“In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death” (2 Kings 20:1). As we have already said, this event historically precedes the enemy’s attack against Jerusalem, but it follows it in all three accounts that we have. The book of Chronicles tells us of it in few words, that of Kings at greater length, and Isaiah in great detail, for this prophet adds to it: “the writing of Hezekiah” which is not found in the historical books. There are various reasons for this transposition. The first is that in the sending of the ambassadors Babylon’s role is linked to the illness of Hezekiah. Babylon was destined to cut off the Assyrian under whose jurisdiction it then was, and was henceforth to play the preponderant role in the history of Judah. This role, that of the power transferred to the Gentiles and the establishment of the first universal monarchy, does not begin to appear in God’s ways toward His people until the historical—not the prophetic—role of the Assyrian has ended. The second reason is that it was necessary to set Hezekiah’s faithful career before our eyes before his grievous illness which threatened to put an end to it. From the prophetic point of view, especially in Isaiah, this makes Hezekiah’s tears and supplications all the more poignant. His death might have appeared to have been a judgment of God when his whole life has been spent before Him in integrity. This is also why the writing of Hezekiah is not found in the prophecy properly so called, for it describes the feelings of the remnant appointed to death. In effect, the remnant will be called upon to pass through similar circumstances. Upright in heart, having served God all their lives, like Hezekiah cleansed from evil and from all evil associations, they must realize in their souls what it is to be cut off from the land of the living under the weight of the governmental indignation of God against Israel of which they form part. But they will be delivered and come to life again, as a result of the part they have in the death and resurrection of the Messiah. The third reason is that in the book before us it was important not to interrupt the account that began with the legitimate revolt of Hezekiah, continued with the invasion of Judah when the king’s confidence was put to the test, and ended with his marvelous deliverance in answer to implicit trust in God when all human help was impossible.
After having reached Hezekiah in his circumstances, God’s discipline reached him in his person: “Set they house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live” (2 Kings 20:1). He must die. What misery! He who could say, “Ah! Jehovah, remember, I beseech Thee, how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in Thy sight” (2 Kings 20:3), this man must die! For a godly Jew, to walk before God in the land of the living was an evident sign of His favor. Was this favor then withdrawn from the king? God would take no account of fourteen years of devotion to Himself, to His cause, and to His house! He was therefore being rejected as a useless instrument, just at the moment when his piety and his confidence in God had shone out in a special way! This kingdom which God had entrusted to him would have fallen into other hands, less pure than his own!
All this speaks to us of that which overtook the Messiah, of whom Hezekiah is but a feeble type. He also must be cut off in the midst of His days, be cast down after having been lifted up. He also, the faithful Witness who had done solely the will of God, had to suffer death; He also had to depart with nothing and lose His kingdom and all His earthly glory. But Christ—and this could not be the case with Hezekiah—suffered these things because He was bearing the iniquity of a great people, and must suffer God’s righteous condemnation in our place. A man like Hezekiah could in no way redeem his brother nor give God a ransom for him (Psa. 49:7); but He could pass through the experience of the wrath of God in His government. And this is what will happen to the remnant. Like Hezekiah, lifting up their voice to God from the depths, they will learn that the Lord will not take heed to their iniquity because He has visited it upon the Messiah.
It is therefore only in the measure in which Hezekiah participates in the experiences of Christ that he can be considered a type of the Messiah in our passage. Personally, just like the Lord, the zeal of the house of God had eaten him up too, but this not without a failure. He could say, “I trust in Thee”; when it came to dying, he seemed to be cut off from the land of the living without cause; only, Hezekiah was a sinner, and as such it was necessary for another to take his place under the judgment of God.
“Hezekiah wept much” (2 Kings 20:3). The Lord never wept because of the lot that was reserved for Him, for He had come into this world to die. He wept over rebellious Jerusalem; He wept before the tomb of Lazarus as He saw the power of death weigh upon poor fallen men, but He never wept for Himself. Only in one sense, like Hezekiah, He “offered up both supplications and entreaties to Him who was able to save Him out of death with strong crying and tears” (Heb. 5:7), but it was not, like Hezekiah, in order not to die; it was to be saved out of death, to be delivered through resurrection from the horns of the buffaloes, so that the fruit of His work for us might not be lost. As for Hezekiah, tears became him, as they will become the upright remnant. He must learn to accept the sentence of death as being due to him; to say at first without understanding God’s purpose: “What shall I say? He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it (Isa. 38:15); to understand at last, at the end of all his anguish, that the Lord “was purposed to save” him (Isa. 38:20).
God’s answer does not wait long: “And it came to pass before Isaiah had gone out into the middle city that the word of Jehovah came to him saying, Return, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus said Jehovah, 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 to the house of Jehovah” (2 Kings 20:4-5). Scarcely has Hezekiah’s soul been searched out than the word of the Lord comes to Isaiah. One senses that God had beforehand prepared for the king all that He here accords him in his affliction. Hezekiah is brought back to life by a sort of resurrection. “Isaiah said, Take a cake of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered “(2 Kings 20:7) To all appearances the means had no value, but applied at the prophet’s word it is found to be the power of God unto salvation.
“And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What shall be the sign that Jehovah will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of Jehovah, the third day? And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to thee from Jehovah, that Jehovah will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: no, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. And Isaiah the prophet cried to Jehovah, and he brought the shadow back on the degrees by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward” (2 Kings 20:8-11).
Ahaz had set up this dial. Since his reign the shadow had gone forward. Time was passing rapidly and must end in night, in the complete vanishing of the monarchy under God’s judgment. The Lord could hasten this end, for the measure was full, but it pleased Him to answer the desire of the godly king and the prophet’s request by delaying the hour instead of hastening it, thus granting an extension of time to the power of the king. But this miracle has a deeper meaning. It signifies that God could and would overturn all the order of nature and its laws which made the sinner subject to death so that He might accomplish the salvation of His beloved ones. Death no longer retains its fatal course; that life which was declining and which would then, as it were, be cut off from the loom like the weaver’s fabric (Isa. 38:12), would commence anew for the faithful remnant in the resurrection of the Messiah, their representative. For us it begins anew in eternal life by the resurrection of the Savior. Such is the sign that Hezekiah asks for. His request denoted a complete confidence in God who alone can do the impossible with the impossible. In reversing in Christ that which through sin had become nature’s order for us so that He might save us, the Lord assures us that His counsels concerning us will be accomplished.
“On the third day thou shalt go up to the house of Jehovah.” It is thus that Christ’s death and resurrection give us, at the end of three days, free entry into the sanctuary.
Hezekiah had already received, without asking it, the sign of the enemy’s final overthrow (2 Kings 19:29-31) in the fact that God had kept alive, without any human intervention, this remnant from which He would form the new Israel; he learns here by what means this remnant should be saved.
Let us observe before ending this part of Hezekiah’s history the prophet Isaiah’s remarkable role in all these events. Like the Word of God which he represents, he is the bearer of the sentence of death against the best of men who form part of a sinful, fallen race. Death is decreed, and there is no appeal. This message produces a deep affliction in the soul that receives it. Immediately Isaiah announces the happy news of the king’s healing. He then indicates the means by which this healing may be effected, and applies it to the fatal boil. Lastly, he makes known the sign by which, reversing the order of nature, the Lord engages Himself to effect that which He has promised. These things take place in virtue of the mediation of the prophet who cries unto the Lord, for one does not possess the blessing except by the personal intervention of the Lord Jesus. We have here a complete example of that which the gospel brings to the soul of every sinner,.