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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 King 20:1 - 20:1
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Hezekiah's Illness and Recovery. - Compare the parallel account in Isa 38 with Hezekiah's psalm of thanksgiving for his recovery (Isa 38:9-20 of Isaiah).
2Ki 20:1-2
“In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death.” By the expression “in those days” the illness of Hezekiah is merely assigned in a general manner to the same time as the events previously described. That it did not occur after the departure of the Assyrians, but at the commencement of the invasion of Sennacherib, i.e., in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, is evident from 2Ki 20:6, namely, both from the fact that in answer to his prayer fifteen years more of life were promised him, and that he nevertheless reigned only twenty-nine years (2Ki 18:2), and also from the fact that God promised to deliver him out of the hand of the Assyrians and to defend Jerusalem. The widespread notion that his sickness was an attack of plague, and was connected with the pestilence which had broken out in the Assyrian camp, is thereby deprived of its chief support, apart from the fact that the epithet (שְׁחִין (2Ki 20:7), which is applied to the sickness, does not indicate pestilence. Isaiah then called upon him to set his house in order. לְבֵיתְךָ צַו: set thy house in order, lit., command or order with regard to thy house, not declare thy (last) will to thy family (Ges., Knob.), for צִוָּה is construed with the accus. pers. in the sense of commanding anything, whereas here לְ is synonymous with אֶל (2Sa 17:23). “For thou wilt die and not live;” i.e., thy sickness is to death, namely, without the miraculous help of God. Sickness to death in the very prime of life (Hezekiah was then in the fortieth year of his age) appeared to the godly men of the Old Testament a sign of divine displeasure. Hezekiah was therefore greatly agitated by this announcement, and sought for consolation and help in prayer. He turned his face to the wall, sc. of the room, not of the temple (Chald.), i.e., away from those who were standing round, to be able to pray more collectedly.
2Ki 20:3
In his prayer he appealed to his walking before the Lord in truth and with a thoroughly devoted heart, and to his acting in a manner that was well-pleasing to God, in perfect accordance with the legal standpoint of the Old Testament, which demanded of the godly righteousness of life according to the law. This did not imply by any means a self-righteous trust in his own virtue; for walking before God with a thoroughly devoted heart was impossible without faith. “And Hezekiah wept violently,” not merely at the fact that he was to die without having an heir to the throne, since Manasseh was not born till three years afterwards (Joseph., Ephr. Syr., etc.), but also because he was to die in the very midst of his life, since God had promised long life to the righteous.
2Ki 20:4-6
This prayer of the godly king was answered immediately. Isaiah had not gone out of the midst of the city, when the word of the Lord came to him to return to the king, and tell him that the Lord would cure him in three days and add fifteen years to his life, and that He would also deliver him from the power of the Assyrians and defend Jerusalem. הַתִּיּכֹנָה הָעִיר, the middle city, i.e., the central portion of the city, namely, the Zion city, in which the royal citadel stood. The Keri הת חָצֵר, the central court, not of the temple, but of the royal citadel, which is adopted in all the ancient versions, is nothing more than an interpretation of the עִיר as denoting the royal castle, after the analogy of 2Ki 10:25. The distinct assurance added to the promise “I will heal thee,” viz., “on the third day thou wilt go into the house of the Lord,” was intended as a pledge to the king of the promised cure. The announcement that God would add fifteen years to his life is not put into the prophet's mouth ex eventu (Knobel and others); for the opinion that distinct statements as to time are at variance with the nature of prophecy is merely based upon an a priori denial of the supernatural character of prophecy. The words, “and I will deliver thee out of the hand of the Assyrians,” imply most distinctly that the Assyrian had only occupied the land and threatened Jerusalem, and had not yet withdrawn. The explanation given by Vitringa and others, that the words contain simply a promise of deliverance out of the hand of the oppressor for the next fifteen years, puts a meaning into them which they do not contain, as is clearly shown by Isa 37:20, where this thought is expressed in a totally different manner. וגו עַל־הָעִיר וְגַנֹּותִי עַ: as in 2Ki 19:34, where the prophet repeated this divine promise in consequence of the attempt of Sennacherib to get Jerusalem into his power.
2Ki 20:7-8
Isaiah ordered a lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and Hezekiah recovered (וַיֶּחִי: he revived again). It is of course assumed as self-evident, that Isaiah returned to the king in consequence of a divine revelation, and communicated to him the word of the Lord which he had received.
(Note: The account is still more abridged in the text of Isaiah. In 2Ki 20:4 the precise time of the prayer is omitted; in 2Ki 20:5 the words, “behold, I will cure thee, on the third day thou shalt go into the house of the Lord;” and in 2Ki 20:6 the words, “for mine own sake and my servant David's sake.” The four 2Ki 20:8-11, which treat of the miraculous signs, are also very much contracted in Isaiah (Isa 38:7 and Isa 38:8); and 2Ki 20:7 and 2Ki 20:8 of our text are only given at the close of Hezekiah's psalm of praise in that of Isaiah (Isa 38:21 and Isa 38:22).)
