Standing tall and holding fast for the Lord—being a real man or woman—is the great practical lesson of this Scripture.

DIVISION IV

THE TURNING POINT OF HEZEKIAH’S REIGN: A SHIFT FROM THE THREAT OF ASSYRIA TO THE CAPTIVITY OF JUDAH BY BABYLON, 36:1–39:8

PART II—THE HISTORICAL SECTION, 36:1–39:8 

(1:1–12:6) DIVISION OVERVIEW: a turning point now takes place in the great book of Isaiah. A shift occurs from Assyria’s threat to Judah over to the captivity of Judah by Babylon. The shift takes place during the strong, godly reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. This division of the book of Isaiah opens with a scene of terror—the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians. Doom hung heavily in the air. Hezekiah’s response to the impossible situation is to turn to the Lord and cry out for divine help. In doing so, Hezekiah moved the heart of God and we see a gripping picture of God’s power to deliver His people from any circumstance. God promised and carried out the deliverance of His people. Overnight, 185,000 Assyrians were slaughtered by the Angel of the Lord, and the threat of Assyria was eliminated. 

However, immediately after Judah’s deliverance from Assyria, another crisis struck. King Hezekiah was smitten with a deadly illness and his days were numbered. Once again, Hezekiah responded by seeking the Lord, and the Lord again responded in compassion, delivering Hezekiah from certain doom. The king was healed completely and given fifteen more years to live. But what happened next would change the history of Judah forever and mark the beginning of its fall. 

After God’s great deliverances, Hezekiah became filled with pride and a false sense of security. When ambassadors from Babylon came to seek Judah as an ally, Hezekiah foolishly showed the foreigners all the national treasures. Immediately afterward, Isaiah prophesied the future invasion of the nation by Babylon and the subsequent fall of both Judah and its beloved capital, Jerusalem. Some generations later, the prophecy was completely fulfilled: Babylon conquered Judah, plundered the treasury, and took the survivors captive, scattering the exiles throughout the Babylonian Empire. 

Although Hezekiah was a righteous ruler and a committed follower of the Lord, his prideful actions would contribute significantly to the downfall of the nation and change its destiny forever. Total destruction and captivity would now hang over the nation and its people like a dark, heavy cloud. 

THE TURNING POINT OF HEZEKIAH’S REIGN: A SHIFT FROM

THE THREAT OF ASSYRIA TO THE CAPTIVITY OF JUDAH BY

BABYLON, 36:1–39:8 

A.    The End of the Assyrian Threat: God’s Power to Deliver His People, 36:1–37:38 

B.     The Stage Set for the Coming Captivity of Judah by Babylon: The Power of Prayer and the Danger of Sinful Pride, 38:1–39:8^[1]

36        So in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came to fight against the walled cities of Judah and conquered them. ²Then he sent his personal representative with a great army from Lachish to confer with King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. He camped near the outlet of the upper pool, along the road going past the field where cloth is bleached.

³Then Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, who was the prime minister of Israel, and Shebna, the king’s scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the royal secretary, formed a truce team and went out of the city to meet with him. ⁴The Assyrian ambassador told them to go and say to Hezekiah, “The mighty king of Assyria says you are a fool to think that the king of Egypt will help you. ⁵What are the Pharaoh’s promises worth? Mere words won’t substitute for strength, yet you rely on him for help and have rebelled against me! ⁶Egypt is a dangerous ally. She is a sharpened stick that will pierce your hand if you lean on it. That is the experience of everyone who has ever looked to her for help. ⁷But perhaps you say, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God!’ Oh? Isn’t he the one your king insulted, tearing down his temples and altars in the hills and making everyone in Judah worship only at the altars here in Jerusalem? ^8-9My master, the king of Assyria, wants to make a little bet with you!—that you don’t have 2,000 men left in your entire army! If you do, he will give you 2,000 horses for them to ride on! With that tiny army, how can you think of proceeding against even the smallest and worst contingent of my master’s troops? For you’ll get no help from Egypt. ¹⁰What’s more, do you think I have come here without the Lord’s telling me to take this land? The Lord said to me, ‘Go and destroy it!’ ”

¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to him, “Please talk to us in Aramaic,^a for we understand it quite well. Don’t speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear.”

