Isaiah 38

Is 38:1-22. Hezekiah's Sickness; Perhaps Connected with the Plague or Blast Whereby the Assyrian Army Had Been Destroyed.

1. Set ... house in order--Make arrangement as to the succession to the throne; for he had then no son; and as to thy other concerns.

thou shall die--speaking according to the ordinary course of the disease. His being spared fifteen years was not a change in God's mind, but an illustration of God's dealings being unchangeably regulated by the state of man in relation to Him.

2. The couches in the East run along the walls of houses. He turned away from the spectators to hide his emotion and collect his thoughts for prayer.

3. He mentions his past religious consistency, not as a boast or a ground for justification; but according to the Old Testament dispensation, wherein temporal rewards (as long life, &c., Ex 20:12) followed legal obedience, he makes his religious conduct a plea for asking the prolongation of his life.

walked--Life is a journey; the pious "walk with God" (Ge 5:24; 1Ki 9:4).

perfect--sincere; not absolutely perfect, but aiming towards it (Mt 5:45); single-minded in walking as in the presence of God (Ge 17:1). The letter of the Old Testament legal righteousness was, however, a standard very much below the spirit of the law as unfolded by Christ (Mt 5:20-48; 2Co 3:6, 14, 17).

wept sore--Josephus says, the reason why he wept so sorely was that being childless, he was leaving the kingdom without a successor. How often our wishes, when gratified, prove curses! Hezekiah lived to have a son; that son was the idolater Manasseh, the chief cause of God's wrath against Judah, and of the overthrow of the kingdom (2Ki 23:26, 27).

4. In 2Ki 20:4, the quickness of God's answer to the prayer is marked, "afore Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him"; that is, before he had left Hezekiah, or at least when he had just left him, and Hezekiah was in the act of praying after having heard God's message by Isaiah (compare Is 65:24; Psa 32:5; Da 9:21).

5. God of David thy father--God remembers the covenant with the father to the children (Ex 20:5; Psa 89:28, 29).

tears--(Psa 56:8).

days ... years--Man's years, however many, are but as so many days (Ge 5:27).

6. In 2Ki 20:8, after this verse comes the statement which is put at the end, in order not to interrupt God's message (Is 38:21, 22) by Isaiah (Is 38:5-8).

will deliver--The city was already delivered, but here assurance is given, that Hezekiah shall have no more to fear from the Assyrians.

7. sign--a token that God would fulfil His promise that Hezekiah should "go up into the house of the Lord the third day" (2Ki 20:5, 8); the words in italics are not in Isaiah.

8. bring again--cause to return (Jos 10:12-14). In 2Ki 20:9, 11, the choice is stated to have been given to Hezekiah, whether the shadow should go forward, or go back, ten degrees. Hezekiah replied, "It is a light thing (a less decisive miracle) for the shadow to go down (its usual direction) ten degrees: nay, but let it return backward ten degrees"; so Isaiah cried to Jehovah that it should be so, and it was so (compare Jos 10:12, 14).

sundial of Ahaz--Herodotus (2.109) states that the sundial and the division of the day into twelve hours, were invented by the Babylonians; from them Ahaz borrowed the invention. He was one, from his connection with Tiglath-pileser, likely to have done so (2Ki 16:7, 10). "Shadow of the degrees" means the shadow made on the degrees. Josephus thinks these degrees were steps ascending to the palace of Ahaz; the time of day was indicated by the number of steps reached by the shadow. But probably a sundial, strictly so called, is meant; it was of such a size, and so placed, that Hezekiah, when convalescent, could witness the miracle from his chamber. Compare Is 38:21, 22 with 2Ki 20:9, where translate, shall this shadow go forward, &c.; the dial was no doubt in sight, probably "in the middle court" (2Ki 20:4), the point where Isaiah turned back to announce God's gracious answers to Hezekiah. Hence this particular sign was given. The retrogression of the shadow may have been effected by refraction; a cloud denser than the air interposing between the gnomon and dial would cause the phenomenon, which does not take from the miracle, for God gave him the choice whether the shadow should go forward or back, and regulated the time and place. Bosanquet makes the fourteenth year of Hezekiah to be 689 B.C., the known year of a solar eclipse, to which he ascribes the recession of the shadow. At all events, there is no need for supposing any revolution of the relative positions of the sun and earth, but merely an effect produced on the shadow (2Ki 20:9-11); that effect was only local, and designed for the satisfaction of Hezekiah, for the Babylonian astronomers and king "sent to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land" (2Ch 32:31), implying that it had not extended to their country. No mention of any instrument for marking time occurs before this dial of Ahaz, 700 B.C. The first mention of the "hour" is made by Daniel at Babylon (Da 3:6).

9-20. The prayer and thanksgiving song of Hezekiah is only given here, not in the parallel passages of Second Kings and Second Chronicles. Is 38:9 is the heading or inscription.

22. house of the Lord--Hence he makes the praises to be sung there prominent in his song (Is 38:20; Psa 116:12-14, 17-19).