38 In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.”1 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 3 and said, “Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: 5 “Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.2 6 I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and will defend this city.
7 “This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he has promised: 8 Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.3
9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:
10 I said, In the middle4 of my days
I must depart;
I am consigned to the gates of Sheol
for the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord,
the Lord in the land of the living;
I shall look on man no more
among the inhabitants of the world.
12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me
like a shepherd’s tent;
like a weaver I have rolled up my life;
he cuts me off from the loom;
from day to night you bring me to an end;
13 I calmed myself5 until morning;
like a lion he breaks all my bones;
from day to night you bring me to an end.
14 Like a swallow or a crane I chirp;
I moan like a dove.
My eyes are weary with looking upward.
O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety!
15 What shall I say? For he has spoken to me,
and he himself has done it.
I walk slowly all my years
because of the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live,
and in all these is the life of my spirit.
Oh restore me to health and make me live!
17 Behold, it was for my welfare
that I had great bitterness;
but in love you have delivered my life
from the pit of destruction,
for you have cast all my sins
behind your back.
18 For Sheol does not thank you;
death does not praise you;
those who go down to the pit do not hope
for your faithfulness.
19 The living, the living, he thanks you,
as I do this day;
the father makes known to the children
your faithfulness.
20 The Lord will save me,
and we will play my music on stringed instruments
all the days of our lives,
at the house of the Lord.
21 Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” 22 Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?”
39 At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. 2 And Hezekiah welcomed them gladly. And he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. 3 Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, “What did these men say? And from where did they come to you?” Hezekiah said, “They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.” 4 He said, “What have they seen in your house?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.”
5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: 6 Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. 7 And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 8 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my days.”
Section Overview: Grace from Start to Finish
These two chapters can again conveniently be taken together as the conclusion of this historical section (chs. 36–39) and also of the section addressing God and history (chs. 28–39)—which itself concludes all of the issues raised in chapters 13–27 concerning God and the nations. Moreover, the importance of faith, underlined in the Ahaz episode in chapter 7, is also present here as Isaiah concludes his message concerning God and Assyria. By the time chapter 40 opens, Assyria and even Babylon will have come to an end. This does not imply that chapters 40–66 are the work of a later author but rather means that Isaiah is probing more deeply into the issues already raised in chapters 1–39 concerning the future of God’s people.
The expressions “In those days” (38:1) and “At that time” (39:1) show that the prophet is concerned here not so much with precise chronology as he is with locating these events in Hezekiah’s reign. If Hezekiah reign begins in 727/726 BC (cf. 2 Kings 18:1), probably as a co-regency with his father, Ahaz, then his death would be in 696, meaning fifteen years before that (cf. Isa. 38:5) would be 712/711. This is more likely than some dating schemes that place these events in 703 BC, by which time Merodach-baladan was no longer a threat to the Assyrians. Neither possibility, however, alters the point of the pairing of the two episodes. What is significant is that these chapters belong chronologically before the events of Isaiah 36–37.
The reason for this dischronologization is theological rather than historical. The need to trust God during and beyond the inevitable exile must be addressed. Why does Yahweh, who rescues his people from the Assyrians, not rescue them from the Babylonians? The answer is not in terms of the significance of their leaders, however admirable, but in the unfathomableness of Yahweh, which is to be the great theme of chapters 40–55. The Lord always has the power to rescue his people, but sometimes it is better for them to go through trials rather than around them.
These chapters relate two crises in Hezekiah’s life and balance the picture given in chapters 36–37. Hezekiah was a good man and an effective king; even chapter 39 does not set aside this reality. However, he is not the child promised in chapter 9 or the suffering servant of Isaiah 53; he is mortal and fallible, as may be seen from these chapters.
The narrative develops in five movements. The first (38:1–8) shows the king in the grip of a mortal illness, during which he receives a word from Isaiah that he will not recover. He turns to Yahweh and hears words of comfort assuring him that he will recover, as well as an additional promise that fifteen years will be added to his life and he will be rescued from Assyria. This word is confirmed by a sign: Yahweh causes the shadows on Ahaz’s sundial to turn back.
Hezekiah responds to this in a psalm (38:9–20) that blends lament and praise, showing him as a vulnerable but grateful man reflecting on death and the contrast of Sheol to the world of the living. A third brief section (38:21–22) speaks of God’s healing and Hezekiah’s desire to go to the temple.
