Back Ten Degrees

"In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death.  And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz [yes, THE Isaiah of the book bearing his name in the Old Testament] came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live."  The twentieth chapter of Second Kings opens with Judah's king Hezekiah about to die soon after the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem described in chapter nineteen had been lifted.  Not because the Assyrians had won, of course, but because the forces which had surrounded the city all died during the night, all 185,000 of them (the equivalent of just over nine modern divisions of twenty thousand soldiers each) slain by the angel of the LORD.  This loss would have a profound effect upon Assyria; in fact, history records that these "bad boys" of the Near East never mounted a large-scale assault again.


Hezekiah's own impending death prompted him to do something not, like so many who preceded and followed him on the throne of Judah, as a last resort but rather as a first measure.  Verse two says Hezekiah turned his face to the wall (and away from others, entering his "prayer closet") and prayed unto the LORD.  Look at the wording of his prayer in verse three: "I beseech thee, O LORD, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight."  All Hezekiah asks of God is to be remembered honorably by Him; not for riches, not for a long life, not for any of the "stuff" you and I often fill our prayers with.  Just by calling Him "[his] LORD" he honors Him and asks to be evaluated or be remembered by His standards, how Hezekiah himself did -- not anyone else -- in keeping the standards of his LORD.  Ultimately that's all we can ask for by God's standards that remains ours.



"And Hezekiah wept sore."  Verse three ends on this note after the king completed his prayer.  Like all of us to a degree, Hezekiah was sad to know he was going to die, but he was especially sad because he was leaving big shoes (or in the parlance of the day, big sandals) to fill.  Yes, Hezekiah had led the people of Judah in bringing down the high places and returning the people to the worship of the LORD and yes, Hezekiah had the faith to call on the LORD for deliverance from Assyria, but Hezekiah probably knew better than anybody how easily the people could slip again under the wrong type (re: not God-honoring) of leadership.  The kingdom if Israel's final fate didn't have to be Judah's and it doesn't have to be ours when we are actively seeking and supporting the right type of leaders, the ones we may not always agree with but the ones we pray for to act and who will act in the life-affirming ways that honor and please God. 



Back to the story, Isaiah doesn't even get out of the palace -- he gets to the middle court -- in verse four before the LORD tells him to tell Hezekiah (identified in verse five as "the captain of my people", a sign that God hadn't given up on either of them) that He's heard the king's prayer and seen his tears.  The LORD knows genuine sorrow and earnest desire to serve Him when He sees it, so He promises in three days that He will heal Hezekiah of his "sick[ness] unto death".  Not only does the LORD say in verse six that He will heal Hezekiah, He WILL add fifteen years to his life, He WILL deliver Hezekiah and the city of Jerusalem out of the hands of Assyria, and He WILL defend Jerusalem for "his servant David's [Hezekiah's ancestor's] sake".  Hezekiah's didn't ask for any of this, but the LORD who sees what's on our hearts can do so much more when we offer Him freely even the little that we have in ourselves.  And you can't argue that Hezekiah isn't remembered for walking before the LORD; perhaps not as well as some Biblical figures to our "modern minds", but while the record lasts in our hands, Hezekiah will definitely be remembered as one of the great kings -- the great people -- of Judah for his willingness to follow the LORD's direction.



Isaiah prescribes in verse seven to lay a lump of figs on the boil Hezekiah's suffering from so he'll recover enough to walk.  When the king asks what is the sign that the LORD will heal him [likely of a type of leprosy since the lump of figs was well-attested to destroy ulcerated sores] once he goes to the house -- the Temple -- of the LORD, Hezekiah is offered a choice: shall the sun go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?  "Degrees" in this context refers to steps; obviously the shadow cast by the sun shining from an object, likely the [sun]dial of Ahaz referred to in verse eleven, would advance as the day went on, and from where Hezekiah lay recovering there was a staircase which led outside.  For the shadow the sun cast to go forward ten degrees, Hezekiah surmised in verse ten, was an easy thing especially if the day became overcast.  But to go BACK ten degrees or ten steps contrary to the direction of the sun across the sky, that would indicate God at work.  Evidently this just applied to the shadow the sundial cast; no records exist of the sun retreating in the opposite direction that day!  When Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD, that's exactly what happened.


