The destruction of the Assyrian host delivered Hezekiah from an inner
as well as an outer enemy, for he had opponents in Jerusalem, among
them the high priest Shebnah. (62) Shebnah had a more numerous
following in the city than the king himself, (63) and they and their
leader had favored peace with Sennacherib. Supported by Joah, another
influential personage, Shebnah had fastened a letter to a dart, and
shot the dart into the Assyrian camp. The contents of the letter were:
"We and the whole people of Israel wish to conclude peace with thee,
but Hezekiah and Isaiah will not permit it." (64) Shebnah's influence
was so powerful that Hezekiah began to show signs of yielding. Had it
not been for the prophet Isaiah, the king would have submitted to
Sennacherib's demands.
Shebnah's treachery and his other sins did not go unpunished. When he
and his band of adherents left Jerusalem to join the Assyrians, the
angel Gabriel closed the gate as soon as Shebnah had passed beyond it,
and so he was separated from his followers. To the inquiry of
Sennacherib about the many sympathizers he had written of, he could
give no reply but that they had changed their mind. The Assyrian king
thought Shebnah had made sport of him. He, therefore, ordered his
attendants to bore a hole through his heels, tie him to the tail of a
horse by them, and spur the horse on to run until Shebnah was dragged
to death. (65)
The unexpected victory won by Hezekiah over the Assyrians, to whom the
kingdom of Samaria had fallen a prey but a short time before, showed
how wrong they had been who had mocked at Hezekiah for his frugal ways.
A king whose meal consisted of a handful of vegetables could hardly be
called a dignified ruler, they had said. These critics would gladly
have seen his kingdom pass into the hands of Pekah, the king of
Samaria, whose dessert, to speak of nothing else, consisted of forty
seim of young pigeons. (66)
In view of all the wonders God had done for him, it was unpardonable
that Hezekiah did not feel himself prompted at least to sing a song of
praise to God. Indeed, when the prophet Isaiah urged him to it, he
refused, saying that the study of the Torah, to which he devoted
himself with assiduous zeal, was a substitute for direct expressions of
gratitude. Besides, he thought God's miracles would become known to the
world without action on his part, (67) in such ways as these: After the
destruction of the Assyrian army, when the Jews searched the abandoned
camps, they found Pharaoh the king of Egypt and the Ethiopian king
Tirhakah. These kings had hastened to the aid of Hezekiah, and the
Assyrians had taken them captive and clapped them in irons, in which
they were languishing when the Jews came upon them. Liberated by
Hezekiah, the two rulers returned to their respective realms, spreading
the report of the greatness of God everywhere. And again, all the
vassal troops in Sennacherib's army, set free by Hezekiah, accepted the
Jewish faith, and on their way home they proclaimed the kingdom of God
in Egypt and in many other lands. (68)
By failing in gratitude Hezekiah lost a great opportunity. The Divine
plan had been to make Hezekiah the Messiah, and Sennacherib was to be
God and Magog. Justice opposed this plan, addressing God thus: "O Lord
of the world! David, king of Israel, who sang so many songs and hymns
of praise to Thee, him Thou didst not make the Messiah, and now Thou
wouldst confer the distinction upon Hezekiah, who has no word of praise
for Thee in spite of the manifold wonders Thou hast wrought for him?"
Then the earth appeared before God, and said: "Lord of the world! I
will song Thee a song in place of this righteous man; make him to be
the Messiah," and the earth forthwith intoned a song of praise.
Likewise spake the Prince of the World: (69) "Lord of the world! Do the
will of this righteous man." But a voice from heaven announced: "This
is my secret, this is my secret." And again, when the prophet exclaimed
sorrowfully, "Woe is me! How long, O Lord, how long!" the voice
replied: "The time of the Messiah will arrive when the 'treacherous
dealers and the treacherous dealers' shall have come." (70)
The sin committed by Hezekiah asleep, he had to atone for awake. If he
refused to devote a song of praise to God for his escape from the
Assyrian peril, he could not refrain from doing it after his recovery
from the dangerous sickness that befell him. (71) This sickness was a
punishment for another sin beside ingratitude. He had "peeled off" the
gold from the Temple, and sent it to the king of the Assyrians;
therefore the disease that afflicted him caused his skin to "peel off."
(72) Moreover, this malady of Hezekiah's was brought upon him by God,
to afford an opportunity for the king and the prophet Isaiah to come
close to each other. The two had had a dispute on a point of etiquette.
