2 Kingschapter 20
21 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him and said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Put your house in order, for you are about to die; you will not recover.’”
Introduction
Jeremiah, by tradition, History, 2 Kings Overview.
This chapter was written for exiles in Babylon, and it holds the first word in Kings that Babylon would one day carry off Judah's treasures. It returns to Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, and its events come before the deliverance told in the chapter before. The first half happens in a sickroom and the second in a treasury. Listen for what the king asks of God when he is dying, and for the sign he chooses. Then notice how he answers a prophet's warning about his descendants, and what that answer shows about him.
Context
- Who
- Judeans who had yet to think of Babylon as a threat of any kind
- What
- An account of Hezekiah's illness and recovery, the sign of the shadow on the stairway, and the envoys from Babylon to whom he showed his treasures.
- Where
- The king's chamber in Jerusalem, the stairway of Ahaz, and the treasure house of the palace.
- When
- About 703 to 701 BC, before the deliverance of chapter 19, with the notice of Hezekiah's death in 686 BC at the close.
- Why
- To show the LORD answering a dying king's prayer, and to announce in the same reign the exile to Babylon with which the book ends.
Historical context
The chapter is Hezekiah's, and in it he is a king of Judah holding a city the Assyrian empire wanted. The prophet at his bedside is Isaiah son of Amoz, who stands through chapters 18 and 19 as well.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The time is the stretch around 701 BC, and the commentators place the sickness in the year of Sennacherib's invasion. That is why the promise at verse 6 to deliver the city still lies ahead here, although chapter 19 has reported it done.
The place is Jerusalem, and the chapter names two rooms of it. One is the king's own chamber, where a man turns his face to the wall, and the other is the treasure house with its silver, gold, spices and armoury.
A first hearer knew that Babylon in this generation was a rival of Assyria rather than a power over Judah, so envoys from Merodach-baladan were an approach from one enemy of Assyria to another. A poultice of pressed figs was the ordinary treatment for a boil, and the stairway of Ahaz was a flight of marked steps whose shadow told the hours.
The pool and conduit of the last verse can still be walked, and an inscription found in it in 1880 records the two teams of diggers meeting.
Significance
For Judah this chapter said that a sentence already spoken could be answered by prayer. The ground of the answer was a promise made to David rather than the worth of the man praying.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
It also told them where their treasure was going, since Babylon is named here as the place their own gold would travel to. The king's last recorded sentence, that there would at least be peace in his lifetime, left them to weigh whether relief at a delayed judgment is faith.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
This is the chapter of the estate's own door on the shadow that moved backwards, and the classical comment on it is the fullest in these twelve chapters. It runs on four questions: when the illness happened, what the fig cake did, what the shadow did, and why the king was punished for showing his treasury.
On the first, Rashi dates the illness three days before the Assyrian's downfall, and then dates the downfall itself. The third day, when the king went up to the house of the LORD, "was the day of Sancheiriv's downfall, and it was on the Pesach holiday" (Rashi on II Kings 20:1:1 and 20:1:2, the Metsudah Tanach series of Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY). The Metsudah edition's note at that verse records what is done in the home because of it: the downfall is named in the Haggadah on both nights of the seder, in the piyyut of the first night and in the piyyut of the second. At the sixth verse Rashi holds the dating by an argument from the text, that the promise to save the king from the hand of Assyria shows the illness came before the deliverance (Rashi on II Kings 20:6:1). The note at the first verse carries Ralbag reading it the other way, that the chapter stands in order and the illness followed the downfall, the promise covering attacks still to come from the Assyrian's successors. Both readings stand in the corpus and neither is put above the other here.
On the second, Rashi reads the prophet's prescription as a miracle inside a miracle. He first settles the word, that fresh fruit is called figs and the pressed round cake has its own name (Rashi on II Kings 20:7:1). Then he makes the point that a fig cake laid on sound flesh makes it decay, so what was laid on the boil was a thing that harms laid on a thing already vulnerable, and it healed (Rashi on II Kings 20:7:2). At the fourth verse he explains why the word came back so quickly, that God hurried to tell the king of his cure before word of the sentence could spread through the city, citing the Jerusalem Talmud. The note carries Radak on the written form of the word for the court, with the Talmud at Eiruvin 26a measuring that inner court at the size of an ordinary city (Rashi on II Kings 20:4:1).
