2 Chronicles 32:24-31 - Homiletics

The shadow which Hezekiah casts on his own life's history.

The great commendation of Hezekiah, written in one word—his "goodness"—in our thirty-second verse, but somewhat more expressly in the parallel ( 2 Kings 18:5 ), which raised him to the very first rank with David and Jehoshaphat, may well be accepted as fully explained and sustained by the undeviating excellence of his administration of the kingdom. His reign is, at any rate, unsullied by any sins like those of David. Yet one error, one sin, and from its denunciation and punishment manifestly a grievously offensive one, is to be laid to his charge, and which seems to have consisted in a boastful ostentatiousness, on an occasion which presumably pre-eminently condemned it for untimeliness and inexpedience. The faithfulness, and yet the tenderness, of allusion to it, as made by our present writer ( 2 Chronicles 32:31 ), we cannot but notice, understand, and admire. But for the fuller suggestions that lie within it, they are to be sought and found in the parallel ( 2 Kings 20:12-19 ), and in the writing of the Prophet Isaiah (39, wonderfully prefaced by 38.). From this part of the history of Hezekiah we may notice something to be learned as to—

I. THE SEED OF OCCASION . There are seeds—many, indeed—of occasion, besides those which, perhaps, we think more justly called seeds, viz. those of cause. They are to be thought on and feared, for they are the lighter and less visible; more approaching to a certain omnipresence, and wafted hither and thither on the gentlest of breezes, as well as the stiffest, they alight so softly, at most unsuspected times, and on spots most unsuspected. These occasion-seeds are, doubtless, often part of the very scheme and works of Providence. Designed to good, they are, like many of the completer manifestations of Providence, warped and wrested to evil. The exact origin of the severe "sickness unto death" of Hezekiah is nowhere told us. It looks uncommonly like an earlier "thorn in the flesh." The thorn in the flesh, out of which St. Paul made for himself such good history, turns to all the reverse with Hezekiah! His "thorn in the flesh" was sent because the all-seeing Eye saw this—that there was already sign of Hezekiah being exalted above measure (verse 25) through the long run of mercy and prosperity vouchsafed to him, even though vouchsafed in harmony with his own "goodness." Yet mercy strews "his path and his bed." Promise of recovery, sign and marvel—sign of recovery, and recovery itself—are all in early sequel. Mercies of kindness still follow and pursue him ( Isaiah 39:1 )—letters, presents, congratulations, flattering inquiries of the wonderful sign granted to Hezekiah, in a double sense, of Heaven itself—and the issue already declares itself! The net is not "spread in vain in the sight of this bird"! Sickness, warning, special kindness, special suggestions of dependence, and therefore of the appropriate humility; of dependence most graciously remembered of Heaven, and therefore of gratitude, that should have been responsive;—"all this array one cunning bosom-sin blows quite away." The occasion of sin came through, the very warning against sin, and shows how sin will carve its own occasion right through all occasion!

II. THE SIN ITSELF NOW IS QUESTION . The careful study of this for our own warning is the more desirable, inasmuch as it is the one only recorded defection of Hezekiah. It comes on the page of his history unexpectedly, and must be supposed to come out of one of those most sunken and aside depths that give facility for sin to harbour, and for Satan to work his devices in the more difficult cases for him. The lesson is that with Satan, the expert in the offensive, it needs ever that with much prayer we strive to be experts in the defensive. The pomp of display and the vanity of ostentation by which and into which Hezekiah was now entrapped, were probably attended by aggravating circumstances, which, though not stated, may be surmised with no little probability; but, at any rate, they were penetrated by this aggravation—that they came from one who knew better, and had so well known and done better, that they could only be viewed as some very retrograde condition of heart, and, unless sternly checked, liable to lead to worse developments in practice. Civil words to Babylon, and civil deeds to the ambassadors of her king, happened to be just the wrong thing, and not the right A vain-glorious display of the treasures, that already excite the cupidity of plunder—temptations to our tempter and would-be betrayer and destroyer—was a grand mistake indeed. So are civil words to our souls' tempters, and civil deeds to our great enemy Satan! If Hezekiah had known that "these men," and "the country whence they came" ( 2 Kings 20:14 ), were going to be the capturers and the enforced home respectively of God's people, whom he had been set jealously to guard and watch over as the under-shepherd; if he had known that all his "precious things, silver and gold, spices and ointment, armour and all treasures," were to be the sacrilegious plunder of Babylon and the King of Babylon;—would he then have done as he did? These things, it may truly be said, he did not know now. But what did he know? And did he not know such things as these—that pride and vanity, vain-glory and ostentation, were not for him, who was the dependent servant of God, and the trustee of treasures, sacred treasures, also, that belonged to him to whom the earth and the fulness thereof and all its precious things, but especially Israel, belonged? How often do we excuse ourselves, both for mere faults and also for sins, on the plea that we did not know certain exact facts, forgetful of these two things —first, that we nevertheless did know, and do know, certain great general principles and rules which, had we observed them, would have covered and governed all individual cases; and, secondly, that though we may often say, "We did not know," there remains to be answered the question whether our ignorance was not nevertheless of our own making, or at least within the reach of our own removing!

III. THE ATTITUDE OF HEZEKIAH TO HIS FAITHFUL PROPHET , It certainly would appear ( 2 Kings 20:14 , 2 Kings 20:15 ; Isaiah 39:3 , Isaiah 39:4 ) that he was conscious of wrong in the presence of Isaiah, that he feared his interrogatories, that he equivocated in his reply, or, at any rate, concealed, or tried to conceal, some part of what had transpired in his interview with the ambassadors of Babylon, laying emphasis enough on the rest. So far as the narrative goes, he does not directly reply to what "these men' said. He was probably flattered by "great Babylon" coming at all, by the congratulations brought, by the inquiry respecting "the wonder that was done in the land," and—infatuation though it were, if so—by the presumable overtures on the part of the King of great Babylon to enter into some alliance with him. This all was emphasized greatly by the fact that the present visit was the first converse of the two kingdoms. Israel had heard of Babylon, of her "wealth," her "glory," her "beauty," and of her "sins" ( Isaiah 13:1-22 ; Isaiah 14:1-32 ; Isaiah 21:1-17 .) also, but up to this time had held no sort of communion with her. In an evil hour the "uplifted" (verse 25) heart of Hezekiah answered to all the blandishments of the occasion, and the new and grand acquaintance which he has made is prophetically and positively set before him by Isaiah in a light which quickly disenchants him, as the conqueror and taker-captive of Israel, and the very master of his sons and humbled posterity. An hour ago it was his ambition to show all his "wealth" and all his "dominion," and watch whether they vied with those of the great master of the "ambassadors." A moment's vision of the truth dashes all else to the ground; and Hezekiah becomes either the genuine resigned penitent—God having "tried him," left him "to himself, that he might learn all that was in his heart" (verse 31)—or the alike obsequious and selfish receiver of the tidings of doom for his people, delayed till after his own death. If this latter be the position, the even grateful resignation to the Divine will, uttered by Hezekiah's lip, contrasts ill with the nobility we would wish to put to the credit of such a king, and the king of such a people.