¹²But he replied, “My master wants everyone in Jerusalem to hear this, not just you. He wants them to know that if you don’t surrender, this city will be put under siege until everyone is so hungry and thirsty that he will eat his own dung and drink his own urine.”

¹³Then he shouted in Hebrew to the Jews listening on the wall, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria:

¹⁴“Don’t let Hezekiah fool you—nothing he can do will save you. ¹⁵Don’t let him talk you into trusting in the Lord by telling you the Lord won’t let you be conquered by the king of Assyria. ¹⁶Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for here is the king of Assyria’s offer to you: Give me a present as a token of surrender; open the gates and come out, and I will let you each have your own farm and garden and water, ¹⁷until I can arrange to take you to a country very similar to this one—a country where there are bountiful harvests of grain and grapes, a land of plenty. ¹⁸Don’t let Hezekiah deprive you of all this by saying the Lord will deliver you from my armies. Have any other nation’s gods ever gained victory over the armies of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Don’t you remember what I did to Hamath and Arpad? Did their gods save them? And what about Sepharvaim and Samaria? Where are their gods now? ²⁰Of all the gods of these lands, which one has ever delivered their people from my power? Name just one! And do you think this God of yours can deliver Jerusalem from me? Don’t be ridiculous!”

²¹But the people were silent and answered not a word, for Hezekiah had told them to say nothing in reply. ²²Then Eliakim (son of Hilkiah), the prime minister, and Shebna, the royal scribe, and Joah (son of Asaph), the royal secretary, went back to Hezekiah with clothes ripped to shreds as a sign of their despair and told him all that had happened.

 

37        When King Hezekiah heard the results of the meeting, he tore his robes and wound himself in coarse cloth used for making sacks, as a sign of humility and mourning, and went over to the Temple to pray. ²Meanwhile he sent Eliakim his prime minister, and Shebna his royal scribe, and the older priests—all dressed in sackcloth—to Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz. ³They brought him this message from Hezekiah:

“This is a day of trouble and frustration and blasphemy; it is a serious time, as when a woman is in heavy labor trying to give birth and the child does not come. ⁴But perhaps the Lord your God heard the blasphemy of the king of Assyria’s representative as he scoffed at the living God. Surely God won’t let him get away with this. Surely God will rebuke him for those words. Oh, Isaiah, pray for us who are left!”

⁵So they took the king’s message to Isaiah.

⁶Then Isaiah replied, “Tell King Hezekiah that the Lord says: Don’t be disturbed by this speech from the servant of the king of Assyria and his blasphemy. ⁷For a report from Assyria will reach the king that he is needed at home at once, and he will return to his own land, where I will have him killed.”

^8-9Now the Assyrian envoy left Jerusalem and went to consult his king, who had left Lachish and was besieging Libnah. But at this point the Assyrian king received word that Tirhakah, crown prince of Ethiopia, was leading an army against him from the south.^a Upon hearing this, he sent messengers back to Jerusalem to Hezekiah with this message:

¹⁰“Don’t let this God you trust in fool you by promising that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria! ¹¹Just remember what has happened wherever the kings of Assyria have gone, for they have crushed everyone who has opposed them. Do you think you will be any different? ¹²Did their gods save the cities of Gozan, Haran, or Rezeph, or the people of Eden in Telassar? No, the Assyrian kings completely destroyed them! ¹³And don’t forget what happened to the king of Hamath, to the king of Arpad, and to the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah.”

¹⁴As soon as King Hezekiah had read this letter, he went over to the Temple and spread it out before the Lord ¹⁵and prayed, saying, ^16-17“O Lord, Almighty God of Israel enthroned between the Guardian Angels, you alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone made heaven and earth. Listen as I plead; see me as I pray. Look at this letter from King Sennacherib, for he has mocked the living God. ¹⁸It is true, O Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all those nations, just as the letter says, ¹⁹and thrown their gods into the fire; for they weren’t gods at all but merely idols, carved by men from wood and stone. Of course the Assyrians could destroy them. ²⁰O Lord our God, save us so that all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you are God, and you alone.”

²¹Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent this message to King Hezekiah: “The Lord God of Israel says: This is my answer to your prayer against Sennacherib, Assyria’s king.

