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A crowned king in a turban sits on a dais while men in a pillared hall lay out silver and gold vessels before him.

about 716 to 687 BC · Church history · Featured Study

Hezekiah's Revival

The reform told in Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah, with the finds of the age beside it.

Hezekiah broke in pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, because Judah had been burning incense to it.

Span
about 716 to 687 BC
Boundary
Edwin Thiele draws the span from Kings and the Assyrian records, and Gershon Galil sets it ten years earlier.

King Hezekiah, Willem de Poorter, 1623 to 1648. Public domain.

2 Chronicles 29:5 BSB
“Listen to me, O Levites,” he said. “Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the house of the LORD, the God of your fathers. Remove from the Holy Place every impurity.

Summary

Ahaz left his son a house of God with its lamps out. Chronicles tells how Hezekiah had it made clean and called the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem for the feast. Kings tells how he broke down the high places. He trusted the LORD when the king of Assyria came against the city.

  • Chronicles gives the reform three chapters, and Kings gives it a few lines.
  • He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign.
  • Kings and Chronicles both judge him by his father David.

The Revival's Own Voice: The Doors Opened

The Chronicler tells how the king's reign began with the house of God.

The Chronicler's book ends with the decree of Cyrus. He names his sources for this king as the vision of Isaiah and the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

In the first month of the first year of his reign, Hezekiah opened and repaired the doors of the house of the LORD.

The king's first act was for the house of God.

2 Chronicles 29:3BSB

Kings begins its account of the reform with the high places, and Chronicles alone tells of the opened temple.

The Five Turning Points

The turning points run from the opened doors to the envoys of Babylon.

The reform turns on these five moments.

  1. The first month of the first yearThe temple opened and cleansedThe reform began at the house of God before any other work.2 Chronicles 29:3 to 17
  2. The second monthThe Passover with the northThe king's letters went from Beersheba to Dan.2 Chronicles 30:1 to 27
  3. After the feastThe high places broken downThe worshippers carried the reform home to their towns.2 Chronicles 31:1 and 2 Kings 18:4
  4. 701 BCSennacherib at Lachish and JerusalemThe king's trust was tested by the empire of his day.2 Kings 18:13 to 19:37
  5. Late in the reignThe illness and the envoys of BabylonThe king's pride brought a word of exile.2 Kings 20:1 to 19 and 2 Chronicles 32:24 to 31

Each moment with the text that tells it.

The Story From the Shut Doors to the Envoys

The three accounts, from the reign of Ahaz to the king's last years.

Ahaz had given the temple's treasure to the king of Assyria, and it did not help him. In his distress he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus.

Then Ahaz gathered up the articles of the house of God, cut them into pieces, shut the doors of the house of the LORD, and set up altars of his own on every street corner in Jerusalem.

Hezekiah came to a shut temple.

2 Chronicles 28:24BSB

In the square on the east side the king spoke to the priests and Levites. He told them their fathers had turned their backs on the LORD's dwelling and put out its lamps.

Levites of the families of Kohath, Merari and Gershon set to work, with men of the singers' families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun.

So the priests went inside the house of the LORD to cleanse it, and they brought out to the courtyard all the unclean things that they found in the temple of the LORD. Then the Levites took these things and carried them out to the Kidron Valley.

The cleansing began inside the house and ended at the Kidron.

2 Chronicles 29:16BSB

The work began on the first day of the first month, reached the portico on the eighth day and ended on the sixteenth.

They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, the sanctuary and Judah. The priests made atonement for all Israel.

And Hezekiah ordered that the burnt offering be sacrificed on the altar. When the burnt offering began, the song of the LORD and the trumpets began as well, accompanied by the instruments of David king of Israel.

Worship began with the atoning sacrifice.

2 Chronicles 29:27BSB

The king, his officials and the whole assembly agreed on the plan for the feast.

Couriers carried the king's letters through Ephraim and Manasseh as far as Zebulun, and some from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came.

Moreover, the power of God was on the people in Judah to give them one heart to obey the command of the king and his officials according to the word of the LORD.

The Chronicler credits the people's obedience to God's power.

2 Chronicles 30:12BSB

Many from the north ate the Passover without the purification the law asked. The king prayed for them, and the LORD healed the people.

