King Hezekiah was a good king. He did what was right before God like king David and he was well known as one who trusted the Lord God. It was not easy to trust God when an enemy as vicious as Assyria, which destroyed the northern kingdom Israel, was besieging
Judah. Yet King Hezekiah turned to God in prayer and he beseeched Isaiah to also pray for the kingdom. And God hearkened to his prayers. Consequently, God destroyed the army of Assyria and sent them back to their homeland.
Then he became very ill and was told to be ready to depart from this earth. Hezekiah’s response seemed not so consistent with one who trusted God explicitly. He in fact cried out to God to remember his good deeds and he turned to the wall and sulked. Here is a suggestion of a possible attitude problem and a response that projected a spirit of entitlement; he was reminding God of all his good deeds and that he was entitled to a better deal than to die at an early age.
In spite of this, God extended grace and mercy to him and allowed him to recover and to live on for another fifteen years.
It was during this extra fifteen years that Manasseh was born and he became king at the age of twelve. King Manasseh was the worst king of all in Judah; he not only worshipped idols, he rebuilt the Asherah poles, practiced divination, consulted mediums, extended worship to the stars and sun, caused his son to be burned up and was even worse than all the kings of the Amorites. Manasseh shed innocent blood and he reigned in such an evil way for fifty-five years. Although he did repent in the later part of his life, his reign caused God to be determined to punish Judah in the same manner that He punished Israel.
If king Hezekiah had died without the extra fifteen years, Manasseh would not have been born. Hezekiah could have died as a king with a good reputation, as one who trusted God explicitly and Manasseh would not be around for fifty-five years with apostasy and an evil reign.
Additionally, after recovering from his illness, king Hezekiah welcomed the envoys from Babylon and showed them all his treasures. The prophet Isaiah told him that all these treasures would be taken away to Babylon in the future when the Babylonians conquer Judah. Surprisingly, king Hezekiah was unmoved by this statement; he seemed indifferent to this revelation and concluded that it was good, as long as there was peace during his reign. Here again, there seemed to be an expression of self-centredness, without much concern for what would happen to his descendants and to the kingdom of Judah in the future. It seemed that Hezekiah was also unconcerned for the glory of God and God’s reputation. For this prophesied future would mean God’s kingdom Judah would be conquered and Jerusalem, the place where God’s temple dwelled, would be overrun.
Before his illness, as he prayed to God to defend the city against Assyria, Hezekiah seemed to be very concerned that the Assyrian officials were belittling the reputation of the one true God. Here again, one wonders if Hezekiah were to die in his illness, this episode with the Babylonian envoys would not have taken place.
We see that it is very easy to have a sense of entitlement towards God and we expect God to bless us because we have served him well and we become upset and sulky when negative things happen to our lives, whether it be illness, relationship problems or financial problem. We must acknowledge that all that we are and all that we can accomplish as believers are through the grace and mercy of God. As servants of God, any good we do is to be expected of servants and we should not carry this sense of entitlement in our lives.
Not accepting God’s decisions for our lives and clamouring for what we desire may not necessarily be a good thing when we get what we want. King Hezekiah would have been spared of leaving a legacy with king Manasseh doing evil for fifty-five years and his lack of vigilance of showing all his treasures to a potential formidable enemy of the future. Manasseh’s evil reign was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’; God decided to terminate Judah in the same way He terminated Israel and Manasseh was a major contributing factor that sealed this decision.
King Josiah, the grandson of king Hezekiah, was a very good king and well known for his spiritual reforms for Judah. He not only destroyed all the negative paraphernalia of idol worship set up by King Manasseh, he also desecrated them and sought to ensure that they did not make a comeback. In the eighteenth year of his reign, he was given a copy of the Law found in the temple. King Josiah was alarmed by what he read in the law and he knew that the people had sinned greatly against God. So he humbled himself before God and led his people in the same direction. Even though he was told by the prophetess that God would not punish the nation during his reign, king Josiah did not respond like his grandfather in an indifferent manner. He continued his reforms, desecrating the altar at Bethel and instituting a great Passover.
King Josiah was described as one whose heart was tender to the Word of God expressed in the Law. He was not indifferent to what he read in the Law and he was certainly moved to take remedial actions and humbled himself before God and encouraged his people to do likewise.
This is a wonderful attitude to nurture. We must be open, sensitive and teachable to the Word of God. As we hear His Word during Worship, during reading and meditations of Scripture, do we receive them as His Word. Are we doers of the Word or just hearers only? One must not be over-familiar with God’s Word to a point of being indifferent; or even worse, to a point of being hardened in our hearts to what God has to say and reveal. For Israel, Judah and their kings, God sent His Word again and again through His prophets but they would not listen. Are we truly hearing and listening to His Word and what He is communicating to us in these days?