On the third, Rashi reads the sign as a choice between two unequal signs and explains the mechanism with an Old French word for the instrument, oriloje, the clock people make to tell the hour. He takes the verse as abbreviated: the shadow had already run its steps, and the question is whether it should stand where it is for the length of ten hours or go back ten steps so that evening looks like morning again (Rashi on II Kings 20:9:1). The king's answer is read as a choice of the harder sign, because standing still is not conspicuous while turning the evening back into morning is a wonder anyone can see (Rashi on II Kings 20:10:1). Then Rashi joins the sign to the reign before it. On the day the wicked father died the day was shortened and the shadow hurried forward ten steps so that there would be no time to eulogize him, and those same ten hours came back now for the son, with the Talmud at Sanhedrin 96a behind the first half (Rashi on II Kings 20:11:1). The note at that verse carries Radak reading the name of the steps simply as the dial the father had built, and Chizkuni reading the sun as prepared for this from creation. Rashi then uses the same hours to explain how the news travelled. The Babylonian king rose after nine hours to find it was morning and nearly killed his servants for letting him sleep a day and a night. They told him the sun had gone back and that the God of Hezekiah had turned it, and he sent to ask, which the corpus gives as the reading of the Pesikta (Rashi on II Kings 20:12:1).
On the fourth, Rashi reads the king's answer to the prophet as the failure of a test, and sets him in company that a Christian reader will not expect. He names three men God tested and found wanting, Cain, Hezekiah and Balaam, and shows what each should have said and what each said instead. The king should have answered that the prophet of God had no need to ask him; instead he boasted that his visitors had come from a distant land, and he was punished for that and for rejoicing over them and seating them at his table (Rashi on II Kings 20:14:1). The sentence that follows is read as measure for measure against the king's own word that he had shown them everything (Rashi on II Kings 20:17:1). The sons who will be taken to serve in the palace of Babylon are identified with three named men of the exile, with the note carrying the view that the word means eunuchs and the Targum's rendering of it as officers (Rashi on II Kings 20:18:1). The closing notice of the pool and the conduit is read from the parallel account, where the springs outside the city were stopped as a defence when the Assyrian marched (Rashi on II Kings 20:20:1).
Two of Rashi's own comments on this chapter, on the thirteenth verse where the king shows the treasure house and on the nineteenth where he receives the sentence, are in the corpus without their text, because the licence Sefaria reports for that version does not permit keeping it. They stand here cited by ref and unquoted: Rashi on II Kings 20:13:1 and 20:19:1. Radak and Metzudat David comment across the chapter as well, and the corpus carries their refs with the reason that Sefaria holds no English version of them, so they too stand cited and unquoted: Radak on II Kings 20:2:1, 20:3:1, 20:4:1, 20:6:1, 20:8:1 and 20:9:1, and Metzudat David on II Kings 20:8:1 and 20:10:1. Radak on the second and third verses covers the king turning his face to the wall and the prayer he made there, which is the part of the chapter the corpus leaves least accessible in English.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators for this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. The illness and the prayer carry sixteen. On the first verse, where the prophet tells the king to set his house in order, Bava Batra 147a:8, Berakhot 10a:27, Devarim Rabbah 8:1 and Ein Yaakov, Eiruvin 2:13. On the second, where the king turns his face to the wall, Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 4:4:11, Tractate Semachot 8:12 and Tractate Soferim 8:2. On the third, where he recalls how he has walked before the LORD, Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:4, Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 47:6 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:85. On the fourth and fifth, where the word comes back before the prophet has left the court, Eruvin 26a:9, Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 10:2:12, Kohelet Rabbah 5:6:1, Bereshit Rabbah 76:4, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 32:10:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Vaera 3:1. On the sixth, where fifteen years are added, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Yoma 5:8, Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 4:11 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Chayei Sara 10:1.
The sign carries five: on the eighth verse, Bamidbar Rabbah 7:5 and Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 11:6:3; Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:4:2 anchored across the eighth to the eleventh; and on the eleventh itself, Shir HaShirim Rabbah 4:8:3.