The assembly kept the feast seven days and agreed to keep seven more.

So there was great rejoicing in Jerusalem, for nothing like this had happened there since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel.

The Chronicler measures the feast against Solomon's reign.

2 Chronicles 30:26BSB

When the feast ended, the worshippers went out through Judah and Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh. They broke the pillars, the Asherah poles and the high places.

Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. No king of Judah was like him, either before him or after him.

Kings measures the king by his trust.

2 Kings 18:5BSB

In the king's fourteenth year Sennacherib of Assyria took the walled towns of Judah. Hezekiah sent word to him at Lachish and paid three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold.

Chronicles tells how the king stopped the springs outside the city and rebuilt the broken wall.

And the LORD was with Hezekiah, and he prospered wherever he went. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and refused to serve him.

The revolt against Assyria brought the invasion.

2 Kings 18:7BSB

The Rabshakeh came from Lachish and called out in Hebrew to the men on the wall. He mocked the king's trust and the altars he had removed.

Hezekiah spread Sennacherib's letter before the LORD in the temple, and Isaiah sent word that the Assyrian would not enter the city.

‘I will defend this city and save it for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.’”

The promise rests the city's rescue on David's line.

2 Kings 19:34BSB

Sennacherib went home to Nineveh, where two of his sons later killed him.

So the LORD saved Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem from the hands of King Sennacherib of Assyria and all the others, and He gave them rest on every side.

Chronicles gives the deliverance to the LORD alone.

2 Chronicles 32:22BSB

When the king fell mortally ill, he prayed and was given fifteen more years, with a sign on the stairway of Ahaz.

Chronicles says his heart grew proud and that he later humbled himself with the people of Jerusalem.

And so when ambassadors of the rulers of Babylon were sent to him to inquire about the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone to test him, that He might know all that was in Hezekiah’s heart.

The envoys' visit showed what was in the king's heart.

2 Chronicles 32:31BSB

2 Chronicles 29:27, 2 Chronicles 30:12, 2 Chronicles 30:26, 2 Kings 18:5, 2 Kings 18:7, 2 Kings 19:34, 2 Chronicles 32:22, 2 Chronicles 32:31

The Text and the Ground

Seven finds set beside the verses they touch.

Sennacherib's annals, an inscription and a royal seal stand beside the account.

FindWhere it came fromWhat it showsThe verse beside it
Sennacherib's prismThe Oriental Institute prism, dated 689 BC and published by D. D. Luckenbill in 1924Sennacherib claims 46 walled cities of Hezekiah and 200,150 people, and lists 30 talents of gold and 800 of silver.2 Kings 18:13 to 16, where the silver is 300 talents
The Lachish reliefsSennacherib's palace at Nineveh, found by Layard and now in the British MuseumThe siege of Lachish is carved with an epigraph of Sennacherib on his throne as its booty passed before him.2 Kings 18:14 and 2 Chronicles 32:9
The Siloam inscriptionThe wall of the tunnel from the Gihon spring to the Pool of Siloam, found in 1880The workmen tell of the two crews meeting and the water running 1,200 cubits, and Kings and Chronicles give the king's name.2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30
The Hezekiah bullaEilat Mazar's Ophel excavation, Area A, the 2009 season, announced in December 2015The excavators read it as "Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah" under a winged sun.2 Kings 18:1
The royal jar handlesJars stamped lmlk, belonging to the king, under the Level III destruction at LachishUssishkin assigns the destruction to 701 BC, and Lipschits, Sergi and Koch hold that the stamps ran on after that year.2 Chronicles 32:28
The Broad WallNahman Avigad's excavation in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, 1970Avigad wrote that houses were demolished to make way for the wall.Isaiah 22:10 and 2 Chronicles 32:5
The Lachish gate shrineSa'ar Ganor's excavation at the city gate, announced in 2016Its altars had their horns cut off, and a stone toilet was set in the shrine.2 Kings 18:4
Each find with where it came from and what it shows.

The People of the Story

Eleven people have a role in the account.

Kings, priests, a prophet and an emperor stand in the account.

