Isa. 37:1-7, Hezekiah Calls Out to the LORD’s Prophet

·       2 Ki. 19:1-4: Hezekiah’s message to Isaiah.

Having heard the report of his advisors, Hezekiah humbled himself and went to the temple.  Remember how Hezekiah, in the first month of his reign, began to restore the temple.  It is now several years later, but he still has the attitude that he must first go to the LORD!  Torn clothes and sackcloth are not the normal apparel of kings; but it is always the “heart apparel” of those who seek God.  Oh, that I might be that man!

It was intended that the King would hear from God through the mouth of the prophet.  But Hezekiah was not about to leave the temple, the “house of the LORD,” the LORD’s “resting place” (Ps. 132:8).  One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple (Ps. 27:4).  So Hezekiah stayed at the temple and sent Eliakim and Shebna to inquire of Isaiah.

You might say from v3 that Hezekiah “has a way with words.”  But I would suggest that these are words that come from deep within a burdened heart.  Cast your burden upon the LORD, and He shall sustain you (Psa. 55:22a).  But I would also say that Hezekiah came with a “strong argument.”  I like to call it “leverage” with the LORD.  Isaiah was the prophet through whom the LORD said, “I, even I, am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11); and “I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images” (Isa. 42:8).  Hezekiah knows this; he has listened to God’s prophet.  So his prayer is perfect: perhaps when the LORD hears what the Rabshakeh said, He will rebuke those words.

·       2 Ki. 19:5-9: Isaiah’s response to Hezekiah.

Isaiah’s answer is fairly brief, and it seems that he has already heard from the LORD; it doesn’t take long to answer Hezekiah. 

Do not be afraid …

the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.

Oh, how God stands with His people!  The Rabshakeh made it a point to not only threaten Hezekiah; he proclaimed his terrifying message to all the people on the wall who would eat their own fecal matter and drink their own urine (Isa. 36:12).  But he is threatening the people whom God calls the “apple” or “pupil” of His eye.  A later prophet, Zechariah, would tell the post-exile people, “For thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye” (Zech. 2:8).  That Messianic prophecy is a fulfillment of the promise in the great Song of Moses (Deut. 32), where God reminds Israel how He “found him in a desert land and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye” (Dt. 32:10).  David prayed for this: “Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me under the shadow of Your wings” (Psa. 17:8).  Hezekiah was on solid ground.  And He knew it.  If we live for God’s glorious name, if we “seek first His kingdom,” we too will be on solid ground when we cry out to our Lord!