The embassy from Babylon carries the rest. On the twelfth verse, Jerusalem Talmud Yevamot 2:6:3, Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 5:8 and Sifrei Aggadah on Esther, Midrash Abba Guryon 1:3. On the thirteenth, where the treasure house is shown, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Miketz 55 and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 52:10. On the fourteenth, where the prophet asks what the men said and where they came from, Bamidbar Rabbah 2:12, Bereshit Rabbah 19:11 and Jerusalem Talmud Sotah 7:5:5. On the seventeenth, where nothing is to be left, Ein Yaakov, Yoma 5:11, Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 6:1:3 and Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of Melechet HaMishkan 1:32. On the eighteenth, where the king's own sons are to be taken, Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 11:21, Sanhedrin 104a:10 and Tractate Soferim 7:1. On the twentieth, where the pool and the conduit are recorded, Jerusalem Talmud Nedarim 6:8:8, Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 9:1:6 and Midrash Tehillim 87:4. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 20:1:1, 20:1:2, 20:4:1, 20:6:1, 20:7:1, 20:7:2, 20:9:1, 20:10:1, 20:11:1, 20:12:1, 20:14:1, 20:17:1, 20:18:1 and 20:20:1, The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY; and on 20:13:1 and 20:19:1, cited by ref because the licence the corpus reports does not permit keeping the text; Radak, Radak, the readings the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 20:4:1, 20:9:1 and 20:11:1, and his own refs at 20:2:1, 20:3:1, 20:4:1, 20:6:1, 20:8:1 and 20:9:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Ralbag, Ralbag, the reading the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 20:1:1; Chizkuni, Chizkuni, the reading the Metsudah edition carries at II Kings 20:11:1; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Kings 20:8:1 and 20:10:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-kings/20.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Fifteen years added, and the shadow goes back ten steps
2 Kings 20:1-3
Isaiah tells him "you are about to die" and offers no remedy. Hezekiah asks the LORD to "remember how I have walked before You faithfully and with wholehearted devotion," the appeal in Psalms 7 and 18. Only prayer and tears stand between the sentence and its reversal.
2 Kings 20:1
“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"?”
Cyril of Jerusalem · written before 386 · Catechetical Lecture 2:15patristic
3 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Kings 20:1
“In those days - Hezekiah seems to have died 697 B.C.; and his illness must belong to 713 or 714 B.C. (compare 2Ki 20:6), a date which falls early in the reign of Sargon. The true chronological place of this narrative is therefore prior to all the other facts related of Hezekiah except his religious reforms. The prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz - This full description of Isaiah (compare 2Ki 19:2), by the addition of his father’s name and of his office, marks the original independence of this narrative.”
2 Kings 20:1
“That his disease is mortal, and, if he be not recovered by a miracle of mercy, will certainly be fatal: Thou shalt die, and not live. That therefore he must, with all speed, get ready for death: Set thy house in order. This we should feel highly concerned to do when we are in health, but are most loudly called to do when we come to be sick.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 20:1
“In those days was Hezekiah sick--As his reign lasted twenty-nine years (2Ki 18:2), and his kingdom was invaded in the fourteenth (2Ki 18:13), it is evident that this sudden and severe illness must have occurred in the very year of the Syrian invasion.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
turned his face to the wall: Barnes sets this beside Ahab at 1 Kings 21:4, who turned his face away in sullen anger over Naboth's vineyard. Hezekiah turns to pray undisturbed. Matthew Henry notes that the answered prayer of chapter 19 had taught him to keep praying.
2 Kings 20:2
“He turned his face to the wall - Contrast 1Ki 21:4. Ahab turned in sullenness, because he was too angry to converse; Hezekiah in devotion, because he wished to pray undisturbed.”
Hezekiah wept bitterly: Wesley reads the tears partly as fear for the succession, which was uncertain at that time. Manasseh was twelve when he became king at 21:1, so he was born within the fifteen added years. JFB hear the promise of 1 Kings 8:25 behind the prayer.
2 Kings 20:3
“Remember now - The old covenant promised temporal prosperity, including length of days, to the righteous. Hezekiah, conscious of his faithfulness and integrity 2Ki 18:3-6, ventures to expostulate (compare also 2Ki 21:1 note). According to the highest standard of morality revealed up to this time, there was nothing unseemly in the self vindication of the monarch, which has many parallels in the Psalms of David (Psa 7:3-10; Psa 18:19-26; Psa 26:1-8, etc.).”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 20:3
“Wept - For that horror of death which is and was common to men, especially, in the times of the Old Testament, when the grace of God in Christ was not so fully manifested, as now it is: and, for the distracted condition in which the church and state were then likely to be left, through the uncertainty of the succession to the crown.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 20:4-6
Before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard: The word reaches Isaiah before he has left the middle courtyard and reverses the first message. The LORD says "I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears," and adds fifteen years to his life. Hezekiah is called "the leader of My people," the title Scripture gives David himself.