(73) The king adduced as a precedent the action of Elijah, who "went to
show himself unto Ahab," and demanded that Isaiah, too, should appear
before him. The prophet, on the other hand, modelled his conduct after
Elisha's, who permitted the kings of Israel, and Judah, and Edom, to
come to him. But God settled the dispute by afflicting Hezekiah with
sickness, and then He bade Isaiah go to the king and pay the visit due
to the sick. The prophet did the bidding of God. When he appeared in
the presence of the ailing king, he said: "Set thine house in order,
for thou wilt die in this world and not live in the next" a fate
which Hezekiah incurred because he had failed to take unto himself a
wife and bring forth posterity. The king's defense, that he had
preferred a celibate's life because he had seen in the holy spirit that
he was destined to have impious children, the prophet did not consider
valid. He rebutted it with the words: "Why does thou concern thyself
with the secrets of the All-Merciful? Thou hast but to do thy duty. God
will do whatsoever it pleases Him." Thereupon Hezekiah asked the
daughter of the prophet in marriage, saying: "Perchance my merits
joined to thine will cause my children to be virtuous." But Isaiah
rejected the proposal of marriage, because he knew that the decree of
God ordaining the king's death was unalterable. Whereupon the king:
"Thou son of thus has it been transmitted to me from the house of my
ancestor: (74) Even if a sharp sword rests at the very throat of a man,
he may yet not refrain from uttering a prayer for mercy." (75)
And the king was right. Though death had been decreed against him, his
prayer averted it. In his prayer he supplicated God to keep him alive
for the sake of the merits of his ancestors, who had built the Temple
and brought many proselytes into the Jewish fold, and for the sake of
his own merits, for, he said, "I searched out all the two hundred and
forty-eight members of my body which Thou didst give me, and I found
none which I had used in a manner contrary to Thy will." (76)
His prayer was heard. God added fifteen years to his life, but He made
him understand very clearly, that he owed the mercy solely to the
merits of David, not at all to his own, as Hezekiah fondly believed.
(77) Before Isaiah left the court of the palace, God instructed him to
return to the king, and announce his recovery to him. Isaiah feared
lest Hezekiah should place little trust in his words, as he had but a
short while before predicted his swiftly approaching end. But God
reassured the prophet. In his modesty and piety, the king would harbor
no doubt derogatory to the prophet's trustworthiness. (78) The remedy
employed by Isaiah, a cake of figs applied to the boil, increased the
wonder of Hezekiah's recovery, for it was apt to aggravate the malady
rather than alleviate it. (79)
A number of miracles besides were connected with the recovery of
Hezekiah. In itself it was remarkable, as being the first case of a
recovery on record. Previously illness had been inevitably followed by
death. Before he had fallen sick, Hezekiah himself had implored God to
change this order of nature. He held that sickness followed by
restoration to health would induce men to do penance. God had replied:
"Thou art right, and the new order shall be begun with thee." (80)
Furthermore, the day of Hezekiah's recovery was marked by the great
miracle that the sun shone ten hours longer than its wonted time. The
remotest lands were amazed thereat, and Baladan, the ruler of Babylon,
was prompted by it to send an embassy to Hezekiah, which was to carry
his felicitations to the Jewish king upon his recovery. Baladan, it
should be said by the way, was not the real king of Babylon. The throne
was occupied by his father, whose face had changed into that of a dog.
Therefore the son had to administer the affairs of state, and he was
known by his father's name as well as his own. (81) This Baladan was in
the habit of dining at noon, and then he took a nap until three o'clock
of the afternoon. On the day of Hezekiah's recovery, when he awoke from
his sleep, and saw the sun overhead, he was on the point of having his
guards executed, because he thought they had permitted him to sleep a
whole afternoon and the night following it. He desisted only when he
was informed of Hezekiah's miraculous recovery, and realised that the
God of Hezekiah was greater than his own god, the sun. (82) He at once
set about sending greetings to the Jewish king. His letter read as
follows: "Peace be with Hezekiah, peace with his great God, and peace
with Jerusalem." After the letter was dispatched, it occurred to
Baladan that it had not been composed properly. Mention of Hezekiah had
been made before mention of God. He had the messengers called back, and
ordered another letter to be written, in which the oversight was made
good. As a reward for his punctiliousness, three of his descendants,
Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, and Belshazzar, were appointed by God to
be world monarchs. God said: "Thou didst arise from thy throne, and
didst take three steps to do Me honor, by having thy letter re-written,
therefore will I grant thee three descendants who shall be known from
one end of the world to the other." (83)
The embassy sent by the Babylonian monarch was an act of homage to God
for his miracle-working power. Hezekiah, however, took it to be an act
of homage toward himself, and it had the effect of making him arrogant.
Not only did he eat and drink with the heathen who made up the embassy,
but also, in his haughtiness of mind, he displayed before them all the
treasures which he had captured from Sennacherib, and many other
curiosities besides, among them magnetic iron, a peculiar sort of
ivory, and honey as solid as stone.
What was worse, he had his wife partake of the meal in honor of the
embassy, and, most heinous crime of all, (84) he opened the holy Ark,
and pointing to the tables of law within it, said to the heathen: "With
the help of these we undertake wars and win victories." (85) God sent
Isaiah to reproach Hezekiah for these acts. The king, instead of
confessing his wrong at once, answered the prophet haughtily. (86) Then
Isaiah announced to him that the treasures taken from Sennacherib (87)
would revert to Babylon some time in the future, and his descendants,
Daniel and the three companions of Daniel, would serve the Babylonia
ruler as eunuchs. (88)
Despite his pride in this case, Hezekiah was one of the most pious
kings of Judah. Especially he is deserving of praise for his efforts to
have Hebrew literature put into writing, for it was Hezekiah who had
copies made of the books of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and
Proverbs. (89) On the other hand, he had concealed the books containing
medical remedies. (90)
Great was the mourning over him at his death. No less than thirty-six
thousand men with bared shoulders marched before his bier, and, rarer
distinction still, a scroll of the law was laid upon his bier, for it
was said: "He who rests in this bier, has fulfilled all ordained in
this book." (91) He was buried next to David and Solomon. (92)