PersonWho he wasWhere he enters
AhazHe was Hezekiah's father, king of Judah.Before the reform
HezekiahHe was king of Judah for twenty-nine years.Throughout
Mahath son of AmasaiHe was the first of the Kohathite Levites named for the cleansing.The cleansing
Joel son of AzariahHe was the second Kohathite Levite named for the cleansing.The cleansing
AzariahHe was the chief priest, of the household of Zadok.The tithes
SennacheribHe was king of Assyria.The invasion
The RabshakehHe was an Assyrian officer sent with the army to Jerusalem.The siege
EliakimHe was the palace administrator.The siege
ShebnaHe was the scribe.The siege
Isaiah son of AmozHe was the prophet of Jerusalem in Hezekiah's reign.The siege and the illness
ManassehHe was Hezekiah's son, who reigned after him.After the reign
Listed in the order they enter the account.

The Rabshakeh, Eliakim, Shebna, Isaiah son of Amoz, Manasseh

Why These Years

The span is the king's reign as Thiele dates it.

The span is Edwin Thiele's, and Gershon Galil's chronology runs from 726 to 697. Kings dates the fall of Samaria to the king's sixth year and Sennacherib's invasion to his fourteenth. The two chronologists count his years in different ways to fit both.

The Passover of the Second Month

The king kept the feast by a provision the law of Moses already gave.

The assembly put the feast a month late because too few priests were consecrated and the people had not gathered. C. F. Keil wrote in 1872 that the postponement "was provided for by the law".

  1. “Tell the Israelites: ‘When any one of you or your descendants is unclean because of a dead body, or is away on a journey, he may still observe the Passover to the LORD. Such people are to observe it at twilight on the fourteenth day of the second month. They are to eat the lamb, together with unleavened bread and bitter herbs; they may not leave any of it until morning or break any of its bones. They must observe the Passover according to all its statutes.

    The law gave the late Passover for those who could not keep the first.

    Numbers 9:10 to 12BSB

The Hard Part: The Scorn, the Tribute and the Heir

The text records what the reform met and what came after it.

In the towns of Ephraim and Manasseh the king's couriers were scorned and mocked. To buy off Sennacherib he stripped the gold from the temple doors and doorposts.

Isaiah told him that his treasures and some of his sons would be carried to Babylon. He called the word good and thought of peace in his own days. Manasseh reigned fifty-five years and rebuilt the high places.

What Is Taught Elsewhere

Three parts of the story are taught on their own pages.

Assyria has its own study, the finds of Israel and Judah their own debate, and Josiah's reform a century later its own revival page.

Assyria

Archaeology and the Bible

Josiah's Revival

What the Text Leaves Unsaid

Two questions the accounts do not answer.

Neither book says how long the tunnel took to cut, or whether the men of the north kept the Passover again.

What Marked It and What It Left

The ledger of the reform, with the counts and their kind.

An opened temple marked the reform, and a cleared land was its fruit.

The ledgerWhat the record holds
What marked itThe cleansed temple, a sin offering for all Israel, the LORD's song with the burnt offering, and a feast shared with men of the north marked it.
What was left standingThe divisions of the priests and Levites, the tithe brought in heaps, and a land without its high places for one reign were left.
What the text countsChronicles counts the animals offered, never the people.
The reform's ledger, from Chronicles and Kings.

At the rededication in the first year of the reign, the assembly brought 70 bulls, 100 rams and 200 lambs as burnt offerings. They consecrated 600 bulls and 3,000 sheep. For the Passover the king gave 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep, and the officials 1,000 bulls and 10,000 sheep.

How Hezekiah's Reign Was Taught

Three writers of three centuries on Hezekiah's prayer, his Passover and his siege.

Cyril of Jerusalem (died 386)
Catechetical Lecture 2:15

How this text has been taught

“Would you know the power of repentance? Would you understand this strong weapon of salvation and the might of confession? By confession Hezekiah routed 185,000 of the enemy. That was important, but it was little compared with what shall be told. The same king's repentance won the repeal of the sentence God had passed on him. For when he was sick, Isaiah said to him, ‘Give charge concerning your house, for you shall die and not live.’ What expectation was left? What hope of recovery was there, when the prophet said, ‘For you shall die’?”

on 2 Kings 20:1 to 6The Fathers & the Creeds

About this saying1 paragraph

Cyril of Jerusalem, in his second Catechetical Lecture in the fourth century, took the king's prayer in his illness as a lesson in repentance.

Matthew Henry (1662 to 1714)
Commentary on the Whole Bible

How this text has been taught

“Whereupon they resolved to keep the passover in the second month. Let the circumstance give way to the substance, and let not the thing itself be lost upon a nicety about the time. It is good striking while the iron is hot, and taking people when they are in a good mind.”

on 2 Chronicles 30:3The Puritans & Pietists

About this saying1 paragraph

Matthew Henry in 1710 read the second month as the substance kept over the circumstance.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown (1802 to 1910)
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

How this text has been taught

“Among the interesting illustrations of sacred history furnished by the recent Assyrian excavations, is a series of bas-reliefs, representing the siege of a town, which the inscription on the sculpture shows to be Lachish, and the figure of a king, whose name is given, on the same inscription, as Sennacherib.”

on 2 Kings 18:13The Missionary Century

About this saying1 paragraph

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown in 1871 read the siege beside the reliefs of Lachish then newly found.

In Their Own Words

The king in the words the text gives him.

It is in my heart to make a covenant1 verse, 1 paragraph

The king spoke to the Levites after he opened the doors.

Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel, so that His fierce anger will turn away from us. Now, my sons, do not be negligent, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, to minister before Him, and to burn incense.”

The king called the priests to their service under a covenant.

2 Chronicles 29:10 to 11BSB

Return to the LORD1 verse, 1 paragraph

The letters went north after he had chosen the second month.

So the couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his officials, which read: “Children of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that He may return to those of you who remain, who have escaped the grasp of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the LORD, the God of their fathers, so that He made them an object of horror, as you can see. Now do not stiffen your necks as your fathers did. Submit to the LORD and come to His sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever. Serve the LORD your God, so that His fierce anger will turn away from you. For if you return to the LORD, your brothers and sons will receive mercy in the presence of their captors and will return to this land. For the LORD your God is gracious and merciful; He will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him.”

The king offered the remnant of the north the LORD's mercy.

2 Chronicles 30:6 to 9BSB

May the LORD, who is good, provide atonement1 verse, 1 paragraph

He prayed this while he was keeping the feast with them.

A large number of the people—many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun—had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah interceded for them, saying, “May the LORD, who is good, provide atonement for everyone who sets his heart on seeking God—the LORD, the God of his fathers—even if he is not cleansed according to the purification rules of the sanctuary.”

He asked mercy for worshippers whom the rules would have shut out.

2 Chronicles 30:18 to 19BSB

There is a greater One with us1 verse, 1 paragraph

He said this to his commanders before his city was besieged.

“Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged before the king of Assyria and the vast army with him, for there is a greater One with us than with him. With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles.” So the people were strengthened by the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

The king's courage rested on God's help.

2 Chronicles 32:7 to 8BSB

You alone are God1 verse, 1 paragraph

He prayed this after he received the messengers' letter.

And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD: “O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see. Listen to the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God. Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods, but only wood and stone—the work of human hands. And now, O LORD our God, please save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God.”

He asked for rescue for the sake of the LORD's name among the peoples.

2 Kings 19:15 to 19BSB

The living can thank You1 verse, 1 paragraph

Isaiah gives this writing of the king after he recovered from his illness.

Surely for my own welfare I had such great anguish; but Your love has delivered me from the pit of oblivion, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back. For Sheol cannot thank You; Death cannot praise You. Those who descend to the Pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. The living, only the living, can thank You, as I do today; fathers will tell their children about Your faithfulness.

The healed king turned his rescue into praise for the next generation.

Isaiah 38:17 to 19BSB

Where Readers Disagree

Three questions of the reform, with the writers who answer them.

Did Hezekiah cut the Siloam tunnel?2 paragraphs

The traditional reading takes the tunnel as Hezekiah's work, as Kings and Chronicles say. Amos Frumkin, Aryeh Shimron and Jeff Rosenbaum dated plant matter in its plaster and its stalactites in 2003 and reported an Iron Age II date.

John Rogerson and Philip Davies argued in 1996 that the inscription is Hasmonean, and six epigraphers answered them in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1997.

Do the ruined altars of Judah show the reform?2 paragraphs

Yohanan Aharoni read the end of the Arad shrine as two steps of reform, under Hezekiah and Josiah, and Ze'ev Herzog held that it was covered over on Hezekiah's order before Sennacherib came.

Nadav Na'aman held that the shrine stood until Sennacherib destroyed the city in 701 BC. Ganor and Kreimerman tie the altars with their horns cut off to Hezekiah's reform, and Stephen Russell answered that the tie holds only if the excavators are right.

What became of Sennacherib's army?2 paragraphs

Kings and Isaiah say the angel of the LORD struck down the camp. Herodotus tells that field mice gnawed the quivers and bows of Sennacherib's army in the night.

Sennacherib's own annals close the campaign with the tribute counted.

Books to Read Next

Three free books on the reform and the siege.

The Books of the Chronicles
C. F. Keil · 1872

Keil reads 2 Chronicles 29 to 32 verse by verse and defends the second-month Passover from the law.

Read it free online

The Annals of Sennacherib
D. D. Luckenbill · 1924

Luckenbill translates the Assyrian king's own record of the campaign against Judah and the Lachish epigraph.

Read it free online

Commentary on the Whole Bible, volume 2
Matthew Henry · 1710

Henry reads the reform chapter by chapter for the reader's own house.

Read it free online

What Hezekiah's Reform Left

Jonathan Edwards preached on the work of redemption in 1739. He wrote that renewals of the covenant came with outpourings of the Spirit, "so we find it was in Hezekiah's and Josiah's times."

The line through this page

The verse first, then this page.

  1. 2 Chronicles 29:5

    This is the key verse of the page.

  2. This page

    Hezekiah's Revival

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

  1. The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible (read 2026)
  2. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Oriental Institute Publications 2, Chicago, 1924), pp. 7, 32 to 34 and 156.
  3. A. H. Sayce, ed., Records of the Past, second series, vol. 1 (London, 1888), pp. 168 to 175, the Siloam inscription.
  4. Amos Frumkin, Aryeh Shimron and Jeff Rosenbaum, "Radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem", Nature 425 (2003), pp. 169 to 171, the abstract.
  5. John Rogerson and Philip R. Davies, "Was the Siloam Tunnel Built by Hezekiah?", Biblical Archaeologist 59 (1996), with the reply of six epigraphers in Biblical Archaeology Review 23:2 (1997)
  6. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, release of 2 December 2015 on the Hezekiah bulla from Eilat Mazar's Ophel excavations.
  7. D. Ussishkin, "The Destruction of Lachish by Sennacherib and the Dating of the Royal Judean Storage Jars", Tel Aviv 4 (1977), pp. 28 to 60; O. Lipschits, O. Sergi and I. Koch, "Royal Judahite Jar Handles", Tel Aviv 37 (2010), pp. 3 to 32, the abstract.
  8. Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (1983), p. 134, as quoted.
  9. S. Ganor and I. Kreimerman, "An Eighth-Century BCE Gate Shrine at Tel Lachish, Israel", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 381 (2019), pp. 211 to 236, the abstract; the Israel Antiquities Authority's release of 2016; S. C. Russell, OUPblog, 19 October 2016.
  10. D. R. Moulis, "Hezekiah's Cultic Reforms according to the Archaeological Evidence" (2019), pp. 168 to 170, citing Aharoni (1968), Herzog (2002) and Na'aman (2002)
  11. Herodotus, Histories 2.141, translated by A. D. Godley (Loeb, 1920)
  12. C. F. Keil, The Books of the Chronicles, translated by Andrew Harper (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1872), p. 455.
  13. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708 to 1710), on 2 Chronicles 30:3.
  14. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, lecture 2, section 15 (fourth century), on 2 Kings 20:1 to 6, in an English translation.
  15. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 2 Kings 18:13.
  16. Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption (preached 1739), Period I, Part IV, section 10.
  17. Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (third edition, 1983), with Gershon Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Brill, 1996), as their tables are reproduced.

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