2 Kings 20:4
“And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court,.... Of the king's palace, which is called the other court within the porch, 1Ki 7:8 so it is according to the marginal reading, which we follow; but the textual reading is, "the middle city"; Jerusalem was divided into three parts, and this was the middle part Isaiah was entering into: but before he did, so it was: that the word of the Lord came to him, saying; as follows.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:4
“Into the middle court - הצר hatstser, the court. This is the reading of the Masoretic Keri: העיר haair, “of the city,” is the reading of the text, and of most MSS.; but the versions follow the Keri.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 20:4
“Prayers that have much life and affection in them are in a special manner pleasing to God. God exceeds his prayers; he only begged that God would remember his integrity, but God here promises (1.) To restore him from his illness: I will heal thee. Diseases are his servants; as they go where he sends them, so they come when he remands them.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the leader of My people: Barnes notes the Hebrew title is nagid, used of David, and Isaiah 38:5 gives the message in a shorter form without it. The promise answers the prayer twice over, with healing and with worship in the temple on the third day. Henry observes that God gave more than Hezekiah asked.
2 Kings 20:5
“The captain of my people - This phrase (which does not occur elsewhere in Kings) is remarkable, and speaks for the authenticity of this full report of the actual words of the prophet’s message (abbreviated in Isa 38:1, etc.). The title, “Captain נגיד nāgı̂yd of God’s people,” commonly used of David, is applied to Hezekiah, as David’s true follower 2Ki 18:3.”
I will add fifteen years: Gill reads the promise to deliver this city as proof that the illness came before the Assyrian army fell in chapter 19. Barnes weighs a date in 714 or 713 BC, when the king of Assyria was Sargon. Clarke notes Hezekiah alone was told his life's length.
2 Kings 20:6
“And I will add unto thy days fifteen years,.... See Gill on Isa 38:5. and I will deliver thee, and this city, out of the hand of the king of Assyria; by which it appears that this sickness and recovery were before the destruction of the Assyrian army: and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake: for the sake of his honour and glory in the temple, and the service of it, that were in Jerusalem, and for the sake of his promise to David and his seed.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:6
“I will add unto thy days fifteen years - This is the first and only man who was ever informed of the term of his life. And was this a privilege! Surely no. If Hezekiah was attached to life, as he appears to have been, how must his mind be affected to mark the sinking years! He knew he was to die at the end of fifteen years; and how must he feel at the end of every year, when he saw that so much was cut off from life? He must necessarily feel a thousand deaths in fearing one.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 20:6
“This was the thing which Hezekiah's heart was upon a much as his own recovery, and therefore the promise of this is here repeated. If this was after the raising of the siege, yet there was cause to fear Sennacherib's rallying again. "No," says God, " I will defend this city. " V.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Isaiah prescribes a plaster of figs, the ordinary remedy for a boil. Commentators read the means as real but insufficient of themselves against a mortal tumor, so the plaster and the promise work together. A word that could have healed with nothing at all still sends for figs.
2 Kings 20:7
“And Isaiah said, take a lump of figs,.... Not moist figs, but a cake of dried figs, as the word used signifies, and so the less likely to have any effect in curing the boil: and they took, and laid it on the boil, and he recovered; made a plaster of it, and laid it on the ulcer, and it was healed.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:7
“A lump of figs - The usual remedy in the East, even at the present day, for ordinary boils. But such a remedy would not naturally cure the dangerous tumor or carbuncle from which Hezekiah suffered. Thus the means used in this miracle were means having a tendency toward the result performed by them, but insufficient of themselves to produce that result (compare 2Ki 4:34 note).”
2 Kings 20:7
“The vine, and that not in a few places, refers to the Lord himself, and the fig tree to the Holy Spirit, as the Lord makes glad the hearts of people and heals them. And therefore Hezekiah is commanded first to make a plaster with a lump of figs—that is, the fruit of the Spirit—that he may be healed—that is, according to the apostle—by love; for he says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance;" which, on account of their great pleasantness the prophet calls figs.”
Methodius of Olympus · written before 311 · Symposium or Banquet of the Ten Virgins 10.5patristic
2 Kings 20:8-9
Hezekiah asks for a sign that the promise of the third day will hold. Isaiah leaves the choice with the king, whether the shadow should "go forward ten steps, or back ten steps". The instrument is usually read as a set of marked steps, where the shadow lengthened and shortened.
2 Kings 20:8
“What shall be the sign - He wished to be fully convinced that his cure was to be entirely supernatural; and, in order to this, he seeks one miracle to prove the truth of the other, that nothing might remain equivocal.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 20:8
“The shadow of the sun went back upon the dial of Ahaz the ten degrees it had gone down. Various conjectures have been formed as to this dial. The word in the original is "degrees," or "steps," and hence many commentators have supposed that it was a stair, so artfully contrived, that the shadows on the steps indicated the hours and course of the sun.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
go forward ten steps: Barnes notes that the Babylonians had invented the sundial by the time of Herodotus. He takes the instrument of Ahaz to be a stairway whose steps marked time. Isaiah 38:7 and 8 give the sign in a shorter form.
