1. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the unfavourable circumstances under which Hezekiah ascended the throne. Ahaz appears during his sixteen years' reign as the typically idolatrous king, a lover of foreign worships of every description-even burning his own son as a sacrifice to Moloch, erecting “altars in every corner of Jerusalem,” and making shrines and high places to his various gods throughout his whole kingdom. Hezekiah succeeded to the throne at the early age of twenty-five, and he had been trained amid these degrading conditions. But he soon showed that he was no believer in the omnipotent moral power of heredity or circumstance. He had individual convictions concerning God and duty which he reached in spite of all the influences of family, of custom, and of education. Possibly the influence of Isaiah, disregarded by Ahaz and his advisers, had been secretly moulding the young prince before his accession.
There is not a more striking instance of Divine mercy on the one hand, nor yet, on the other, of the personal character of religion even under the Old Testament, than that Ahaz should have been succeeded on the throne of Judah by Hezekiah. His name, “Strength of Jehovah,” or, perhaps better, “God is might,” was truly indicative of the character of his reign. In every respect-not only as regarded the king personally, but also in the results of his administration, as affecting his country and people-this period was in complete contrast to that which had immediately preceded it.… Ahaz had made himself tributary to Assyria and held his crown almost at the mercy of the great world-empire.… As he had discarded the religion of Jehovah, so he despised His Word. Against the admonitions and warnings of the great prophet, who had assured him of Divine help, Ahaz had chosen to surrender to a foreign Power.
So matters stood when Hezekiah ascended the throne. Of all the political combinations possible to him, he chose none. He returned to the point from which Ahaz had departed. His policy was not to have any policy, but to trust in the living God, to obey His Word, and to follow His guidance. His policy was his religion, and his religion was true policy. The only occasion on which he was tempted to deviate from it was at a later time, and it well-nigh proved fatal to him, as in the sequel it certainly did to his successors. Not that Hezekiah neglected to avail himself of political combinations as they arose. Indeed, this became the source of his danger. He may have argued that not to make use of the means placed within his reach was fatalism, not faith. In this he erred. Yet he did not put his trust in such alliances. He treated them rather as means for defensive than as instruments sought for offensive purposes. The only real help which he sought was that of the living God. Thus religion was the central principle of his reign and the secret of his success.1 [Note: A. Edersheim.]
2. Hezekiah is introduced to us as a religious reformer by the compiler of the Chronicles; but this circumstantial account must be received with caution. According to the Chronicler, in the very first year of his reign the young king threw open the doors of the Temple, which had been closed by his father, assembled the priests and the Levites in front of the gates, and bade them sanctify themselves and then prepare to sanctify the house of the Lord, and to cleanse it and remove all the rubbish that had accumulated during the years it had been closed. This work was done in a thoroughly efficient manner by the Levites, whose zeal and labours put the priests to shame. Then there was a grand re-opening of the Temple. All the vessels that had been saved from the wreck were arranged before the altar, the lamps were lit once more, and the king made a great sin-offering for the transgressions of the people, and with burnt-offering commenced a glorious service of sacred music, which had been specially prepared for the occasion.
His next move was to restore the long neglected Passover to its proper place. For he perceived that the Passover was set for the unity of the nation. It may be possible that he wished to bring back the ten tribes to the kingdom of Judah, but it is more probable that he desired the twelve tribes to worship Jehovah as one people, and so to remind them of their common inheritance and of their bond of religious unity at Jerusalem. Accordingly, he sent throughout all Israel to summon the Remnant to a solemn assembly at Jerusalem, in order that a general confession of sin might be made by all who had “escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria.” The dwellers of Central Palestine had not learned the lessons of adversity, and they laughed to scorn the messengers of Hezekiah. Farther north the invitation met with a more favourable reception, and “divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem.” The time occupied in assembling the people, and in the necessary purification of the priests, caused the celebration of the Passover to be postponed to the second month-a practice sanctioned by precedent in the days of wandering in the desert. The Passover-feast ended, a spirit of reforming fervour seized the people, and there was a general destruction of idolatrous images, altars, and high places, not only in Judah, but in Ephraim and Manasseh At this time also the king reorganized the courses of priests and Levites, under “Azariah, chief priest of the house of Zadok,” and took measures for the due collection and storage of tithes and first-fruits for the maintenance of the priesthood and the ordered services of the Temple. But the only part of these reforms that is recognized in the brief account of 2Ki_18:1-37 is the removal of “high places” and the destruction of “pillars” and “Asherah,” and especially the destruction of the Nehushtan (“the brazen thing”), the serpent-image made by Moses in the wilderness, which had become the object of idolatrous worship.
We may all ask ourselves if there is anything in our lives, worldly or spiritual, which we are cherishing and guarding, paying to it the adoration, worship, and love due only to God our Creator-anything we are making an idol of, burning incense to it, the clouds of smoke from which sometimes obscure, if only for a time, the true vision of our God and His will towards man. If so, let us ask God, that He will, in His infinite wisdom, bestow upon us the righteous zeal of Hezekiah, that we may utterly destroy and put away from us all hindrances to our love, and worship, and service of God. Do we make the cross of Christ an idol while we forget His words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?1 [Note: L. B., What Is Truth? 126.]
3. While it is generally admitted that Hezekiah paved the way for the reformation carried out by Josiah in the next century, not only prohibiting idolatry, but seeking to centralize the national worship by destroying the local sanctuaries in the provincial cities of Judah around which heathen practices were apt to gather, it is held by Wellhausen, W. R. Smith, Nowack, Stade, and others, that the reforms could have taken place only after the Assyrian invasion, which brought dishonour on the provinces but was the means of exalting Jerusalem and glorifying its protecting Deity, thus counteracting the idolatrous tendencies inherited from the previous reign. In proof that the reformation could not have been earlier, they cite the allusions to prevalent idolatry in such late prophecies of Isaiah as Isa_30:22; Isa_31:7 (c. 702). These indeed show that the reformation had been far from perfect, being largely due to royal command; but the whole traditional account of Hezekiah's reign points to an earlier date for his turning to Jehovah.
We cannot tell the measure of Hezekiah's success, for what he effected was presently undone by Manasseh; but, at least, it was under him that the problem of religious reformation first took practical shape.
Hezekiah was, so to speak, the first Reformer; the first of the Jewish Church to protest against institutions which had outlived their usefulness, and which the nation had outgrown. The uprooting of those delightful shades, the levelling of those consecrated altars, the destruction of that mysterious figure “which Moses had made in the wilderness,” must have been a severe shock to the religious feelings of the nation. There was a widespread belief, which penetrated even to the adjacent countries, that the worship of Jehovah Himself had been abandoned, and that His support could no more be expected. Was it possible that the faith of the people could survive, when its most cherished relics were so rudely handled, when so little was left to sustain it for the future? So has the popular conservative instinct of every age been terrified at every reformation, and maintained, with the alarmists of the time of Hezekiah, that, as one destructive step leads to another, we must have all or nothing. Hezekiah has been often quoted, and quoted justly, as an example that reform is not revolution, that Religion does not lose but gain by parting with needless incumbrances, however hallowed by long traditions or venerable associations.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, ii. 401.]
