2 Kingschapter 20
21 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
Key verse
Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord.
It stands in Fifteen years added, and the shadow goes back ten steps, verses 1 to 11.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Hezekiah is sick unto death and Isaiah brings the word: 'Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.' He turns his face to the wall and weeps sore, and before Isaiah is out of the middle court he is sent back. Fifteen years added, the city defended. Offered a sign, Hezekiah asks the harder one: the shadow goes backward ten steps on the dial of Ahaz, and a cake of figs heals the boil. Then the sag: envoys from Babylon come, and Hezekiah shows them everything. Isaiah says it will all be carried to Babylon, and the king's reply is honest and small: 'Is it not so, if peace and truth shall be in my days?'
Context
History · Jeremiah · 2 Kings overview
The world behind this chapter
2 Kings 20The history
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.
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 rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- The Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah's Tunnel (Jerusalem, the inscription found 1880)
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
2 Kings 20 falls in Hezekiah and the Assyrian crisis (chapters 18–20). Hezekiah's reforms; Nehushtan destroyed; Sennacherib's threat and the 185,000 dead; Isaiah's intervention; the backward shadow; the Babylonian envoys.
Before it: Northern kingdom's fall, chapters 14–17. After it: Manasseh, Josiah, and the fall of Jerusalem, chapters 21–25.
The whole shape of 2 Kings→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Fifteen years added, and the shadow goes back ten steps
1. (vv. 1-3)
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
3 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
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
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
“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
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.”
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
Set thine house in order: Hezekiah's illness falls, by the commentators' reckoning, in the same year as Sennacherib's invasion, so the narrator has told the deliverance of chapters eighteen and nineteen before turning back to the sickness that most likely came first. His prayer asks the Lord to remember how he has walked before him in truth and with a perfect heart, the same appeal David makes in Psalm 7 and Psalm 18, proper rather than proud under a covenant that tied length of days to righteousness. Isaiah's opening word gives no room for treatment: set thine house in order, and only tears and prayer stand between the sentence and its reversal.
2. (vv. 4-6)
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
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.”
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
afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court: The word turns Isaiah around before he has crossed the middle court, and the second message reverses the first outright: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears, fifteen years added to a life the prophet had just pronounced ended. The city's deliverance rides on the same clause that runs through both books, I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake, the promise of 2 Samuel 7 kept a third generation past the man it was made to. Hezekiah is addressed as the captain of my people, the title Scripture uses of David himself, David's true heir answered as David's true heir.
3. (v. 7)
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
a lump of figs: Isaiah prescribes a plaster of figs, the ordinary remedy for a boil in the ancient Near East, laid on the place rather than spoken over it. Commentators read the means as real but insufficient of themselves against a mortal tumor, so the plaster and the promise work together rather than the plaster alone doing the healing. A word that could have healed with nothing at all still sends for figs.
4. (vv. 8-9)
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
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.”
What shall be the sign: Hezekiah asks for a sign that the third-day promise will hold, and Isaiah answers by handing him the choice: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees, on the dial of Ahaz. The instrument is usually read as a set of marked steps rather than a dial with a gnomon, its shadow lengthening and shortening with the sun across the day. Either direction would be a wonder; the choice is left entirely to the king who asked.
5. (vv. 10-11)
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
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
It is a light thing: Hezekiah calls the forward jump a light thing, since the shadow was already moving that way, and asks instead for the harder reversal, the shadow returning backward ten degrees against its whole day's motion. Isaiah cries to the Lord and the shadow goes back by the dial of Ahaz exactly as asked, a sun-worshipping empire's own instrument turned into the LORD of Israel's proof. The event is named nowhere else in Scripture and the mechanism is left undescribed; the text records the sign given, not the physics behind it.
B. Nothing hidden from Babylon's envoys: a costly boast
1. (vv. 12-13)
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
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
sent letters and a present: Merodach-baladan's envoys arrive with letters and a present, ostensibly congratulating a recovered king, and Hezekiah answers by showing them everything: the silver, the gold, the spices, the armor, nothing in his house or his dominion left unseen. Babylon and Assyria were rivals at this date, and the visit reads as diplomacy on Babylon's side, an approach to a king who had just embarrassed the Assyrian army; on Hezekiah's side the commentators read pride, pointing to 2 Chronicles 32:25 where his heart was lifted up at the honor God had shown him. A courtesy call from the power that will one day carry this same treasure away opens the door the rest of the chapter walks through.
2. (vv. 14-15)
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
What said these men?: Isaiah's two questions run to the heart of intent rather than fact: what said these men, and what have they seen in thine house. Hezekiah answers the second fully, everything have they seen, nothing among my treasures I have not shown them, but the record passes over any answer to the first, what the Babylonians actually said. The prophet who might have been shown to the envoys as the king's true treasure is the one now asking the questions the king did not think to ask himself.
3. (vv. 16-18)
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
3 more voices on this verse
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
“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
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
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
Hear the word of the Lord: opens the sentence, and it falls in the plainest terms: all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up, shall be carried into Babylon, nothing left, and Hezekiah's own sons taken to serve as eunuchs in a Babylonian palace. The judgment answers the display of this chapter rather than causing the exile outright; the bench reads Manasseh's later idolatry as the deeper cause, this word standing as a first, plain naming of where the road already led. Babylon has appeared in this book before as a source of colonists for Samaria at 17:24; here for the first time in Kings it is named as the destroyer Judah's own treasures will travel to.
4. (v. 19)
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.”
Good is the word of the Lord: Hezekiah calls the sentence good, and then adds a second sentence the commentators read two ways. Some hold it a true word of submission, an old covenant believer calling the Lord's rebuke both just and merciful, the reading Wesley gives it; others hear a self-regarding relief that the judgment falls on a future generation rather than his own, a natural but lesser feeling that Barnes and Henry both name without excusing. Both readings sit on the same two clauses, and the text gives no verdict between them.
C. The pool and the conduit that brought water into the cityvv. 20-21
how he made a pool, and a conduit: The chapter closes with the standard formula pointing to the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah, naming one work among Hezekiah's acts that the parallel record in 2 Chronicles 32:30 fills in: the pool and the conduit that brought water into the city, generally identified with the Siloam tunnel and its inscription found cut through Jerusalem's bedrock. The narrator leaves Hezekiah asleep with his fathers and passes the throne to Manasseh, a wicked son to a good father exactly as a wicked father, Ahaz, had produced this same good king. The next chapter answers the question this one leaves open: whether a fifteen-year reprieve and a king's own faithfulness are enough to hold back what his heir will do.
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
2 Kings 20:21
“And Hezekiah slept with his fathers,....”
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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 exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 704: Hezekiah And The Ambassadors, Or, Vainglory Rebuked; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.