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Ver. 5. The captain of my people,] Antecessor. See on 1 Samuel 9:16. The God of David.] To whom I promised a continued succession on the throne of Judah; and will therefore lengthen thy life, and give thee a son. To the house of the Lord.] Hezekiah’s both duty and disposition, as a right son of David, whose song was, “I shall yet praise him in his holy temple, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
Ver. 6. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years.] Thus God’s grant to Hezekiah’s prayer was not more speedy than bountiful. We are wont to reckon seven years for the life of a man, and now, behold, more than two lives hath God added to the age of Hezekiah. This also he did for him, notwithstanding those flaws in his prayer, those distrustful I said’s, (Isaiah 38:10,11, &c.) and albeit he foresaw that Hezekiah would “not render again according to the benefit done unto him.” (2 Chronicles 32:25) And I will deliver thee and this city.] Thus God is better to his people than their prayers; he doth for them “exceeding abundantly above all that they ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20) Piscator here hence concludeth that Hezekiah began to be sick presently after the promise made of sending away the Assyrian out of the land. (2 Kings 19:32) And for my servant David’s sake,] i.e., For my promise’s sake made to David. See on 2 Kings 20:5.
Ver. 7. Take a lump of figs.] This poultice was fit enough for the carbuncle, but yet could never have cured him so soon without a miracle. See on 2 Kings 20:1. And he recovered.] Non ex facultate ficuum, sed ex Dei verbo, saith Junius: By a supernatural virtue added to the figs, which else could not have wrought the cure.
Ver. 8. And Hezekiah said.] Dixerat autem, He had said; sc., before the plaster was laid upon the boil. What shall be the sign? &c.] That he should have a sign, he doubted, as his father Ahaz had, though unworthy. (Isaiah 7:10-14) See on Judges 6:17,37. And that I shall go up into the house of the Lord the third day.] He maketh the utmost of the promise, as had done before him Jacob, (Genesis 32:9:11) and David. (1 Chronicles 17:23-26) This is to suck and be satisfied. (Isaiah 66:11)
Ver. 9. Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees?] This was in God Almighty stupenda dignatio, a wonderful condescension, thus to gratify a mortal man—stooping so low to his meanness. If Hezekiah were—-as the Rabbis say he was—studious of the mathematics, how suitable was this sign! These degrees were half-hours, or quarters, or haply less. The shadow was that of the style of a sundial. Neither did the shadow only go backward, but the sun itself ran retrograde, (Isaiah 38:8) whereof the Rabbis give this foolish reason, that when wicked Ahaz was buried, the sun hastened faster than ordinary to his setting, that there might be no time for funeral rites, to recompense which loss of time then, the day was thus prolonged now. Those ancients do better, who, allegorising the text, tell us that sick Hezekiah signifieth all mankind as sick of sin; but this is an infallible sign of the saint’s recovery, that the sun hath gone ten degrees back in the dial. The Sun of righteousness Jesus Christ, hath for our sakes made himself lower by many degrees in the earth. “My Father is greater than I”: there he is gone back ten degrees below his Father. “Thou hast made him lower than the angels”: there he is gone back ten degrees below the angels. “I am a worm, and no man”: there he has gone back ten degrees below men. “A live dog is better than a dead lion”: there he has gone back ten degrees below worms: for he was not counted so good as a live worm, but was buried in the earth, as a dead lion, to be meat for the worms, if it had been possible for “his holy One to see corruption.”
Ver. 10. It is a light thing,] viz., In comparison of the sun’s retrogradation, wherein both the substance of the thing and the manner were wholly miraculous, whether it were done in an instant, or in the set course of time, or its ordinary continual motion. See on 2 Kings 20:9.
Ver. 11. And he brought the shadow.] Together with the body of the sun. This was the prodigy that the Babylonish ambassadors had observed and came to inquire of. (2 Chronicles 32:31) The sun—which was their god—had honoured Hezekiah; therefore they were sent to honour him too with a visit and a present. And should not we therefore honour the saints whom Christ hath so honoured? See on 2 Kings 20:9. Ten degrees backward.] Ten degrees, that is, five hours, as the most hold; so that that day was seventeen hours long, not twenty-two, as Junius will have it. In the dial of Ahaz.] A famous dial, haply mural, and visible to Hezekiah out of his bedchamber. Abulens.