²²“The Lord says to him: My people—the helpless virgin daughter of Zion—laughs at you and scoffs and shakes her head at you in scorn. ²³Who is it you scoffed against and mocked? Whom did you revile? At whom did you direct your violence and pride? It was against the Holy One of Israel! ²⁴You have sent your messengers to mock the Lord. You boast, ‘I came with my mighty army against the nations of the west. I cut down the tallest cedars and choicest cypress trees. I conquered their highest mountains and destroyed their thickest forests.’

²⁵“You boast of wells you’ve dug in many a conquered land, and Egypt with all its armies is no obstacle to you! ²⁶But do you not yet know that it was I who decided all this long ago? That it was I who gave you all this power from ancient times? I have caused all this to happen as I planned—that you should crush walled cities into ruined heaps. ²⁷That’s why their people had so little power and were such easy prey for you. They were as helpless as the grass, as tender plants you trample down beneath your feet, as grass upon the housetops, burnt yellow by the sun. ²⁸But I know you well—your comings and goings and all you do—and the way you have raged against me. ²⁹Because of your anger against the Lord—and I heard it all!—I have put a hook in your nose and a bit in your mouth and led you back to your own land by the same road you came.”

³⁰Then God said to Hezekiah, “Here is the proof that I am the one who is delivering this city from the king of Assyria: This year^b he will abandon his siege. Although it is too late now to plant your crops, and you will have only volunteer grain this fall, still it will give you enough seed for a small harvest next year, and two years from now you will be living in luxury again. ³¹And you who are left in Judah will take root again in your own soil and flourish and multiply. ³²For a remnant shall go out from Jerusalem to repopulate the land; the power of the Lord Almighty will cause all this to come to pass.

³³“As for the king of Assyria, his armies shall not enter Jerusalem, nor shoot their arrows there, nor march outside its gates, nor build up an earthen bank against its walls. ³⁴He will return to his own country by the road he came on and will not enter this city, says the Lord. ³⁵For my own honor I will defend it and in memory of my servant David.”

³⁶That night the Angel of the Lord went out to the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000 soldiers; when the living wakened the next morning, all these lay dead before them. ³⁷Then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, returned to his own country, to Nineveh. ³⁸And one day while he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords; then they escaped into the land of Ararat, and Esar-haddon his son became king.

 

38        It was just before all this that Hezekiah became deathly sick, and Isaiah the prophet (Amoz’ son) went to visit him and gave him this message from the Lord:

“Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die; you will not recover from this illness.”

²When Hezekiah heard this, he turned his face to the wall and prayed:

³“O Lord, don’t you remember how true I’ve been to you and how I’ve always tried to obey you in everything you said?” Then he broke down with great sobs.

⁴So the Lord sent another message to Isaiah:

⁵“Go and tell Hezekiah that the Lord God of your forefather David hears you praying and sees your tears and will let you live fifteen more years. ⁶He will deliver you and this city from the king of Assyria. I will defend you, says the Lord, ⁷and here is my guarantee: ⁸I will send the sun backwards ten degrees as measured on Ahaz’s sundial!”

So the sun retraced ten degrees that it had gone down!

⁹When King Hezekiah was well again, he wrote this poem about his experience:

¹⁰“My life is but half done and I must leave it all. I am robbed of my normal years, and now I must enter the gates of Sheol. ¹¹Never again will I see the Lord in the land of the living. Never again will I see my friends in this world. ¹²My life is blown away like a shepherd’s tent; it is cut short as when a weaver stops his working at the loom. In one short day my life hangs by a thread.

¹³“All night I moaned; it was like being torn apart by lions. ¹⁴Delirious, I chattered like a swallow and mourned like a dove; my eyes grew weary of looking up for help. ‘O God,’ I cried, ‘I am in trouble—help me.’ ¹⁵But what can I say? For he himself has sent this sickness. All my sleep has fled because of my soul’s bitterness. ¹⁶O Lord, your discipline is good and leads to life and health. Oh, heal me and make me live!

¹⁷“Yes, now I see it all—it was good for me to undergo this bitterness, for you have lovingly delivered me from death; you have forgiven all my sins. ¹⁸For dead men cannot praise you.^a They cannot be filled with hope and joy. ¹⁹The living, only the living, can praise you as I do today. One generation makes known your faithfulness to the next. ²⁰Think of it! The Lord healed me! Every day of my life from now on I will sing my songs of praise in the Temple, accompanied by the orchestra.”

