2 Kings 20:3 - Exposition

I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart. There is no Pharisaical self-righteousness here. Hezekiah is conscious that he has honestly endeavored to serve God, and to do his will—that, whatever may have been his shortcomings, his heart has been right towards God. He ventures, therefore, on something like expostulation. Why is he to be cut off in the midst of his days, at the age of thirty-nine, when such a wicked king as Uzziah has lived to be sixty-eight ( 2 Kings 15:2 ), and Rehoboam to be fifty-eight ( 1 Kings 14:21 )? It is to be remembered that, under the old covenant, length of days was expressly promised to the righteous ( Proverbs 3:2 ; Proverbs 9:11 ; Proverbs 10:27 , etc.), and that a shortened life was the proclaimed penalty of wicked-doing ( Job 15:32 , Job 15:33 ; Job 22:16 ; Psalms 55:23 ; Proverbs 10:27 ). Hezekiah's self-assertion is thus a sort of laying hold of God's promises. And have done that which is flood in thy sight ; comp. 2 Kings 18:3-6 ; and note the similar pleadings of David, " With my whole heart have I sought thee" ( Psalms 119:10 ); "I have remembered thy Name, O Lord, and have kept thy Law . This I had because I kept thy commandments" ( Psalms 119:55 , Psalms 119:56 ), and the like. And Hezekiah wept sore. Human nature shrinks from death instinctively, and it requires a very vivid imagination for even the Christian in middle life to feel with St. Paul, that "it is better for him to depart and to be with Christ." The Hebrew of Hezekiah's time had far mere reason to regard death as an evil. His hopes of a life beyond the grave were feeble—his conceptions of the life, if life there were, faint and unattractive. Sheol , like Hades, was a vague, awful, terrible thing. If we consider Hezekiah's words, "The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee" ( Isaiah 38:18 , Isaiah 38:19 ), we may understand how the Hebrew shrank from the fearful change. And in Hezekiah's case there was a yet further reason for grief Hezekiah had as yet no male offspring (Josephus, 'Ant. Jud.,'10.2. § 1). Manasseh was as yet unborn (comp. verse 6 with 2 Kings 21:1 ). If he died now, his house would be cut off, he would be without posterity—a sore grief to every Hebrew. Ewald's references to Isaiah 38:19 and Isaiah 39:7 , as indicative of Hezekiah having sons at the time, are absolutely without value.