Judah’s good King Hezekiah
18
📚Now it came about in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign.18:1 Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father, was one of the worst of Judah’s kings (2 Kings 16:1-4), yet Hezekiah was one of the very best. Not one of us needs to remain captive to ancestry and background. God’s grace can triumph over everything.⚜
2 📚He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years 📖 in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abi 📖. She was the daughter of Zachariah. 3 📚And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, in everything just as his father David had done.
18:3 No king in Israel and only a few in Judah are compared favorably in the Bible with David – only Asa, Hezekiah, Josiah, and, to some extent, Jehoshaphat.⚜
4 📚He removed the high places 📖 and smashed the images and cut down the groves 📖, and broke in pieces the bronze serpent 📖 that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel had burned incense to it, and he called it Nehushtan 📖.
5 📚He trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, nor were there any before him.
18:5 A similar thing is said about Hezekiah’s great-grandson Josiah. See 2 Kings 23:25. Faith is the quality in which Hezekiah excelled. Compare 2 Kings 19:14-19.⚜
6 📚For he clung 📖 to the LORD, and did not turn away from following him, but kept his commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses. 7 📚And the LORD was with him, and he was successful 📖 wherever he went. And he rebelled 📖 against the king of Assyria, and did not serve him. 8 📚He defeated the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territories, from the watchman’s tower to the fortified city.
18:8 Compare 2 Chron 28:18. When God works with His people, sad and evil conditions can be reversed.⚜
9 📚And it came about in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria and besieged it. 10 📚And at the end of three years they took it. Samaria was taken in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is, the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel. 11 📚And the king of Assyria took Israel away to Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 12 📚This occurred because they did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded, and would not hear or do them.
Sennacherib attacks Judah
13 📚Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 14 📚And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent word to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong 📖. Withdraw from me. I will pay whatever you impose on me”. And the king of Assyria demanded from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents 📖 of gold. 15 📚And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s house.
16 📚At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
18:15-16 2 Kings 12:18; 2 Kings 16:8; 1 Kings 15:18-19. Giving God’s possessions to a foreign, idolatrous king could not have been right, and it did not stop the king of Assyria.⚜
Sennacherib’s army comes to Jerusalem
17 📚And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish with a great army to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem 📖. And when they had come up, they came and stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is on the road to the Fuller’s Field 📖. 18 📚And when they had called out for the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came out to them.
19 📚And Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: what is this hope in which you are trusting?
18:19 Little did he know that Hezekiah’s trust was in the Creator of the universe – one who could send one angel and crush the whole army of Assyria (v 5; 2 Kings 19:35).⚜
20 📚You say (but they are only vain words), ‘I have counsel and strength for the war.’ Now in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me? 21 📚Now, see, you are trusting in the staff of that bruised reed, in Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. 22 📚But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God’, is not he the one whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?’
23 📚“Now therefore, please give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver two thousand horses to you, if you on your part are able to set riders on them. 24 📚How then will you turn away the face of one of the least of the captains of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 25 📚Have I now come up against this place to destroy it, without the LORD? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’ ”
18:20-25 The object of this speech, begun with much sarcasm, was to destroy the people’s confidence so they would surrender Jerusalem without a fight. He says they should have no confidence in their army (vs 20,23,24), in any agreement they may have made with Egypt (vs 21,24), or in God (v 22). And he tried to convince them it was God’s will for them to surrender (v 25).⚜
26 📚Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in the Syrian language, for we understand it; and do not talk with us in the Jews’ language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall”.
27 📚But Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words? Has he not sent me to the men who are sitting on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own urine with you?”
28 📚Then Rabshakeh stood and shouted with a loud voice in the Jews’ language and spoke, saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. 29 📚Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of his hand. 30 📚And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be delivered into the hands of the king of Assyria.’
31 📚“Do not listen to Hezekiah. For thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make peace with me through a gift and come out to me, and then each man of you eat from his own vine and each one from his fig tree, and each one drink the water from his cistern, 32 📚until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and of honey, so that you may live and not die. And do not listen to Hezekiah, when he persuades you, saying, “The Lord will deliver us”. 33 📚Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 34 📚Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hands? 35 📚Among all the gods of the countries, who are those who have delivered their country out of my hands, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’ ”
18:27-35 The commander continued his attempt to destroy the people’s confidence in both God and Hezekiah. He knew that if they surrendered their confidence they would surrender the city. This was what is known in our day as psychological warfare. He put the choice before them – complete famine (v 27) or plenty (v 31), death or life (v 32). He tried to convince them that Jehovah was as weak and useless as the gods of other nations Assyria had trampled on. And he emphasized the might of the Assyrians (the most powerful nation in the world at that time).⚜
36 📚But the people kept silent and did not answer him a word, for the king’s command was as follows: “Do not answer him”.
18:36 The people did not forsake their confidence.⚜
37 📚Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn 📖 and told him the words of Rabshakeh.