One more event of Hezekiah's reign is recorded in Second Kings before his death.  Soon after his healing, Hezekiah receives letters and a gift from the king of Babylon, a gentleman known as Berodach-baladan.  Although properly spelled Merodach-baladan, a name which means "Marduk [the chief Babylonian god] has given a son", the difference is cosmetic and can likely be attributed to differing pronunciation in Hebrew.  Certainly Hezekiah appreciated, for personal (oh, how sweet you thought of me!) as well as political (Babylon was trying to break away from Assyria and was evidently strong enough to do so at this time) reasons, this gesture and in verse thirteen is related to have shown the Babylonian envoys everything in Judah from his own house as well as throughout the kingdom.  Perhaps he wanted to impress on the Babylonians what a valuable ally Judah would be against Assyria.  Perhaps he was genuinely grateful for this visit and got carried away -- you don't even want to tell your closest allies everything you've got! 



When Isaiah found out about it, an inevitable occurrence considering the influence he had in Hezekiah's court, he wasn't happy.  In verses fourteen and fifteen, Hezekiah tells Isaiah how the men from Babylon saw everything Hezekiah had, all his treasures in his house.  You can almost hear Isaiah slapping his forehead or the equivalent early seventh century B.C. gesture in disappointment and frustration; personally, he probably doesn't want to tell Hezekiah what's going to happen next according to the word of the LORD, but sometimes that's what being loyal to Him calls for.  The truth shall make you free, but first it will usually tick you off!  Verses sixteen through eighteen prophesy that everything the Babylonian envoys saw will one day get carried into Babylon itself.  Everything, and we mean EVERYTHING, will get carried away and nothing will be left in the king's house or in Jerusalem.  Not only will you lose the things, Isaiah says, your children will also get taken from here to be eunuchs (ouch!) in the palace of the king of Babylon.



How did Hezekiah take this?  Surprisingly to our ears, rather well.  In verse nineteen he first says to Isaiah, "Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken."  Make no mistake, Hezekiah knew that Isaiah's loyalties ultimately lay with their LORD God.  Although Hezekiah was God's chosen ruler on the throne of Judah, this didn't grant him any special privileges any more that what we perceive as God's responses of lack thereof to our prayers says we're special to Him or not.  If God chooses to bless, He does, and vice versa.  The word of the LORD is always good because He will not lie to us or just say through others what will make us feel good.  It's far more important, but our priorities are often skewed in our world, to BE good (re: God-honoring, life-affirming) than to FEEL good because feelings are affected by . . . well, how we feel.  Perhaps if Hezekiah had heard this message when he was sick, he wouldn't have been as receptive, but far be it from me to second-guess a man who's been dead and gone for twenty-seven centuries.  When I get to heaven I can ask him, but I'll probably be busy with other things.



Hezekiah also said, "Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?"  Which there was; then it's recorded in verse twenty that he died, and he's credited with quite a lot as we have seen.  Among other things, he also made an aqueduct (referred to in verse twenty as a "conduit") which brought water into Jerusalem from outside the city.  It still stands today in present-day Israel; also known as "Hezekiah's Tunnel", it carried water from the spring of Gihon to the pool of Siloam and was a remarkable feat (1,777 feet long) of engineering for when it was made.  And the author says there's even more to the story of Hezekiah -- a lot happened over his twenty-nine year reign -- written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah which is encapsulated in the Old Testament book of Second Chronicles chapters twenty-nine through thirty-two.  Then to close chapter twenty here we read that Hezekiah's son Manasseh came to the throne.  Would Manasseh live up to the Godly standards his father had set for himself as well as set the example for those he ruled?  Or would Judah go back, back, much further than ten degrees?



David