Section four (39:1–4) describes letters and a delegation from Merodach-baladan, hoping to persuade Hezekiah to join an anti-Assyrian alliance. Hezekiah is flattered and unwisely shows the delegation his treasures and Judah’s arsenal.
The final section (39:5–8) shows that all these worldly goods will end up in Babylon, as will Hezekiah’s own royal descendants. Hezekiah accepts this but is thankful for the gracious promise that he will not share in the exile.
Section Outline
III. History and Faith (28:1–39:8) . . .
H. Grace from Start to Finish (38:1–39:8)
1. Grace That Answers Prayer (38:1–8)
2. A Psalm of Lament and Praise (38:9–20)
3. A Footnote on Hezekiah’s Healing (38:21–22)
4. An Ominous Embassy (39:1–4)
5. A Prophecy of Judgment and Grace (39:5–8)
Response
We learn here the oft-forgotten lesson that we must not trust in humans to rescue us. Hezekiah is an impressive king, but he is also vulnerable and not the messiah of whom Isaiah has prophesied. While we must not denigrate our leaders in either state or church, neither must we expect them to be infallible. Rather, we ought to pray for them and, if necessary, show them from the Word of God where they have gone wrong.
In addition, we must not expect our own faithfulness to shield us from illness or other trauma. We must pray from our hearts, honestly and sincerely, when such things happen. Hezekiah’s prayers are part of the rich tapestry of prayers in the Bible that shows us flawed but faithful people taking their burdens to the Lord.
We ought always to recognize the danger of flattery, which is not a problem for the king of Judah only. In our evangelical celebrity culture we often inordinately praise big names and show to their most ordinary utterances the respect due only to the Word of God.
In the end we are saved, kept, and will finally reach glory by grace alone. This is the true antidote to overvaluing ourselves or others. The Bible is God’s story, primarily concerning him and his greatness—not human characters.Isaiah 38–39
This next major part of the book is by any reckoning one of the most glorious and powerful sections of the Bible, comparable in its sweep and eloquence to the letter to the Hebrews. Mind-boggling truths are expressed in sustained and powerful poetry, and the picture of God is overwhelming in its power.
It is well known that many scholars regard these chapters as Second or Deutero-Isaiah, largely because they deal with events well beyond the eighth-century prophet’s time, even mentioning the Persian king Cyrus by name (44:28; 45:1). These matters are dealt with in Introduction: Author; here it will suffice to show that when Isaiah collated the book, he saw fit to place chapter 40 immediately after the prediction of exile in chapter 39. If the book had ended at chapter 39, we would have to conclude that the messages of hope, especially chapter 35, were merely whistling in the wind and that judgment was to have the last word. In any case, Isaiah has already predicted the fall of Babylon in 13:1–14:22. Thus he must now show how the hopes about Zion are not illusory, as he does in these chapters.
In this context it is useful to consider how the prophet’s life likely developed in its later years. The last we hear of his public ministry is in chapter 37, at the time of Sennacherib’s 701 BC invasion. We do not know his age “in the year that King Uzziah died” (6:1), which was 741/740 BC. We may assume he was about thirty, as 8:3 speaks of his wife bearing a child. This would mean that he was in his late sixties when Sennacherib invaded, and by the time Hezekiah died some three years later he could have been in his early seventies. Probably he lived on for a few more years into the dark days of Manasseh; Jewish tradition says he died as a martyr by being sawn in two,85 an event perhaps referenced in Hebrews 11:36–37.
It is likely that the repressive regime of Manasseh made public preaching impossible (cf. 2 Kings 21:16), and that Isaiah devoted himself to collecting and editing his earlier messages and completing them by adding these chapters, with their message of consolation. This would also account for why this section reads more like written than oral ministry.
The message not only is about a future after exile but, like all prophecy, speaks to the prophet’s own day—and indeed to every day. The chapters address the key question of how God can forgive his disobedient people. The first part (Isaiah 40–48) shows that he is willing to forgive and emphasizes that Babylon is merely a tool for his purposes, as was Assyria before them (47:9). Yahweh, not Babylonian gods such as Nebo, is Lord of history. The second part (chs. 49–55) shows how the Lord will deal with the sin that caused the exile in the first place, ending with a restored and renewed creation (55:12–13).Isaiah 40–55
Isaiah 40