2 Kings 20:9
“Ten degrees - literally, “ten steps.” It is not, perhaps, altogether certain whether the “dial of Ahaz” 2Ki 20:11 was really a dial with a gnomon in the center, and “degrees” marked round it, or a construction fur marking time by means of “steps.” Sundials proper had been invented by the Babylonians before the time of Herodotus; but the instrument here was probably an instrument consisting of a set of steps, or stairs, with an obelisk at the top, the shadow of which descended or ascended the steps according as the sun rose higher in the heavens or declined.”
2 Kings 20:10-11
Hezekiah answers that "It is easy for the shadow to lengthen ten steps," since it was already moving that way. He asks for the harder sign. The text records the sign given and leaves its mechanism undescribed.
2 Kings 20:10
“It is a light thing - It seemed to Hezekiah comparatively easy that the shadow, which had already begun to lengthen, should merely make a sudden jump in the same direction; but, wholly contrary to all experience that it should change its direction, advancing up the steps again when it had once begun to descend them.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 20:10
“He desired to recover that he might glorify God in the gates of the daughter of Zion. It is not worth while to live for any other purpose than to serve God. It was put to his choice whether the sun should go back or go forward; for it was equal to Omnipotence, and it would be the more likely to confirm his faith if he chose that which he thought the more difficult of the two.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the stairway of Ahaz: Gill reports that Ben Gersom held the miracle to touch the shadow alone, and Clarke also doubted that the earth turned back on its axis. Matthew Henry sees the sun put under Israel's God. 2 Chronicles 32:31 says Babylon's envoys came to ask about this wonder.
2 Kings 20:11
“And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord,.... Or prayed, as the Targum; and was very earnest in prayer, that what Hezekiah had desired might be granted: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz; Ben Gersom understands it not of the sun itself, but of the shadow of it only; See Gill on Isa 38:8.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:11
“He brought the shadow ten degrees backward - We cannot suppose that these ten degrees meant ten hours; there were ten divisions of time on this dial: and perhaps it would not be right to suppose that the sun went ten degrees back in the heavens, or that the earth turned back upon its axis from east to west, in a contrary direction to its natural course.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 20:11
“The most plausible idolatry of the heathen was theirs that worshipped the sun; yet that was hereby convicted of the most egregious folly and absurdity, for by this it appeared that their god was under the check of the God of Israel.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Nothing hidden from Babylon's envoys: a costly boast
2 Kings 20:12-13
sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah: Babylon and Assyria were rivals at this date, and Babylon was courting a king who had just shamed the Assyrian army. 2 Chronicles 32:25 names the pride of Hezekiah's heart in this period. The power that will one day carry this treasure away has now seen all of it.
2 Kings 20:12
“At that time Berodach-baladan - He is called Merodach-Baladan, Isa 39:1, and by the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, and by several of Kennicott’s and De Rossi’s MSS.; and also by the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. The true reading seems to be Merodach; the מ mem and ב beth might be easily interchanged, and so produce the mistake. Sent letters and a present - It appears that there was friendship between the king of Babylon and Hezekiah, when the latter and the Assyrians were engaged in a destructive war.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:12
“At that time Berodachbaladan,.... He is called Merodachbaladan, Isa 39:1, so here in the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions; See Gill on Isa 39:1; and by Metasthenes (z) his father is called Merodach, and he Ben Merodach, who reigned twenty one years, and his father fifty two; from hence to the end of 2Ki 20:12 the same account is given in the same words as in Isa 39:1 throughout, except in 2Ki 20:13, where it is, "hearkened unto them", and there, "glad of them"; heard the letter the ambassadors brought with pleasure; see the notes there.”
2 Kings 20:12
“It is good having those our friends whom we perceive to be the favourites of heaven. Upon the account of civil interest. If the king of Babylon was now mediating a revolt from the king of Assyria, it was policy to get Hezekiah into his interest, in answer to whose prayers, and for whose protection, heaven had given that fatal blow to the king of Assyria.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 20:12
“But, after the destruction of Sennacherib, presents were brought him from various quarters, out of respect to a king who, by his faith and prayer, saved his country; and besides, it is by no means improbable that from the corpses in the Assyrian camp, all the gold and silver he had paid might be recovered.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Clarke notes that Isaiah 39:2 and the ancient versions read that Hezekiah was glad, where the Hebrew of Kings reads that he listened. Barnes explains the treasure house as literally the spice house, a name that came to cover gold and silver. Spurgeon's sermon names the fault vainglory.