תְּאֵנִים דְּבֶלֶת is a mass consisting of compressed figs, which the ancients were in the habit of applying, according to many testimonies (see Celsii Hierob. ii. p. 373), in the case of plague-boils and abscesses of other kinds, because the fig διαφορεῖ σκληρίας (Dioscor.) and ulcera aperit (Plin.), and which is still used for softening ulcers. שְׁחִין, an abscess, is never used in connection with plague or plague-boils, but only to denote the abscesses caused by leprosy (Job 2:7-8), and other abscesses of an inflammatory kind (Exo 9:9.). In the case of Hezekiah it is probably a carbuncle that is intended.
After the allusion to the cure and recovery of Hezekiah, we have an account in 2Ki 20:8. of the sign by which Isaiah confirmed the promise given to the king of the prolongation of his life. In the order of time the contents of 2Ki 20:7 follow 2Ki 20:11, since the prophet in all probability first of all disclosed the divine promise to the king, and then gave him the sign, and after that appointed the remedy and had it applied. At the same time, it is also quite possible that he first of all directed the lump of figs to be laid upon the boil, and then made known to him the divine promise, and guaranteed it by the sign. In this case וַיֶּחִי merely anticipates the order of events. The sign which Isaiah gave to the king, at his request, consisted in the miraculous movement of the shadow backward upon the sundial of Ahaz.
2Ki 20:9-10
הַצֵּל הָלַךְ: “the shadow is gone ten degrees, if it should go back ten degrees?” The rendering, visne umbram solarii decem gradibus progredi an ... regredi, which Maurer still gives after the Vulgate, vis an ut ascendat ... an ut revertatur, cannot be grammatically reconciled with the perfect הָלַךְ, and is merely a conjecture founded upon the answer of Hezekiah.
(Note: Hitzig and Knobel would therefore read הָלֹךְ, though without furnishing any proofs that the inf. abs. is used for the future in the first clause of a double question, especially if the ה interrog. is wanting, and there is no special emphasis upon the verbal idea.)
According to this answer, “it is easy for the shadow to decline (i.e., to go farther down) ten degrees; no (sc., that shall not be a sign to me), but if the shadow turn ten degrees backwards,” Isaiah seems to have given the king a choice as to the sign, namely, whether the shadow should go ten degrees forward or backward. But this does not necessarily follow from the words quoted. Hezekiah may have understood the prophet's words וגו הַצֵּל הָלַךְ hypothetically: “has the shadow gone (advanced) ten degrees, whether it should,” etc.; and may have replied, the advance of the shadow would not be a sure sign to him, but only its going back.
2Ki 20:11
Isaiah then prayed to the Lord, and the Lord “turned back the shadow (caused it to go back) upon the sun-dial, where it had gone down, on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward.” אָחָז מַעֲלֹות cannot be understood, as it has been by the lxx, Joseph., Syr., as referring to a flight of steps at the palace of Ahaz, which was so arranged that the shadow of an object standing near indicated the hours, but is no doubt a gnomon, a sun-dial which Ahaz may have received from Babylonia, where sun-dials were discovered (Herod. ii. 109). Nothing further can be inferred from the words with regard to its construction, since the ancients had different kinds of sun-dials (cf. Martini Abhandlung von den Sonnenuhren der Alten, Lpz. 1777). The word מַעֲלֹות steps in the literal sense, is transferred to the scala, which the shadow had to traverse both up and down upon the disk of the sun-dial, and is used both to denote the separate degrees of this scala, and also for the sum-total of these scala, i.e., for the sun-dial itself, without there being any necessity to assume that it was an obelisk-like pillar erected upon an elevated place with steps running round it (Knobel), or a long portable scale of twice ten steps with a gnomon (Gumpach, Alttestl. Studien, pp. 181ff.). All that follows from the descent of the shadow is that the dial of the gnomon was placed in a vertical direction; and the fact that the shadow went ten degrees down or backward, simply presupposes that the gnomon had at least twenty degrees, and therefore that the degrees indicated smaller portions of time than hours. If, then, it is stated in 2Ki 20:8 of Isaiah that the sun went back ten degrees, whereas the going back of the shadow had been previously mentioned in agreement with our text, it is self-evident that the sun stands for the shining of the sun which was visible upon the dial-plate, and which made the shadow recede. We are not, of course, to suppose that the sun in the sky and the shadow on the sun-dial went back at the same time, as Knobel assumes. So far as the miracle is concerned, the words of the text do not require that we should assume that the sun receded, or the rotation of the earth was reversed, as Eph. Syr. and others supposed, but simply affirm that there was a miraculous movement backward of the shadow upon the dial, which might be accounted for from a miraculous refraction of the rays of the sun, effected by God at the prophet's prayer, of which slight analoga are met with in the ordinary course of nature.
(Note: As, for example, the phenomenon quoted by several commentators, which was observed at Metz in Lothringen in the year 1703 by the prior of the convent there, P. Romuald, and other persons, viz., that the shadow of a sun-dial went back an hour and a half. - The natural explanation of the miracle which is given by Thenius, who attributes it to an eclipse of the sun, needs no refutation. - For the different opinions of the earlier theologians, see Carpzov, Apparat. crit. p. 351ff.)
This miraculous sign was selected as a significant one in itself, to confirm the promise of a fresh extension of life which had been given to Hezekiah by the grace of God in opposition to the natural course of things. The retrograde movement of the shadow upon the sun-dial indicated that Hezekiah's life, which had already arrived at its close by natural means, was to be put back by a miracle of divine omnipotence, so that it might continue for another series of years.