Hezekiah

Hezekiah is the son of Ahaz and a king of Judah whose reign the UPDV remembers along three lines: a thoroughgoing religious reform, the Assyrian crisis under Sennacherib, and a near-fatal illness from which Yahweh granted him fifteen more years. Ahaz had shut the doors of the house of Yahweh and "made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem" (2 Ch 28:24-25); when Ahaz "slept with his fathers... Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead" (2 Ki 16:20), and the new king's first act was to reverse what his father had done.

Religious Reform

In the first month of his first year, Hezekiah "opened the doors of the house of Yahweh, and repaired them" (2 Ch 29:3). He gathered the priests and Levites and charged them: "Hear me, you⁺ Levites; now sanctify yourselves, and sanctify the house of Yahweh, the God of your⁺ fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place" (2 Ch 29:5). His diagnosis was blunt — the fathers had "trespassed... forsaken him... shut up the doors of the porch... put out the lamps... not burned incense nor offered burnt-offerings" (2 Ch 29:6-7) — and his resolve was a fresh covenant: "Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with Yahweh, the God of Israel, that his fierce anger may turn away from us" (2 Ch 29:10).

The reform reached past the temple. Hezekiah "removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah: and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for in those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan" (2 Ki 18:4). The same purge swept the countryside after the festival: "all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah, and broke in pieces the pillars, and hewed down the Asherim, and broke down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all" (2 Ch 31:1).

The Restored Passover

Hezekiah called the nation back to the feast. He "sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of Yahweh at Jerusalem, to keep the Passover to Yahweh, the God of Israel" (2 Ch 30:1). Because the priests had not finished sanctifying themselves, the king and the assembly agreed to keep the feast in the second month and "established a decree to make proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beer-sheba even to Dan" (2 Ch 30:5). The assembly was "very great" (2 Ch 30:13); they cleared the city of its altars first, then "killed the Passover on the fourteenth [day] of the second month" (2 Ch 30:15). When many had not cleansed themselves yet ate anyway, "Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, The good Yahweh pardon everyone that sets his heart to seek God" (2 Ch 30:18-19). The narrator's verdict closes the scene: "And Yahweh listened to Hezekiah, and healed the people" (2 Ch 30:20).

The Piety of His Reign

The Kings narrator gives a summary verdict that the rest of the story plays out: "He trusted in [the Speech of] Yahweh, the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor [among them] who were before him. For he stuck to Yahweh; he did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments, which Yahweh commanded Moses. And [the Speech of] Yahweh was with him; wherever he went forth he prospered: and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and did not serve him" (2 Ki 18:5-7). Sirach later sums up the same judgment from the other end of the canon: "For Hezekiah did that which was pleasing to the Lord, And was strong in the ways of David, Which Isaiah the prophet commanded" (Sir 48:22), and lists him in the small company who did not "deal corruptly" with the law of the Most High — "Except David, Hezekiah, And Josiah" (Sir 49:4).

The Assyrian Crisis

The Assyrian threat had been gathering since "the fourth year of King Hezekiah... Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it" (2 Ki 18:9). The crisis reached Judah under Sennacherib: "After these things, and this faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fortified cities, and thought to win them for himself" (2 Ch 32:1). When Hezekiah's officers reported the demand of the Assyrian field commander, the king's word back was a prophet's word: "Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of disgrace; for the children have come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" (2 Ki 19:3).

Hezekiah took Sennacherib's letter to the temple. He "received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of Yahweh, and spread it before Yahweh" (Isa 37:14), and prayed: "O Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, who sits [above] the cherubim, you are the God, even you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth... Now therefore, O Yahweh our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are Yahweh, even you only" (Isa 37:16, 20). Yahweh's answer attached the deliverance to himself: "For I will defend this city to save it, for [my Speech's] sake, and for my slave David's sake. And the angel of Yahweh went forth, and struck in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000... So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh" (Isa 37:35-37). Sirach echoes the same denouement: "So they called to God Most High, And spread forth their hands to him, And he heard the voice of their prayer, And saved them by the hand of Isaiah... And he smote the army of Assyria, And discomfited them by the plague" (Sir 48:20-21); "In his days Sennacherib came up, And sent Rabshakeh, Who stretched forth his hand against Zion, And blasphemed God in his pride" (Sir 48:18).

Sickness and the Sign of the Sun

"In those days was Hezekiah sick to death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, Thus says Yahweh, Set your house in order; for you will die, and not live" (Isa 38:1). The king answered the verdict by turning to the wall: "Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed to Yahweh, and said, Remember now, O Yahweh, I urge you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept intensely" (Isa 38:2-3). The word came back through Isaiah before he had left the courtyards: "Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says Yahweh, the God of David your father, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears: look, I will heal you; on the third day you will go up to the house of Yahweh. And I will add to your days fifteen years; and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for [the sake of my Speech], and for my slave David's sake" (2 Ki 20:5-6).

The sign was the sun-shadow. Hezekiah asked, "It is an easy thing for the shadow to decline ten steps, no, but let the shadow return backward ten steps" (2 Ki 20:10), and Yahweh answered: "Look, I will move back the shadow of the steps, which has gone down on the steps from the Upper House of Ahaz - [I will move back] the sun backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the steps on which it had gone down" (Isa 38:8). Sirach sums it up in a line: "In his days the sun went backward, And he added life to the king" (Sir 48:23). Hezekiah composed a psalm afterward — "The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had recovered of his sickness" (Isa 38:9).

The Babylonian Envoys

The same recovery brought Hezekiah his most consequential failure of judgment. "At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah; for he heard that he had been sick, and had recovered" (Isa 39:1). The king received the embassy as a friendly one: "And Hezekiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all 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 did not show them" (Isa 39:2). Isaiah's question was diagnostic: "What did these men say? And where did they come to you from?... What have they seen in your house?" (Isa 39:3-4). The king's full disclosure became the scope of the judgment: "Look, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have laid up in store until this day, will be carried to Babylon: nothing will be left, says Yahweh. And of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, they will take away; and they will be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon" (Isa 39:6-7). Hezekiah's answer was both pious and self-interested: "The word of Yahweh which you have spoken is good. He said moreover, For there will be peace and truth in my days" (Isa 39:8).

Public Works and Letters

The Kings narrator notes the king's other work in a sentence the archaeology of Jerusalem still bears witness to: "Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?" (2 Ki 20:20). Sirach 48 reads the same project as a feature of the reform: "Hezekiah fortified his city By bringing water into the midst of it; And he hewed the rocks with iron, And dammed up the pool with mountains" (Sir 48:17). His court also kept Israel's wisdom traditions alive: a section of Proverbs is headed, "These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out" (Pr 25:1).

Death and Succession

"And Hezekiah slept with his fathers; and Manasseh his son reigned in his stead" (2 Ki 20:21). Sirach's longer view places him in the short list of faithful kings between David and the exile, the kings whose lives, against the failure of the rest, made the law of the Most High visible in Judah (Sir 48:22; 49:4).

The name Hezekiah belongs to at least one other man in scripture. The superscription of Zephaniah traces the prophet's ancestry back four generations: "Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah" (Zeph 1:1). This Hezekiah is a private ancestor of the prophet, not further identified in scripture; whether he is the same king of Judah is debated but cannot be established from the text alone.