2 Kings 20:13
“Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and shewed them - The Jewish king lent a favorable ear to the proposals of the ambassadors, and exhibited to them the resources which he possessed, in order to induce them to report well of him to their master. All the house of his precious things - literally, the “spice-house;” the phrase had acquired the more generic sense of “treasure-house” from the fact that the gold, the silver, and the spices were all stored together.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:13
“Shewed - Which he did through pride of heart, 2 Chron. xxxii, 25, 26, being lifted up by the great honour which God had done him, in working such glorious miracles for his sake, and by the great respects rendered to him from divers princes, and now by this great Babylonian monarch. So hard a matter is it even for a good man to be high and humble.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 20:13
“He was more open and free than he should have been, and stood not so much upon his guard. What reason had he that was in covenant with God so eagerly to catch at an alliance with a heathen prince, or to value himself at all upon his respectful notice?”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 20:14-15
Isaiah asks Hezekiah where the envoys came from, "what did they say to you," and what they have seen. Hezekiah names Babylon and answers the last question, saying "There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them". The record gives no answer to what the envoys said.
2 Kings 20:14
“Hezekiah did not answer Isaiah’s first question, “What said these men?” but only his second. Probably he knew that Isaiah would oppose reliance on an “arm of flesh.” Babylon now for the first time became revealed to the Jews as an actual power in the world, which might effect them politically. As yet even the prophets had spoken but little of the great southern city; up to this time she had been little more to them than Tyre, or Tarshish, or any other rich and powerful idolatrous city. Henceforth, all this was wholly changed.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 20:14
“Why then did he not bring them to Isaiah, and show him to them who was without doubt the best treasure he had in his dominions, and who by his prayers and prophecies had been instrumental in all those wonders which these ambassadors came to enquire into?”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 32:31 says God left Hezekiah alone in this visit to test him and to know all that was in his heart. Isaiah turns the word everything back on him in verse 17.
2 Kings 20:16-18
The sentence is plain: everything in the palace and all that Hezekiah's fathers had stored up will be "carried off to Babylon," with nothing left. Hezekiah's own descendants will serve as eunuchs. Kings later names Manasseh's sins as the cause of the exile this word first announces.
carried off to Babylon: Clarke traces the fulfilment to the Babylonian raids of Daniel 1:1 to 3, when the land and the temple were stripped. Wesley holds the sentence a judgment on pride and on trust in a league with Babylon. 2 Kings 24:13 records the treasures carried off.
2 Kings 20:17
“Surely the just Hezekiah did not rejoice that the disaster of the captivity had fallen on his children, but he could not oppose the will of the Lord, and so he received the Lord's commands with patience like a humble servant. Thus it happens that one could judge that merit and virtue could be evident even in captivity. For Jeremiah was not less happy in captivity, nor was Daniel, nor Ezra, nor were Ananias and Azariah and Misael less happy than if they had not fallen into captivity.”
Ambrose of Milan · written before 397 · On Jacob and the Blessed Life, Book 1, Chapter 8.36patristic
3 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 20:17
“Behold, the days come - This was fulfilled in the days of the latter Jewish kings, when the Babylonians had led the people away into captivity, and stripped the land, the temple, etc., of all their riches. See Dan 1:1-3.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 20:17
“Behold - This judgment is denounced against him for his pride; for his ingratitude, whereby he took that honour to himself which he should have given entirely to God; and for his carnal confidence in that league which he had now made with the king of Babylon, by which, it is probable, he thought his mountain to be so strong, that it could not be removed.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 20:17
“Not that it was for this sin that that judgment should be brought upon them: the sins of Manasseh, his idolatries and murders, were the cause of that calamity; but it is now foretold to Hezekiah, to convince him of the folly of his pride and of the value he had for the king of Babylon, and to make him ashamed of it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
to be eunuchs in the palace: Barnes finds two fulfilments: Manasseh was taken to Babylon, and Daniel 1:3 records young men of the royal family brought into Nebuchadnezzar's court. Barnes reports a reading that counts Daniel among them. Clarke takes eunuchs to mean household servants.
2 Kings 20:18
“They shall be eunuchs - Perhaps this means no more than that they should become household servants to the kings of Babylon. See the fulfillment, 2Ki 24:13-15, and Dan 1:1-3.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hezekiah calls the word of the LORD good. The text then gives his thought, that there will at least be "peace and security in my lifetime". The two clauses can be read as submission to a just rebuke or as relief that the blow falls on a later generation.
