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Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 39:1 At that time Merodachbaladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered. CHAPTER XI DRIFTING TO EGYPT 720-705 13. B.C. Isaiah 20:1-6 ; Isaiah 21:1-10 ; Isaiah 38:1-22 ; Isaiah 39:1-8 FROM 720, when chapter 11 may have been published, to 705-or, by rough reckoning, from the fortieth to the fifty-fifth year of Isaiah’s life-we cannot be sure that we have more than one prophecy from him; but two narratives have found a place in his book which relate events that must have taken place between 712 and 705. These narratives are chapter 20: How Isaiah Walked Stripped and Barefoot for a Sign against Egypt, and chapters 38 and 39: The Sickness of Hezekiah, with the Hymn he wrote, and his behaviour before the envoys from Babylon. The single prophecy belonging to this period is Isaiah 21:1-10 , "Oracle of the Wilderness of the Sea," which announces the fall of Babylon. There has been considerable debate about the authorship of this oracle, but Cheyne, mainly following Dr. Kleinert, gives substantial reasons for leaving it with Isaiah. We postpone the full exposition of chapters 38 and 39 to a later stage, as here it would only interrupt the history. But we will make use of chapters 20 and Isaiah 21:1-10 in the course of the following historical sketch, which is intended to connect the first great period of Isaiah’s prophesying, 740-720, with the second, 705-701. All these fifteen years, 720-705, Jerusalem was drifting to the refuge into which she plunged at the end of them-drifting to Egypt. Ahaz had firmly bound his people to Assyria, and in his reign there was no talk of an Egyptian alliance. But in 725, when the "overflowing scourge" of Assyrian invasion threatened to sweep into Judah as well as Samaria, Isaiah’s words give us some hint of a recoil in the politics of Jerusalem towards the southern power. The "covenants with death and hell," which the men of scorn flaunted in his face as he harped on the danger from Assyria, may only have been the old treaties with Assyria herself, but the "falsehood and lies" that went with them were most probably intrigues with Egypt. Any Egyptian policy, however, that may have formed in Jerusalem before 719, was entirely discredited by the crushing defeat, which in that year Sargon inflicted upon the empire of the Nile, almost on her own borders, at Rafia. Years of quietness for Palestine followed this decisive battle. Sargon, whose annals engraved on the great halls of Khorsabad enable us to read the history of the period year by year, tells us that his next campaigns were to the north of his empire, and till 711 he alludes to Palestine only to say that tribute was coming in regularly, or to mention the deportation to Hamath or Samaria of some tribe he had conquered far away. Egypt, however, was everywhere busy among his feudatories. Intrigue was Egypt’s forte . She is always represented in Isaiah’s pages as the talkative power of many promises. Her fair speech was very sweet to men groaning beneath the military pressure of Assyria. Her splendid past, in conjunction with the largeness of her promise, excited the popular imagination. Centres of her influence gathered in every state. An Egyptian party formed in Jerusalem. Their intrigue pushed mines in all directions, and before the century was out the Assyrian peace in Western Asia was broken by two great explosions. The first of these, in 711, was local and abortive: the second, in 705, was universal, and for a time entirely destroyed the Assyrian supremacy. The centre of the Explosion of 711 was Ashdod, a city of the Philistines. The king had suddenly refused to continue the Assyrian tribute, and Sargon had put another king in his place. But the people-in Ashdod, as everywhere else, it was the people who were fascinated by Egypt-pulled down the Assyrian puppet and elevated Iaman, a friend to Pharaoh. The other cities of the Philistines, with Moab, Edom, and Judah, were prepared by Egyptian promise to throw in their lot with the rebels. Sargon gave them no time. "In the wrath of my heart, I did not divide my army, and I did not diminish the ranks, but I marched against Asdod with my warriors, who did not separate themselves from the traces of my sandals. I besieged, I took, Asdod and Gunt-Asdodim . . . I then made again these towns. I placed the people whom my arm had conquered. I put over them my lieutenant as governor. I considered them like Assyrians, and they practised obedience." It is upon this campaign of Sargon that Mr. Cheyne argues for the invasion of Judah, to which he assigns so many of Isaiah’s prophecies, as, e.g. , chapters 1 and Isaiah 10:5-34 . Some day Assyriology may give us proof of this supposition. We are without it just now. Sargon speaks no word of invading Judah, and the only part of the book of Isaiah that unmistakably refers to this time is the picturesque narrative of chapter 20. In this we are told that "in the year" the Tartan, the Assyrian commander-in-chief, "came to Ashdod when Sargon king of Assyria sent him" [that is to be supposed the year of the first revolt in Ashdod, to which Sargon himself did not come], "and he fought against Ashdod and took it:-in that time Jehovah had spoken by the hand of Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth," the prophet’s robe, "from off thy loins, and thy sandal strip from off thy foot; and he did so, walking naked," that is unfrocked, "and barefoot." For Egyptian intrigue was already busy; the temporary success of the Tartan at Ashdod did not discourage it, and it needed a protest. "And Jehovah said, As My servant Isaiah hath walked unfrocked and barefoot three years for a sign and a portent against Egypt and against Ethiopia" [note the double name, for the country was now divided between two rulers, the secret of her impotence to interfere forcibly in Palestine] "so shall the king of Assyria lead away the captives of Egypt and exiles of Ethiopia, young and old, stripped and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they shall be dismayed and ashamed, because of Ethiopia their expectation and because of Egypt their boast. And the inhabitant of this coastland" [that is, all Palestine, and a name for it remarkably similar to the phrase used by Sargon, "the people of Philistia, Judah, Edom, and Moab, dwelling by the sea"] "shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we had fled for help to deliver ourselves from the king of Assyria, and how shall we escape-we?" This parade of Isaiah for three years, unfrocked and barefoot, is another instance of that habit on which we remarked in connection with Isaiah 8:1 : the habit of finally carrying everything committed to him before the bar of the whole nation. It was to the mass of the people God said, "Come and let us reason together." Let us not despise Isaiah in his shirt any more than we do Diogenes in his tub, or with a lantern in his hand, seeking for a man by its rays at noonday. He was bent on startling the popular conscience, because he held it true that a people’s own morals have greater influence on their destinies than the policies of their statesmen. But especially anxious was Isaiah, as we shall again see from chapter 31, to bring, this Egyptian policy home to the popular conscience. Egypt was a big-mouthed, blustering power, believed in by the mob; to expose her required public, picturesque, and persistent advertisement. So Isaiah continued his walk for three years. The fall of Ashdod, left by Egypt to itself, did not disillusion the Jews, and the rapid disappearance of Sargon to another part of his empire where there was trouble, gave the Egyptians audacity to continue their intrigues against him. Sargon’s new trouble had broken out in Babylon, and was much more serious than any revolt in Syria. Merodach Baladan, king of Chaldea, was no ordinary vassal, but as dangerous a rival as Egypt. When he rose, it meant a contest between Babylon and Nineveh for the sovereignty of the world. He had long been preparing for war. He had an alliance with Elam, and the tribes of Mesopotamia were prepared for his signal of revolt. Among the charges brought him by Sargon is that, "against the will of the gods of Babylon, he had sent during twelve years ambassadors." One of these embassies may have been that which came to Hezekiah after his great sickness (chapter 39). "And Hezekiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his spicery, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armour and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Hezekiah showed them not." Isaiah was indignant. He had hitherto kept the king from formally closing with Egypt; now he found him eager for an alliance with another of the powers of man. But instead of predicting the captivity of Babylon, as he predicted the captivity of Egypt, by the hand of Assyria, Isaiah declared, according to chapter 39, that Babylon would some day take Israel captive; and Hezekiah had to content himself with the prospect that this calamity was not to happen in his time. Isaiah’s prediction of the exile of Israel to Babylon is a matter of difficulty. The difficulty, however, is not that of conceiving how he could have foreseen an event which took place more than a century later. Even in 711 Babylon was not an unlikely competitor for the supremacy of the nations. Sargon himself felt that it was a crisis to meet her. Very little might have transferred the seat of power from the Tigris to the Euphrates. What, therefore, more probable than that when Hezekiah disclosed to these envoys the whole state of his resources, and excused himself by saying "that they were come from a far country, even Babylon," Isaiah, seized by a strong sense of how near Babylon stood to the throne of the nations, should laugh to scorn the excuse of distance, and tell the king that his anxiety to secure an alliance had only led him to place the temptation to rob him more in the face of a power that was certainly on the way to be able to do it? No, the difficulty is not that the prophet foretold a captivity of the Jews in Babylon, but that we cannot reconcile what he says of that captivity with his intimation of the immediate destruction of Babylon, which has come down to us in Isaiah 21:1-10 . In this prophecy Isaiah regards Babylon as he has been regarding Egypt-certain to go down before Assyria, and therefore wholly unprofitable to Judah. If the Jews still thought of returning to Egypt when Sargon hurried back from completing her discomfiture in order to beset Babylon, Isaiah would tell them it was no use. Assyria has brought her full power to bear on the Babylonians; Elam and Media are with her. He travails with pain for the result. Babylon is not expecting a siege; but "preparing the table, eating and drinking," when suddenly the cry rings through her, "‘Arise, ye princes; anoint the shield.’ The enemy is upon us." So terrible and so sudden a warrior is this Sargon! At his words nations move; when he saith, "Go up, O Elam! Besiege, O Media!" it is done. And he falls upon his foes before their weapons are ready. Then the prophet shrinks back from the result of his imagination of how it happened-for that is too painful-upon the simple certainty, which God revealed to him, that it must happen. As surely as Sargon’s columns went against Babylon, so surely must the message return that Babylon has fallen. Isaiah puts it this way. The Lord bade him get on his watchtower-that is his phrase for observing the signs of the times-and speak whatever he saw. And he saw a military column on the march: "a troop of horsemen by pairs, a troop of asses, a troop of camels." It passed him out of sight, "and he hearkened very diligently" for news. But none came. It was a long campaign. "And he cried like a lion" for impatience, "O my Lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower by day, and am set in my ward every night." Till at last, "behold, there came a troop of men, horsemen in pairs, and" now "one answered and said, Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her gods he hath broken to the ground." The meaning of this very elliptical passage is just this: as surely as the prophet saw Sargon’s columns go out against Babylon, so sure was he of her fall. Turning to his Jerusalem, he Says, "My own threshed one, son of my floor, that which I have heard from Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you." How gladly would I have told you otherwise! But this is His message and His will. Everything must go down before this Assyrian. Sargon entered Babylon before the year was out, and with her conquest established his fear once more down to the borders of Egypt. In his lifetime neither Judah nor her neighbours attempted again to revolt. But Egypt’s intrigue did not cease. Her mines were once more laid, and the feudatories of Assyria only waited for their favourite opportunity, a change of tyrants on the throne of Nineveh. This came very soon. In the fifteenth year of his reign, having finally established his empire, Sargon inscribed on the palace at Khorsabad the following prayer to Assur: "May it be that I, Sargon, who inhabit this palace, may be preserved by destiny during long years for a long life, for the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart, and may I arrive to my end! May I accumulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all countries, the products of mountains and valleys!" The god did not hear. A few months later, in 705, Sargon was murdered; and before Sennacherib, his successor, sat down on the throne, the whole of Assyrian supremacy in the southwest of Asia went up in the air. It was the second of the great Explosions we spoke of, and the rest of Isaiah’s prophecies are concerned with its results. 2 CHAPTER XXV AN OLD TESTAMENT BELIEVER’S SICKBED; OR, THE DIFFERENCE CHRIST HAS MADE DATE UNCERTAIN Isaiah 38:1-22 ; Isaiah 39:1-8 To the great national drama of Jerusalem’s deliverance, there have been added two scenes of a personal kind, relating to her king. Chapters 38 and 39 are the narrative of the sore sickness and recovery of King Hezekiah, and of the embassy which Merodach-Baladan sent him, and how he received the embassy. The date of these events is difficult to determine. If, with Canon Cheyne, we believe in an invasion of Judah by Sargon in 711, we shall be tempted to refer them, as he does, to that date-the more so that the promise of fifteen additional years made to Hezekiah in 711, the fifteenth year of his reign, would bring it up to the twenty-nine, at which it is set in 2 Kings 18:2 . That, however, would flatly contradict the statement both of Isaiah 38:1 and 2 Kings 20:1 . that Hezekiah’s sickness fell in the days of the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib; that is, after 705. But to place the promise of fifteen additional years to Hezekiah after 705, when we know he had been reigning for at least twenty years, would be to contradict the verse, just cited, which sums up the years of his reign as twenty-nine. This is, in fact, one of the instances in which we must admit our present inability to elucidate the chronology of this portion of the book of Isaiah. Mr. Cheyne thinks the editor mistook the siege by Sennacherib for the siege by Sargon. But as the fact of a siege by Sargon has never been satisfactorily established, it seems safer to trust the statement that Hezekiah’s sickness occurred in the reign of Sennacherib, and to allow that there has been an error somewhere in the numbering of the years. It is remarkable that the name of Merodach-Baladan does not help us to decide between the two dates. There was a Merodach-Baladan in rebellion against Sargon in 710, and there was one in rebellion against Sennacherib in 705. It has not yet been put past doubt as to whether these two are the same. The essential is that there was a Merodach-Baladan alive, real or only claimant king of Babylon, about 705, and that he was likely at that date to treat with Hezekiah, being himself in revolt against Assyria. Unable to come to any decision about the conflicting numbers, we leave uncertain the date of the events recounted in chapters 38 and 39. The original form of the narrative, but wanting Hezekiah’s hymn, is given in 2 Kings 20:1-21 . We have given to this chapter the title "An Old Testament Believer’s Sickbed; or, The Difference Christ has made," not because this is the only spiritual suggestion of the story, but because it seems to the present expositor as if this were the predominant feeling left in Christian minds after reading for us the story. In Hezekiah’s conduct there is much of courage for us to admire, as there are other elements to warn us; but when we have read the whole story, we find ourselves saying, What a difference Christ has made to me! Take Hezekiah from two points of view, and then let the narrative itself bring out this difference. Here is a man, who, although he lived more than twenty-five centuries ago, is brought quite close to our side. Death, who herds all men into his narrow fold, has crushed this Hebrew king so close to us that we can feel his very heart beat. Hezekiah’s hymn gives us entrance into the fellowship of his sufferings. By the figures he so skilfully uses he makes us feel that pain, the shortness of life, the suddenness of death, and the utter blackness beyond were to him just what they are to us. And yet this kinship in pain, and fear, and ignorance only makes us the more aware of something else which we have and he has not. Again, here is a man to whom religion gave all it could give without the help of Christ; a believer in the religion out of which Christianity sprang, perhaps the most representative Old Testament believer we could find, for Hezekiah was at once the collector of what was best in its literature and the reformer of what was worst in its worship; a man permeated by the past piety of his Church, and enjoying as his guide and philosopher the boldest prophet who ever preached the future developments of its spirit. Yet when we put Hezekiah and all that Isaiah can give him on one side, we shall again feel for ourselves on the other what a difference Christ has made. This difference a simple study of the narrative will make clear. I. "In those days Hezekiah became sick unto death." They were critical days for Judah-no son born to the king, { 2 Kings 21:1 } the work of reformation in Judah not yet consolidated, the big world tossing in revolution all around. Under God, everything depended on an experienced ruler; and this one, without a son to succeed him, was drawing near to death. We will therefore judge Hezekiah’s strong passion for life to have been patriotic as well as selfish. He stood in the midtime of his days, with a faithfully