; let them have no food or water: And let man and beast be covered with haircloth, and let them make strong prayers to God: and let everyone be turned from his evil way and the violent acts of their hands. Who may say that God will not be turned, changing his purpose and turning away from his burning wrath, so that destruction may not overtake us? And God saw what they did, how they were turned from their evil way; and God's purpose was changed as to the evil which he said he would do to them, and he did it not.
Now a certain man named Lazarus was ill; he was of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (The Mary whose brother Lazarus was ill, was the Mary who put perfumed oil on the Lord and made his feet dry with her hair.) So the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, your dear friend is ill. When this came to his ears, Jesus said, The end of this disease is not death, but the glory of God, so that the Son of God may have glory because of it. Now Jesus had love in his heart for Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » John Gill's Exposition of the Bible » Commentary on 2 Kings 20
Commentary on 2 Kings 20 John Gill's Exposition of the Bible
INTRODUCTION TO 2 KINGS 20
In this chapter is an account of Hezekiah's sickness, and of the means of his recovery, and of the sign given of it, 2 Kings 20:1 of the king of Babylon's congratulatory letter to him upon it, when he showed to the messengers that brought it his treasures, in the pride and vanity of his heart, 2 Kings 20:12 for which he was reproved by the prophet Isaiah, and was humbled, and submitted to the sentence pronounced on his house, 2 Kings 20:14, and the chapter is concluded with his reign and death, 2 Kings 20:20.
In these days was Hezekiah sick unto death,.... Of this sickness of Hezekiah, the message of the prophet Isaiah to him, and his prayer upon it; see Gill on Isaiah 38:1; see Gill on Isaiah 38:2; see Gill on Isaiah 38:3.
And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court,.... Of the king's palace, which is called the other court within the porch, 1 Kings 7:8 so it is according to the marginal reading, which we follow; but the textual reading is, "the middle city"; Jerusalem was divided into three parts, and this was the middle part Isaiah was entering into: but before he did, so it was:
that the word of the Lord came to him, saying; as follows.
Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people,.... The king of them, as the Targum:
thus saith the Lord God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; See Gill on Isaiah 38:5.
behold, I will heal thee; instantly, miraculously; and none but God could heal him, his disease being in its kind mortal, and he had been told from the Lord that he should die:
on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord: the temple, to give thanks for his recovery; and this he should do on the third day from thence; so soon should he be well, which would show the cure to be miraculous.
And I will add unto thy days fifteen years,.... See Gill on Isaiah 38:5.
and I will deliver thee, and this city, out of the hand of the king of Assyria; by which it appears that this sickness and recovery were before the destruction of the Assyrian army:
and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake: for the sake of his honour and glory in the temple, and the service of it, that were in Jerusalem, and for the sake of his promise to David and his seed.
And Isaiah said, take a lump of figs,.... Not moist figs, but a cake of dried figs, as the word used signifies, and so the less likely to have any effect in curing the boil:
and they took, and laid it on the boil, and he recovered; made a plaster of it, and laid it on the ulcer, and it was healed. Physicians observeF21Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. vol. 3. p. 620. Vid. Levin. Lemnii Herb. Bibl. Explicat. c. 19. p. 60. , that as such like inflammations consist in a painful extension of the fibres by the hinderance of the circulation of the blood, through the extreme little arteries, which may be mitigated, or dissipated, or ripened, by such things as are emollient and loosening, so consequently by figs; and, in a time of pestilence, figs beaten together with butter and treacle have been applied to plague of boils with great success; yet these figs being only a cake of dry figs, and, the boil not only malignant, but deadly, and the cure so suddenly performed, show that this was done not in a natural, but in a supernatural way, though means were directed to be made use of.
And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah,.... Or "had said",F23ויאמר "dixerat autem", V. L. Vatablus. before the plaster of figs was directed to, or, however, laid on, and as soon as he was told he should be healed:
what shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the Lord the third day? not that he disbelieved the promise of God, or doubted of a cure, but this he requested for the confirmation of his faith; which good men sometimes asked, when they doubted not, as Gideon; and Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, was bid to ask a sign for the like purpose, and it was resented in him that he did not, see Judges 6:17.
And Isaiah said, this sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken,.... Cure him of his disorder, so that he should be able to go to the temple on the third day:
shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? that is, the shadow of the sun on a dial plate; it was left to his option to choose which he would, as the confirming sign of his recovery.
And Hezekiah answered, it is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees,.... That is, it was comparatively so, otherwise to go down ten degrees at once would be extraordinary and miraculous; but that was more agreeable to the nature and course of it to go forward, and so the miracle would be less apparent:
nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees; which was directly contrary to its natural order and course, whereby the miracle would appear more clear and manifest: these degrees are by some saidF24Weemse's Christ. Synagog. l. 1. c. 6. sect. 6. p. 167. See his Exposition of the Judicial Laws, c. 25. p. 90. &c. to be half hours, and not full ones, since it is observed the sun shines not twenty full hours on any dial, unless under the pole; the sun is supposed to have been now at the fifth full hour; the sun was brought back five whole hours, then came forward five, then came forward two degrees, or one hour, to the sixth hour; which made sixteen; then it was six hours to sunset; so that day was prolonged twenty two hours: the ChineseF25Martin. Sinic. Hist. l. 4. p. 138. relate, that, in the time of Kingcungus, the planet Mars, for sake of the king, went back three degrees.
And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord,.... Or prayed, as the Targum; and was very earnest in prayer, that what Hezekiah had desired might be granted:
and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz; Ben Gersom understands it not of the sun itself, but of the shadow of it only; See Gill on Isaiah 38:8.
At that time Berodachbaladan,.... He is called Merodachbaladan, Isaiah 39:1, so here in the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions; See Gill on Isaiah 39:1; and by MetasthenesF26Ut supra. (De Judicio Temp. fol. 221. 2.) his father is called Merodach, and he Ben Merodach, who reigned twenty one years, and his father fifty two; from hence to the end of 2 Kings 20:12 the same account is given in the same words as in Isaiah 39:1 throughout, except in 2 Kings 20:13, where it is, "hearkened unto them", and there, "glad of them"; heard the letter the ambassadors brought with pleasure; see the notes there. See Gill on Isaiah 39:1 and following.
And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might,.... Which he exerted in his wars with his enemies, and in the reformation of religion, and abolition of idolatry:
and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city; at the same time that he cut it off from the enemy without, see 2 Chronicles 32:3,
are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? a book often referred to in this history, but since lost; many of his acts are recorded in the canonical book of Chronicles, 2 Chronicles 29:1.
And Hezekiah slept with his fathers,.... Died, as they did; no mention is here made of the place of his burial, but there is in 2 Chronicles 32:33 where he is said to be buried in the principal part of the sepulchres of the sons of David, and to have honour done him at his death by the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem, by the vast concourse of people attending his interment, and by burning spices for him, and making a public mourning on his account a certain stated time:
and Manasseh his son reigned in his stead; of whose wicked reign an account is given in the next chapter.