²¹(For Isaiah had told Hezekiah’s servants, “Make an ointment of figs and spread it over the boil, and he will get well again.”

²²And then Hezekiah had asked, “What sign will the Lord give me to prove that he will heal me?”)

 

39        Soon afterwards, the king of Babylon (Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan) sent Hezekiah a present and his best wishes,^a for he had heard that Hezekiah had been very sick and now was well again. ²Hezekiah appreciated this and took the envoys from Babylon on a tour of the palace, showing them his treasure-house full of silver, gold, spices, and perfumes. He took them into his jewel rooms, too, and opened to them all his treasures—everything.

³Then Isaiah the prophet came to the king and said, “What did they say? Where are they from?”

“From far away in Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.

⁴“How much have they seen?” asked Isaiah.

And Hezekiah replied, “I showed them everything I own, all my priceless treasures.”

⁵Then Isaiah said to him, “Listen to this message from the Lord Almighty:

⁶“The time is coming when everything you have—all the treasures stored up by your fathers—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left. ⁷And some of your own sons will become slaves, yes, eunuchs, in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

⁸“All right,” Hezekiah replied. “Whatever the Lord says is good. At least there will be peace during my lifetime!”^[2] 

A.        The End of the Assyrian Threat: God’s Power to Deliver His People, 36:1–37:38 

(36:1–37:38) Introduction: When facing a serious trial, how often has fear gripped your heart, buckled your knees, and dissolved your courage? How often have you been gripped with despair or felt utter discouragement? And when facing temptation, has your will to withstand ever collapsed? Have you given in to seduction when the appeal was just too enticing? Have you allowed your flesh to be aroused, your passion to run wild to the point that you could no longer resist or refuse? 

Standing tall and holding fast for the Lord—being a real man or woman—is the great practical lesson of this Scripture. This is the story of Hezekiah, perhaps the greatest king who ever ruled the Southern Kingdom of Judah. In God’s sovereignty, He knew that a strong, righteous king would need to be upon the throne of Judah right after the fall of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, under the assault of Assyria. Thus, God moved to turn the heart of a young man to the Lord, a young man who was reared in one of the most ungodly environments imaginable. Although the godly reign of Hezekiah would not stop the tide of wickedness from flowing throughout Judah, it would significantly delay the hand of God’s judgment from falling upon them. The Southern Kingdom of Judah would not fall to Babylon for over 100 years. Note this fact: after the fall of the Northern Kingdom, the Southern Kingdom of Judah is often given the ancient name of Israel. This fact needs to be kept in mind as the remaining kings are studied. This is The End of the Assyrian Threat: God’s Power to Deliver His People, 36:1–37:38. 

1.      The Assyrian invasion of Judah by King Sennacherib: a decision demanded—trust the power of man or of God (36:1–22).

2.      The Lord’s assurance of deliverance: God’s promise to the believer (37:1–13).

3.      Hezekiah’s desperate prayer for deliverance: seeking the Lord for help (37:14–20).

4.      The rescue of Judah from the Assyrian threat: God’s wonderful deliverance (37:21–38).^[3] 

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^[1] Leadership Ministries Worldwide. 2005. Isaiah: Chapters 36–66. Vol. II. The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible. Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide.

^a 36:11  Please talk to us in Aramaic. Aramaic was the language used in international diplomacy at this time.

^a 37:8-9  from the south, implied.

^b 37:30  This year, implied. two years from now you will be living in luxury again. The third harvest from then would yield a bumper crop.

^a 38:18  For dead men cannot praise you. The meaning is unclear. Perhaps Hezekiah was unaware of the blessedness of the future life for those who trust in God (57:1-2). Or perhaps his meaning is, “Dead bodies cannot praise you.”

^a 39:1  Merodach-baladan . . . sent Hezekiah a present and his best wishes. Merodach-baladan was at this time planning a revolt in the east against Sennacherib, so he was especially interested in Hezekiah’s activities in the west.

^[2] Taylor, Kenneth Nathaniel. 1997. The Living Bible, Paraphrased. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.

^[3] Leadership Ministries Worldwide. 2005. Isaiah: Chapters 36–66. Vol. II. The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible. Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide.