Lives of Scripture

Hezekiah, son of the idolatrous Ahaz, did what was right "according to all that his father David had done" — he removed the high places, broke into pieces the bronze serpent Moses had made because Israel had begun worshiping it, and Scripture says "there was none like him among all the kings of Judah" for trust in the LORD (2 Kings 18:1-6). When Assyria's King Sennacherib invaded and mocked Judah's God, Hezekiah spread the threatening letter before the LORD in the temple and prayed; Isaiah announced deliverance, and that night "the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000" in the Assyrian camp (2 Kings 18:13-19:37). When Hezekiah fell fatally ill, he wept and prayed, and God granted him fifteen more years, confirmed by the sign of the sun's shadow moving backward (2 Kings 20:1-11). Yet pride followed deliverance: Hezekiah showed off all his treasures to envoys from Babylon, and Isaiah warned that everything, and some of his own descendants, would one day be carried off to Babylon — a prophecy Hezekiah accepted with troubling relief that it would not happen in his own lifetime (2 Kings 20:12-19). Hezekiah also organized a great Passover reuniting worshipers from both the northern and southern kingdoms (2 Chronicles 30:1-27).