2 Kings 20:19
“Good is the word ... - The language is, according to some, that of a true spirit of resignation and humility; according to others, that of a feeling of relief and satisfaction that the evil was not to come in his day. Such a feeling would be but natural, and though not according to the standard of Christian perfectness, would imply no very great defect of character in one who lived under the old Dispensation. Peace and truth - Rather, “peace and continuance.” The evils threatened were war and the dissolution of the kingdom.”
The pool and the conduit that brought water into the city
2 Kings 20:20-21
how he constructed the pool and the tunnel: The closing formula names one of Hezekiah's works, "the pool and the tunnel to bring water into the city," which 2 Chronicles 32:30 describes. The tunnel is generally identified with the Siloam tunnel, whose inscription was found cut in Jerusalem's bedrock. Hezekiah rests with his fathers and Manasseh reigns.
2 Kings 20:20
“But here this historian leaves him asleep with his fathers, and a son in his throne that proved very untoward; for parents cannot give grace to their children. Wicked Ahaz was the son of a godly father and the father of a godly son; holy Hezekiah was the son of a wicked father and the father of a wicked son.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
his son Manasseh reigned: 2 Chronicles 32:33 adds that all Judah honoured Hezekiah at his death and buried him in the upper tombs of David's descendants. Matthew Henry observes that parents cannot give grace to their children.
How this psalm is built
The form: Narrative told out of strict order, a royal sickbed account with the sentence reversed, a sign given, and a second oracle spoken over the king's own welcome, as Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, with Albert Barnes classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| For My sake and for the sake of My servant David | The clause that saves the city at verse 6 is the clause the book has used before, and it names David rather than Hezekiah as the reason. The site's exposition note on 20:4 to 6, which cites Keil, The Books of the Kings, and Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, reads it as the promise of 2 Samuel 7 kept a third generation past the man it was made to. The same title the LORD gives Hezekiah in the same breath, the leader of My people, is the title Scripture uses of David himself.Keil, The Books of the Kings, cited by the site's exposition note on 2 Kings 20:4 to 6. | 2 Kings 20:5, 2 Kings 20:6, 2 Kings 19:34, 2 Kings 8:19 |
| Ten steps forward, or ten steps back | Isaiah sets the sign out as a matched pair and lets the king pick the half he wants, and Hezekiah answers by measuring which half costs more. Rashi calls verse 9 an abbreviated verse and explains the steps as the marks by which the hours of the day were told, so the choice is between the shadow holding its place and the shadow climbing back until the afternoon looks like morning. The text records the request and the answer and says nothing of the mechanism.Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 20:9:1 and 20:10:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, fetched from Sefaria under CC-BY. | 2 Kings 20:9, 2 Kings 20:10, 2 Kings 20:11 |
| Nothing among my treasures, and nothing will be left | Hezekiah tells Isaiah at verse 15 that there is nothing among his treasures he did not show the envoys, and the oracle at verse 17 closes on the same word, that nothing will be left. Rashi reads the second nothing as the answer to the first and calls it measure for measure. The display and the sentence use one vocabulary, so the reader hears the judgment shaped out of the king's own sentence.Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 20:17:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, fetched from Sefaria under CC-BY. | 2 Kings 20:13, 2 Kings 20:15, 2 Kings 20:17 |
| Two questions the king answers by half | Isaiah asks where the men came from and what they said, and then what they saw. The site's exposition note on 20:14 to 15, which cites Albert Barnes and Matthew Henry, observes that Hezekiah answers the question about what was seen in full and that the record carries no answer at all to the question about what was said. The prophet who might have been shown to the envoys as the king's true treasure is the one left asking.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, cited by the site's exposition note on 2 Kings 20:14 to 15. | 2 Kings 20:14, 2 Kings 20:15 |
The historical value
15 more paragraphs on the patterns
Four of the seven finds this book's dossier carries bear on Hezekiah, and two of them touch this chapter directly.
Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription stand behind verse 20. The dossier records a rock-cut channel running roughly 533 metres from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam, and six lines of paleo-Hebrew cut into the tunnel wall describing the two teams of diggers hearing each other through the rock and meeting. The tunnel is dated about 700 BC and the inscription was found in 1880 and now stands in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. The compiler gives the whole work one clause, how he constructed the pool and the tunnel to bring water into the city, and the inscription is the diggers' own account of the same job. Rashi, on the same verse, records the defensive purpose that 2 Chronicles 32:3 to 4 and 32:30 supply, that Hezekiah closed off the springs and streams outside Jerusalem when Sennacherib began his march.