Ver. 12. At that time Berodach-baladan.] Baladan signifieth a lordless or masterless man, saith Pagnine. This Berodach—or Merodach (Isaiah 39:1) -Baladan is thought to be the first Babylonian monarch, after that he had first rebelled against Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and then afterwards slain him. Hence we read no more in Scripture of the kings of Assyria, but of Babylon. Sent letters with a present.] A rich and royal one, no doubt, according to the state of him who sent it, but whether comparable to that of King Ferdinand, sent to Solyman the Turk, I cannot tell—viz., a wonderful globe of silver of most rare and curious device, daily expressing the hourly passing of the time and the motions of the planets, the change and full of the moon, &c., ever moving by certain wheels and weights curiously conveyed within the same, and exactly keeping due time and motion. Such a present would have been most welcome to good Hezekiah, especially if he were a mathematician, as the Rabbis make him, telling us that he restored the year by the intercalation of a day every third year, in the month Adar, which answereth to our February. Baladan, sine domino. Turk. Hist., 713.
Ver. 13. And Hezekiah hearkened unto them.] Ad quos intentus, Ezechiah? He was taken and tickled with their company and courtship, gratifying them in that they came about, and proud of the honour they had done him. (2 Chronicles 32:25,31) As there be white teeth in the blackest blackamoor, so there is a black bill in the whitest swan—a rotten kernel or two in the fairest pomegranate, &c. And showed them the house of his precious things.] Superbe simul et stulte. This was proudly and foolishly done; for now gold thirsty Babylon knew where to have her draught, where to fetch a fat and fit booty. By the imperial law of the Romans, the exporting of wine, oil, and other delicious liquors was flatly forbidden, and this reason given, Ne Barbare gustu illecti promptius invaderent fines Romanorum, Lest the barbarians tasting thereof, should be the rather drawn thereby to invade the Roman empire, as the Gauls did when once they had tasted of the grapes that grew in Italy. Of the Chinese it is reported that they suffer not any foreigner to come into the heart of their kingdom, but only to trade with them on the seacoasts. It was doubtless impoliticly done at best by Hezekiah, to show these strangers his wealth and treasure: yea, it was sinfully done of him—had his storehouse been as rich as the earth—to be lifted up with those heavy metals. The silver and the gold.] Which he had partly by the spoil of Sennacherib’s camp, and partly by the many gifts brought by all nations unto him, as the world’s wonder for the sun’s going backward for his sake. And the spices.] Galen writeth that in his time cinnamon was very rare and hard to be found, except in the storehouses of great princes. Leg. l. Plutarch, in Camillo. Boter., in Catalog. Imper. Lib. i. Antidot.
Ver. 14. What said these men? &c.] Very wisely doth the prophet fetch about the business, that he may prick the bladder, and let out the pride, that now lay festering in Hezekiah’s heart. Even from Babylon.] Which is said to be six hundred and eighty miles from Jerusalem.
Ver. 15. All the things, &c.] See on 2 Kings 20:13.
Ver. 16. Hear the word of the Lord.] Divine truths must be spoken, however they be taken.
Ver. 17. That all that is in thine house.] So that thou hast made a fair hand of all, forfeited all by thine ostentation, ambition, and creature confidence.
Ver. 18. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee.] A heavy judgment on so good a man, on so light an offence, as some would think. But these spiritual lusts, as pride, carnal confidence, self-flattery, presumption, &c., in the saints, are great provocations, as lying more up in the heart of the country. Let us be wise by others’ woes; setting a memorandum on God’s punishments, and marking his spits with our stars.
Ver. 19. Good is the word of the Lord, &c.,] i.e., It is just and equal; and blessed be God that it is no worse. Quintilian saith of Vespasian, that he was patientissimus veri, one that could endure to be freely and faithfully dealt with. Theodosius honoured Ambrose, and our Henry VIII father Latimer, the more for their plain dealing. So did David the prophet Nathan, and Hezekiah the prophet Isaiah, not raging at his so sharp a message, but patiently receiving it; judging himself, and justifying God. Good men are neither waspish nor sullen, when they are either chid or beaten by “the father of their spirits”; but patiently hold their backs to the stripes of a displeased mercy. And he said, Is it not good? &c.] Is it not a mercy that I may escape that which my posterity shall suffer? He thankfully acknowledgeth a mixture, and that the judgment now denounced was not “an evil, an only evil,” as Ezekiel 7:5.
Ver. 20. How he made a pool and a conduit.] Of these, see 2 Kings 18:17 Ne 3:15 2Ch 32:4,30.
Ver. 21. And Hezekiah slept, &c.] He was most honourably buried, (2 Chronicles 32:33) placed above all the house of David, as he exceeded them all in virtue. And Manasseh his son reigned in his stead.] A degenerate plant of so noble a vine. Heroum filii noxae. Sic Caligula fuit optimi viri Germanici filius; sic Antonini, Commodus ille bipedum nequissimus.