Cheyne, T. K., The Decline and Fall of the Kingdom of Judah (1908), 4.
Craigie, J. A., The Country Pulpit (1909), 191.
Davies, T., Sermons, ii. (1895) 77.
Duff, M., and Hope, N., Hezekiah the King.
Edersheim, A., The History of Israel and Judah (1887), 121.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 274.
Hitchcock, F. R. M., Hebrew Types (1913), 148.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: 2 Kings viii. to Nehemiah (1907), 47.
Matheson, G., The Representative Men of the Bible, ii. (1903) 242.
Rowland, A., in Men of the Old Testament: Solomon to Jonah (1904), 105.
Smith, W. R., The Prophets of Israel (1882), 318.
Smith, W. R., The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1892), 256, 356.
Spurgeon, C. H., Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1871), No. 960
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, ii. (1889) 392
Thirtle, J. W., Old Testament Problems (1907), 151.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 338.
Williams, I., The Characters of the Old Testament (1870), 234.
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 376 (J. A. McClymont).
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (Single-volume, 1909), 351 (H. P. Smith).
Encyclopœdia Biblica, ii. (1901), col. 2058 (T. K. Cheyne).
Hezekiah
He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him.- 2Ki_18:5.
1. Hezekiah, King of Judah, was the son and successor of the feeble and superstitious Ahaz, with whom he contrasts as favourably as with his own son and successor Manasseh. He is conspicuous in Jewish history as the first king who is said to have attempted a reformation of religion on the principles which we find formally laid down in the Book of Deuteronomy. Special interest also attaches to his reign on account of his close personal connexion with the prophet Isaiah, who occasionally exerted a great influence over him (especially in the memorable crisis which issued in the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib), and also because of the strong light thrown upon his times by the cuneiform inscriptions as well as by extant prophecies.
2. The reign of Hezekiah marked an important era in the history of the Jews. That people had fallen into the very depth of idolatry and impurity of worship and life. They lay at the mercy of their foes, the Assyrians. The law of their God had been forgotten; the doors of His house had been closed. Altars to strange gods had been built in every corner of Jerusalem, and high places and Asherahs in every city of Judah. The spirit of iniquity was rampant in the land; the voice of religion was all but silent; and death and destruction seemed to be closing in on every side upon the ill-starred city of Jerusalem. But now Ahaz, the evil, is dead, and Hezekiah, his son, reigns in his stead. And of Hezekiah it is written that “after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him.”
3. The difficulty of making any consistent chronological arrangement of the events of Hezekiah's reign is almost insuperable; but if we pass over some of the minor details of his life, two works loom forth from the background of the past, never-to-be-forgotten memorials of a man who was both great and good-his reformation of the national worship and his resolute stand against the national foe, the Assyrian, which we, at this distance, can see in their right perspective.