The bulla of Hezekiah son of Ahaz was excavated from the Ophel beside the Temple Mount in 2009 and published in 2015. The dossier records the reading, Belonging to Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah, recovered from a controlled excavation. It confirms the king of this chapter by his own royal seal.
Merodach-baladan of verse 12 is a figure of the Assyrian record as well as of this book. The chapter puts his envoys in Jerusalem while Assyria was the power both kingdoms answered to, and Babylon and Assyria were rivals at that date, which the site's exposition note on verses 12 to 13 states with Wesley and Spurgeon cited. The visit reads as diplomacy from the side of Babylon, an approach to a king who had just embarrassed an Assyrian army.
The debated concept
Where the chapter sits in time is the first question, and it has holders on both sides. The reading this site's exposition carries, drawn from Jamieson, Fausset and Brown with Barnes, is that the sickness came before the invasion of chapters 18 and 19 and is told after it. Ralbag, reported in Rashi's commentary at 20:1, holds the opposite, that the whole episode stands in chronological order and that the promise at verse 6 covers later Assyrian attacks. Both readings rest on the same clause of verse 6, and the difference is what the promise of deliverance is taken to cover.
The shadow on the stairway is the second. The dossier carries the question under the heading of whether the shadow really moved backward on the dial, and states that readings differ over whether the sign was cosmic in scale or local to the steps themselves. It records the account as stating both the request and the answer plainly on either reading, and it sends the reader to the page at /featured/hezekiahs-sundial. Rashi's note at 20:11 carries a Jewish account of the same event that turns on the day Ahaz died, and a further tradition at 20:12 that has Merodach-baladan hearing of the sign through his own disturbed sleep. The site records these as what the rabbis have read and states no verdict.
The third is what Hezekiah meant at verse 19. The site's exposition note on that verse, which cites Wesley with Barnes, sets out two readings of the same two clauses. Wesley takes it as submission, an old covenant believer calling the LORD's rebuke just and merciful. Barnes and Henry hear a self-regarding relief that the judgment falls on a later generation, a natural feeling that they name without excusing. The note records that both readings sit on the same words and that the text gives no verdict between them.
The divine connection
The chapter states its own theology in the middle of the sign. Hezekiah is told at verse 5 that his prayer was heard and his tears were seen, and the sentence already spoken is reversed inside the same courtyard. The site's exposition note on verses 4 to 6 reads the reversal against the clause that carries it, that the LORD defends this city for His own sake and for the sake of His servant David. The rescue is grounded in a promise made to a man three generations back rather than in the merit of the man praying.
The means and the word work together at verse 7. Isaiah prescribes a poultice of figs, which the site's note, citing Barnes and Gill, calls the ordinary remedy for a boil in the ancient Near East, laid on the place rather than spoken over it. A word that could have healed with nothing at all still sends for figs. Rashi reads the same verse the other way about and calls it a miracle within a miracle, since pressed figs laid on sound flesh would injure it.
What the chapter does not claim is as clear as what it does. The text reports that the shadow went back the ten steps it had descended and says nothing of how, and the site's exposition note on verses 10 to 11 records that the event is named nowhere else in Scripture. A page that presents the sign states the account and the readings of it, and states no mechanism the text withholds.
How the rest of Scripture reads this chapter
The chapter stands three times in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 38 carries the sickness and the sign with a psalm of Hezekiah that this account leaves out, and Isaiah 39 carries the envoys and the oracle. 2 Chronicles 32:24 to 26 carries both in short, and it supplies the reading the commentators bring to verse 13, that Hezekiah's heart was lifted up at the honour God had shown him. 2 Chronicles 32:30 supplies the water works that verse 20 mentions in one clause.
Babylon has stood in this book once before, at 17:24, as a source of colonists for Samaria. Verse 17 is the first place in Kings where Babylon is named as the power Judah's own treasures will travel to, and the last two chapters of the book carry that word out in detail. Rashi, at 20:18, records the Jewish reading that the sons of verse 18 are Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah of Daniel 1, and notes that Targum Jonathan takes the word for eunuchs as officers.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, with Albert Barnes, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871, and Notes on the Old Testament, cited together by the site's exposition note on 2 Kings 20:1 to 3; Ralbag, as Rashi's commentary reports him, Rashi on II Kings 20:1:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, fetched from Sefaria under CC-BY and Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 20:1:1 and 20:1:2, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, fetched from Sefaria under CC-BY.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Berean Standard Bible; Charles Spurgeon; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.