executed work behind him and so good an example of kinghood that for years Isaiah had not expressed his old longing for the Messiah. The Lord had counted Hezekiah righteous; that twin-sign had been given him which more than any other assured an Israelite of Jehovah’s favour-a good conscience and success in his work. Well, therefore, might he cry when Isaiah brought him the sentence of death, "Ah, now, Jehovah, remember, I beseech Thee, how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thine eyes. And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping." There is difficulty in the strange story which follows. The dial was probably a pyramid of steps on the top of which stood a short pillar or obelisk. When the sun rose in the morning. the shadow cast by the pillar would fall right down the western side of the pyramid to the bottom of the lowest step. As the sun ascended the shadow would shorten, and creep up inch by inch to the foot of the pillar. After noon, as the sun began to descend to the west, the shadow would creep down the eastern steps; and the steps were so measured that each one marked a certain degree of time. It was probably afternoon when Isaiah visited the king. The shadow was going down according to the regular law; the sign consisted in causing the Shadow to shrink up the steps again. Such a reversal of the ordinary progress of the shadow may have been caused in either of two ways: by the whole earth being thrown back on its axis, which we may dismiss as impossible, or by the occurrence of the phenomenon known as refraction. Refraction is a disturbance in the atmosphere by which the rays of the sun are bent or deflected from their natural course into an angular one. In this case, instead of shooting straight over the top of the obelisk, the rays of the sun had been bent down and inward, so that the shadow fled up to the foot of the obelisk. There are many things in the air which might cause this; it is a phenomenon often observed; and the Scriptural narratives imply that on this occasion it was purely local. { 2 Chronicles 32:31 } Had we only the narrative in the book of Isaiah, the explanation would have been easy. Isaiah, having given the sentence of death, passed the dial in the palace courtyard, and saw the shadow lying ten degrees farther up than it should have done, the sight of which coincided with the inspiration that the king would not die; and Isaiah went back to announce to Hezekiah his reprieve, and naturally call his attention to this as a sign, to which a weak and desponding man would be glad to cling. But the original narrative in the book of Kings tells us that Isaiah offered Hezekiah a choice of signs: that the shadow should either advance or retreat, and that the king chose the latter. The sign came in answer to Isaiah’s prayer, and is narrated to us as a special Divine interposition. But a medicine accompanied it, and Hezekiah recovered through a poultice of figs laid on the boil from which he suffered. While recognising for our own faith the uselessness of a discussion on this sign offered to a sick man, let us not miss the moral lessons of so touching a narrative, nor the sympathy, with the sick king which it is fitted to produce, and which is our best introduction to the study of his hymn. Isaiah had performed that most awful duty of doctor or minister-the telling of a friend that he must die. Few men have not in their personal experience a key to the prophet’s feelings on this occasion. The leaving of a dear friend for the last time; the coming out into the sunlight which he will nevermore share with us; the passing by the dial; the observation of the creeping shadow; the feeling that it is only a question of time; the passion of prayer into which that feeling throws us that God may be pleased to put off the hour and spare our friend; the invention, that is born, like prayer, of necessity: a cure we suddenly remember; the confidence which prayer and invention bring between them; the return with the joyful news; the giving of the order about the remedy-cannot many in their degree rejoice with Isaiah in such an experience? But he has, too, a conscience of God and God’s work to which none of us may pretend: he knows how-indispensable to that work his royal pupil is, and out of this inspiration he prophesies the will of the Lord that Hezekiah shall recover. Then the king, with a sick man’s sacramental longing, asks a sign. Out through the window the courtyard is visible; there stands the same step-dial of Ahaz, the long pillar on the top of the steps, the shadow creeping down them through the warm afternoon sunshine. To the sick man it must have been like the finger of death coming nearer. "Shall the shadow," asks the prophet, "go forward ten steps or go back ten steps? It is easy," says the king, alarmed, "for the shadow to go down ten steps." Easy for it to go down! Has he not been feeling that all the afternoon? "Do not," we can fancy him saying, with the gasp of a man who has been watching its irresistible descent-"do not let that black thing come farther; but ‘let the shadow go backward ten steps."’ The shadow returned, and Hezekiah got his sign. But when he was well, he used it for more than a sign. He read a great spiritual lesson in it. The time, which upon the dial had been apparently thrown back, had in his life been really thrown back; and God had given him his years to live over again. The past was to be as if it had never been, its guilt and weakness wiped out. "Thou hast cast behind Thy back all my sins." As a new born child Hezekiah felt himself uncommitted by the past, not a sin’s-doubt nor a sin’s-cowardice in him, with the heart of a little child, but yet with the strength and dignity of a grown man, for it is the magic of tribulation to bring innocence with experience. "I shall go softly," or literally, "with dignity or caution, as in a procession, all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, upon such things do men live; and altogether in them is the life of my spirit. Behold, for perfection was it bitter to me, so bitter." And through it all there breaks a new impression of God. "What shall I say? He hath both spoken with me, and Himself hath done it." As if afraid to impute his profits to the mere experience itself, "In them is the life of my spirit," he breaks in with "Yea, Thou hast recovered me; yea, Thou hast made me to live." And then, by a very pregnant construction, he adds, "Thou hast loved my soul out of the pit of destruction"; that is, of course, "loved, and by Thy love lifted," but he uses the one word "loved," and gives it the active force of "drawing" or "lifting." In this lay the head and glory of Hezekiah’s experience. He was a religious man, an enthusiast for the Temple services, and had all his days as his friend the prophet whose heart was with the heart of God; but it was not through any of these means God came near him, not till he lay sick and had turned his face to the wall. Then indeed he cried, "What shall I say? He hath both spoken with me, and Himself hath done it!" Forgiveness, a new peace, a new dignity, and a visit from the living God! Well might Hezekiah exclaim that it was only through a near sense of death that men rightly learned to live. "Ah, Lord, it is upon these things that men live; and wholly therein is the life of my spirit." It is by these things men live, and therein I have learned for the first time what life is! In all this at least we cannot go beyond Hezekiah, and he stands an example to the best Christian among us. Never did a man bring richer harvest from the fields of death. Everything that renders life really life-peace, dignity, a new sense of God and of His forgiveness-these were the spoils which Hezekiah won in his struggle with the grim enemy. He had snatched from death a new meaning for life; he had robbed death of its awful pomp, and bestowed this on careless life. Hereafter he should walk with the step and the mien of a conqueror-"I shall go in solemn procession all my years because of the bitterness of my soul"-or with the carefulness of a worshipper, who sees at the end of his course the throne of the Most High God, and makes all his life an ascent thither. This is the effect which every great sorrow and struggle has upon a noble soul. Come to the streets of the living. Who are these, whom we. can so easily distinguish from the crowd by their firmness of step and look of peace, walking softly where some spurt and some halt, holding, without rest or haste, the tenor of their way, as if they marched to music heard by their ears alone? These are they which have come out of great tribulation. They have brought back into time the sense of eternity. They know how near the invisible worlds lie to this one, and the sense of the vast silences stills all idle laughter in their hearts. The life that is to other men chance or sport, strife or hurried flight, has for them its allotted distance, is for them a measured march, a constant worship. "For the bitterness of their soul they go in procession all their years." Sorrow’s subjects, they are our kings; wrestlers with death, our veterans: and to the rabble armies of society they set the step of a nobler life. Count especially the young man blessed, who has looked into the grave before he has faced the great temptations of the world, and has not entered the race of life till he has learned his stride in the race with death. They tell us that on the outside of civilisation, where men carry their lives in their hands, a most thorough politeness and dignity are bred, in spite of the want of settled habits, by the sense of danger alone; and we know how battle and a deadly climate, pestilence or the perils of the sea have sent back to us the most careless of our youth with a self-possession and regularity of mind, that it would have been hopeless to expect them to develop amid the trivial trials of village life. But the greatest duty of us men is not to seek nor to pray for such combats with death. It is-when God has found these for us to remain true to our memories of them. The hardest duty of life is to remain true to our psalms of deliverance, as it is certainly life’s greatest temptation to fall away from the sanctity of sorrow, and suffer the stately style of one who knows how near death hovers to his line of march to degenerate into the broken step of a wanton life. This was Hezekiah’s temptation, and this is why the story of his fall in the thirty-ninth chapter is placed beside his vows in the thirty-eighth-to warn us how easy it is for those who have come conquerors out of a struggle with death to fall a prey to common life. He had said, "I will walk softly all my years"; but how arrogantly and rashly he carried himself when Merodach-Baladan sent the embassy to congratulate him on his recovery. It was not with the dignity, of the veteran, but with a childish love of display, perhaps also with the too restless desire to secure an alliance, that he showed the envoys "his storehouse, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armour and all that was found in his treasures. There was nothing which Hezekiah did not show them in his house nor in all his dominion." In this behaviour there was neither caution nor sobriety, and we cannot doubt but that Hezekiah felt the shame of it when Isaiah sternly rebuked him and threw upon all his house the dark shadow of captivity. It is easier to win spoils from death than to keep them untarnished by life. Shame burns warm in a soldier’s heart when he sees the arms he risked life to win rusting for want of a little care. Ours will not burn less if we discover that the strength of character we brought with us out of some great tribulation has been slowly weakened by subsequent self-indulgence or vanity. How awful to have fought for character with death only to squander it upon life! It is well to keep praying, "My God, suffer me not to forget my bonds and my bitterness. In my hours of wealth and ease, and health and peace, by the memory of Thy judgments deliver me, good Lord." II. So far then Hezekiah is an example and warning to us all. With all our faith in Christ, none of us, in the things mentioned, may hope to excel this Old Testament believer. But notice very particularly that Hezekiah’s faith and fortitude are profitable only for this life. It is-when we begin to think, What of the life to come? that we perceive the infinite difference Christ has made. We know what Hezekiah felt when his back was turned on death, and he came up to life again. But what did he feel when he faced the other way, and his back was to life? With his back to life and facing deathwards, Hezekiah saw nothing, that was worth hoping for. To him to die was to leave God behind him, to leave the face of God as surely as he was leaving the face of man. "I said, I shall not see Jah, Jah in the land of the living; I shall gaze upon man no more with the inhabitants of the world." The beyond was not to Hezekiah absolute nothingness, for he had his conceptions, the popular conceptions of his time, of a sort of existence that was passed by those who had been men upon earth. The imagination of his people figured the gloomy portals of a nether world - Sheol, the Hollow (Dante’s "hollow realm"), or perhaps the Craving- into which death herds the shades of men, bloodless, voiceless, without love or hope or aught that makes life worth living. With such an existence beyond, to die to life here was to Hezekiah like as when "a weaver rolls up" the finished web. My life may be a pattern for others to copy, a banner for others to fight under, but for me it is finished. Dea

Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, King of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah. Isaiah 39 Merodach-baladan F. Delitzsch, D. D. Marduk-apal-iddina, son of Yakin, is the Chaldean ruler who more than any other vassal embittered the life of the Assyrian suzerain, because as a rival suzerain he was always renouncing obedience to one whom he felt to be a disgrace to the ancient renown of his country. Lenormant, in his Anfangen der Cultur , has devoted a beautiful essay to him under the title, "A Babylonian Patriot of the Eighth Century B.C." The chief matter told about him by the monuments is this: In the year 731 he did homage at Sapiya to the Assyrian ruler Tiglath-pileser IV. In Sargon's first year (721) he, who was properly king of South Babylonia only, brought also North Chaldea into the range of his rule; war ensued, but although beaten, he still maintained himself on the throne, and from that time count the twelve years given to him by the Ptolemaic canon as king of Babylon. In Sargon's twelfth year (710) he shook off the Assyrian yoke; only a year afterwards (709) Sargon succeeded in capturing and burning to ashes the fort Dur-Yakin, into which he had thrown himself; he himself, being required to surrender unconditionally, vanished. ( F. Delitzsch, D. D. ) Marduk-apal-iddina F. Delitzsch, D. D. The name means: Marduk (written also Maruduk ) has given a son. ( F. Delitzsch, D. D. ) The embassy to Hezekiah Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D. was in all probability one of those undertaken by Merodach-Baladan for the purpose of providing himself with allies. Inasmuch now as there was at this time in Judah a party straining its utmost to combine all elements antagonistic to Assyria, there is nothing unreasonable in supposing that some understanding was arrived at between the ambassadors from Babylon and Judah. Upon this view of the circumstances of the occasion, Hezekiah's motive in displaying his treasures will have been to satisfy the embassy that he had resources at his disposal; and Isaiah's rebuke gains in significance and force. ( Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D. ) Hezekiah and the embassy from Babylon D. K. Shoebotham. I. AFFLICTION OF BODY AND SORROW OF MIND ARE PRONE TO BE FORGOTTEN AND UNIMPROVED BY THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM ( 2 Chronicles 32:25 ). The historian says of Hezekiah, that "his heart was lifted up." The very deliverances which God wrought for him worked upon his vanity — the special mercies he had received elated his mind. What are we without grace? II. HEZEKIAH AT THIS TIME WAS ASSAILED BY PECULIAR TEMPTATIONS TO VANITY AND AMBITION ( 2 Chronicles 32:31 ) III. HEZEKIAH PRESENTS AN INSTANCE OF STRANGE FORGETFULNESS OF DUTY TO OTHERS BY NOT IMPARTING TO THEM RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. IV. HEZEKIAH WAS CONVINCED OF HIS SIN BY THE SPECIAL MESSAGE SENT TO HIM BY GOD THROUGH THE PROPHET. V. ALMIGHTY GOD, IN THE MIDST OF ALL HUMAN AFFAIRS AND DESPITE THE CONDUCT OF INDIVIDUALS, IS CARRYING OUT HIS OWN INFINITE COUNSELS OF WISDOM AND OF LOVE. ( D. K. Shoebotham. ) And Hezekiah was glad of them. Isaiah 39:2 Hezekiah's great mistake J. Parker, D. D. Look at Hezekiah; as he takes the men round he says in effect, What an ally I would make if Babylon should ever be in trouble! Or, What an opponent I would make if ever Babylon should be insolent! Or, You see I am one of the great powers of the world. We want large quotation marks for "great powers"! This is the danger of all uncontrolled and unsanctified power, or position, or possibility of dominion: much would be more, more would be most, and most would explode because of its own dissatisfaction. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Character superior to material good J. Parker, D. D. Was this all Hezekiah had to show? There is nothing in it then. All these things can be stolen. A half-educated thief could take away the silver and the gold; a very young felon could take away the spices and the precious ointment; a man with very poor resources could carry off the armour. Hezekiah laid up his riches where thieves could break through and steal. Ah me, how like us all this is! What should he have shown to the men from Babylon? What we ought to show to every inquirer into our method of life — individual, domestic, municipal, and national: he should have shown them character, high citizenship, large education, self-control developed to its highest point of discipline, — these are things which no king of Babylon can take away. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) A misimproved opportunity J. Parker, D. D. What a missionary Hezekiah might have been! How he would have astounded the Babylonian delegates had he said to them: I receive you with respect, courtesy, and thankfulness, but I must tell you of this miracle; come within, and you shall hear how it was, how it began, continued, culminated; this will be something for you to tell when you go home again. In this way every man might create a home missionary field for himself. "Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul." ( J. Parker, D. D. ) A city to plunder E. H. Plumptre, D. D. ! — The Babylonian ambassadors had probably somewhat of the feeling which led Blucher to say, as he walked through the streets of London, "Himmel! what a city to plunder!" ( E. H. Plumptre, D. D. ) Then came Isaiah the prophet unto King Hezekiah. Isaiah 39:3 The prophet higher than the king J. Parker, D. D. It is well to have Isaiahs in society, for Hezekiahs could never keep it together. This is the tone we want. The prophet should be higher than the king. The Christian teacher should stand upon the topmost place. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) What have they seen in thine house? Isaiah 39:4 The disciple at home J. B. Owen, M. A. 1. The parties of whom the prophets inquired, "What have they seen?" were Babylonians. Foreigners, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, ignorant of the true God, and, therefore, parties before whom it was specially important to exhibit nothing which was calculated to bring dishonour upon God. These strangers might have been greatly edified had they remarked a deeply chastened and humble spirit in the king. There is nothing so greatly hinders the propagation of the Christianity of England among foreigners as that practical irreligion which they observe among the English. 2. The subject may suggest to us some general reflections upon the kind of aspect which the house of a professing Christian should present to any stranger as a man of the world. What would such a man naturally expect to see in a Christian's house? Clearly that which he looks for in other houses — namely, a general style and conformity with the particular profession or character of the inmates. He would reckon upon finding there, what St. Paul calls "the Church that is in thy house" — the pervading air of heavenly-mindedness, and the symptoms of devotional exercises in all its sanctified "chambers of imagery" — "the treasures" of parental piety, of filial obedience and decorum; a well-ordered household extending its influence and sanction, like the sacred comprehensions of the law of the Sabbath, from the man himself, to his son and daughter, manservant and maidservant, and even cattle and stranger. Night and morning, it would seem to him to be the natural and consistent rule, that the offering of prayer and reading of the Word should be there presented to "the God of all the families of the earth." In every room and chamber of the house, the ready Bible should suggest by its silent presence the privilege of secret study of the Holy Scriptures; some good books, to the use of edifying, should strew the tables, like little trophies, in incidental evidence of the triumph of religion in that place; the peace, and cheerfulness, and mutual harmony of Christian influence should breathe its airs from Heaven on every happy, thankful heart; the music of habitual concord should sound, like an AEolian psalm, in every aisle of that homely church; and family love, the instinctive antepast of the universal love of Heaven, should spread the sweet odour of its charity, like Aaron's off, from the head of the house down to the very skirts of the living garment with which his blessed heart is clothed. This is what the worldly man should see in the house of the Christian; but, alas! is it always to be seen there? 1. "What have they seen in thine house?" Have they seen there the spirit of the world, in the shape of expensive apparel, or costly furniture, or ornaments beyond your means or your station in society? A Christian man may adorn his house or apparel his person in moderation with the accustomed decencies of life and even the beautiful things of art, for Christianity is no enemy of taste nor patron of vulgarity. But when a man of the world observes in a Christian professor that inordinate affectation of style and sumptuousness in furniture and dress, which leaves no external mark of difference between "him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not," then such a professing Christian may well tremble for the stability of his principles. The ambassadors of the spiritual Babylon are visiting him, and they will have to report to their dark master that there is something to seize in the household of his divided heart. The remark is equally applicable to the humbler classes. Sin is sin, and vanity is vanity, whether it assume a vulgar or a refined shape. 2. "What have they seen in thine house?" Have they seen the continual eagerness to grasp and hoard up money, the absorption of every abused faculty of the mind and every overstrained energy of the body to extend business, increase capital, and multiply speculations, though at the expense of a neglected soul and a forsaken God? And is this done in the face of better convictions of duty and responsibility? Is the heart becoming hardened as the very metal it grasps so eagerly? There is much in the proper and becoming habits of Christian men which is calculated to aid their success in life, but this success should not be permitted to become a snare to them. 3. "What have they seen in thine house?" Have they marked the professing disciple of the self-denying religion of Jesus yielding to a habitual fretfulness and irritability at every trifling trial of temper, keeping wife, children, and servants in a perpetual ferment tending to the ultimate exacerbation of every temper in the household? Have they seen the man at one time discoursing in quiet tone and serious terms on the meek and lowly one, "who, when He was reviled, reviled not again," at another time terrifying all around him with unrighteous ebullitions of anger? The Babylonians, the strangers, see it, and shake their heads, saying, "Deliver me from that man's religion, if it cannot even curb his temper"; and thus a stumbling-block is cast in the way, that offends some poor, "weak brother for whom Christ died." The children in such a house learn to despise a religion with the remembrance of their early terrors and discomforts; and the servants, or others employed about it, thank God that they have escaped their poor master's supposed hypocrisy, even at the sacrifice of his real Christianity. Whereas if, on the other hand, the irascible spirit were to be seen only to be subdued before them; if its occasional outbreak is timely checked, and obviously striven against, and candidly mourned over, if they mark the man struggling against the buffetings of his infirmity, and honestly and earnestly doing painful violence to his besetment, there is a natural sympathy kindled in their hearts which God may vouchsafe to deepen into the conviction that the religion must be real which could generate such an inward contest, and must be influential, too, which could obtain such I victory. 4. "What have they seen in thine house? Have they seen the immoderate banqueting, excess of wine, revellings, and such like"? 5. "What have they seen in thine house?" Perhaps some of you have been mercifully restored from a serious illness: what did those about you see as the effect of your being spared? Did they see a thankful man, a subdued man, a man bearing the spiritual marks of the stripes of the rod of chastisement, more in earnest for God, less inclined to murmur at his lot, to cavil at religious obligations, or depreciate spiritual privileges, or to lower the personal standard of Christian life and conversation? If the world saw this in your house, you have got good yourself and done the world good; if they saw it not, in whatever degree it was not the visible effect upon you, in that proportion you have yourself forfeited the grace of your personal dispensation, missed and abused an ordinance of the Lord, and wronged your brotherhood. 6. And you, heads of families, who make no profession of religion, who have no particular anxieties at stake either way, "what have they seen in your houses?" Have they marked no family prayer, no godly conversation, no effort with the means of moral and evangelical influence? Have they seen children growing up in carelessness and irreligion, whose parental indulgence provoked that destructive judgment which the real love and tenderness of a timely discipline might have averted? If so, consider, you who have the solemn responsibility of a family of immortal souls laid upon you, how Hezekiah's folly was visited upon his children, and tremble at the prospect of the heartrending anguish you may be laying up in store for yourselves in the spectacle of an ungodly and abandoned household. 7. "What have they seen in thine house?" Well, no matter what they have seen; be resolved by the grace of God as to what shall be seen for the time to come. ( J. B. Owen, M. A. ) Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Isaiah 39:5-7 Isaiah's prophecy of the Babylonian captivity J. A. Alexander. directs attention to the exact correspondence of the punishment with the offence. As the Babylonians had seen all, they should one day take all; as nothing had been withheld from them now, so nothing should be withheld from them hereafter. ( J. A. Alexander. ) A costly gratification W. C. Bonnet. Benjamin Franklin, when a lad, was greatly enamoured of a whistle he saw for sale. Swept away by the desire to possess the toy, he gathered all his money and offered it to the vendor, who at once took it and handed over the whistle to the eager boy. For a time the sense of a craving gratified shut out all other consideration. Then, gradually, the lad realised how he had been fooled; and in after-days the wise man, as he observed men and their foolish ways, would remember his own early experience, and say of this man and of that, "He has paid too dear for his whistle." ( W. C. Bonnet. ) Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. Isaiah 39:8 Hezekiah's acceptance of his punishment Sir E. Strachey, Bart. Hezekiah's reply expressed neither the highest magnanimity nor the mere selfish egotism which some commentators have seen in it; but a mixture of feelings in accordance with all that we know of his character. His appreciation of his position and duties as a king is shown in his restoration of the national worship, and his final resistance to Sennacherib, as well as in his general and successful care for the prosperity of his country. But though a religious sense of duty, or the pressure of necessity, could occasionally stir him to master circumstances by a great effort, we may infer from the domination of Shebna, and from his own demeanour and language when supplicating Sennacherib's pardon, after the receipt of Rab-shakeh's message and Sennacherib's letter, in the time of his own sickness, and on the present occasion, that his natural and habitual disposition was rather to submit to the guidance of circumstances, with a gentle and pious confession that this weakness of his character was beyond cure, and to accept the consequences with pious and affectionate resignation to God's will, and thankful acknowledgment of any mitigation of them. He could enter into the meaning of the Psalmist's words, "Thou wast God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance on their inventions." And though he had not, like Moses or Paul, the stern courage which could ask that the punishment might be to himself, and the forgiveness to his people; but on the contrary was thankful to learn that there should "be peace and truth in his days"; it must not be overlooked that it was peace and truth to his country as well as himself, and not merely selfish security that he was thankful for. ( Sir E. Strachey, Bart. ) A contrast: Hezekiah and St. Paul Dean Vaughan. There is certainly submission here, resignation to the Supreme will, readiness to accept the sentence of chastisement by this will. The sentiment thus far is that of Eli when he heard the doom of his house from the lips of the child-prophet: "It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good." But the reason given by Hezekiah in the text itself is deeply disappointing in two ways — first, the selfishness, and, secondly, the earthliness of the consolation. Enough for him if he is spared the personal experience of the retribution; enough if he may live out his fifteen added years in the peace of an outward tranquillity, and in the truth, or, as it is otherwise given, in the continuance of an accustomed and unbroken prosperity. "There shall be peace and truth in my days," would have had no meaning for St. Paul. All days were his days; days of time and days of eternity — all were his. ( Dean Vaughan. ).

39:1-8 This chapter is the same as 2Ki 20:12-19.