_AN OLD TESTAMENT BELIEVER'S SICK-BED; OR, THE DIFFERENCE CHRIST HAS
MADE._
ISAIAH xxxviii.; xxxix. (DATE UNCERTAIN).
To the great national drama of Jerusalem's deliverance, there have been
added two scenes of a personal kind, relating to her king. Chaps.
xxxviii. and xxxix. are the narrative of the sore sickness and recovery
of King Hezekiah, and of the embassy which Merodach-baladan sent him,
and how he received the embassy. The date of these events is difficult
to determine. If, with Canon Cheyne, we believe in an invasion of Judah
by Sargon in 711, we shall be tempted to refer them, as he does, to that
date--the more so that the promise of fifteen additional years made to
Hezekiah in 711, the fifteenth year of his reign, would bring it up to
the twenty-nine, at which it is set in 2 Kings xviii. 2. That, however,
would flatly contradict the statement both of Isaiah xxxviii. 1 and 2
Kings xx. 1 that Hezekiah's sickness fell in the days of the invasion of
Judah by Sennacherib; that is, after 705. But to place the promise of
fifteen additional years to Hezekiah after 705, when we know he had been
reigning for at least twenty years, would be to contradict the verse,
just cited, which sums up the years of his reign as twenty-nine. This
is, in fact, one of the instances, in which we must admit our present
inability to elucidate the chronology of this portion of the book of
Isaiah. Mr. Cheyne thinks the editor mistook the siege by Sennacherib
for the siege by Sargon. But as the fact of a siege by Sargon has never
been satisfactorily established, it seems safer to trust the statement
that Hezekiah's sickness occurred in the reign of Sennacherib, and to
allow that there has been an error somewhere in the numbering of the
years. It is remarkable that the name of Merodach-baladan does not help
us to decide between the two dates. There was a Merodach-baladan in
rebellion against Sargon in 710, and there was one in rebellion against
Sennacherib in 705. It has not yet been put past doubt as to whether
these two are the same. The essential is that there was a
Merodach-baladan alive, real or only claimant king of Babylon, about
705, and that he was likely at that date to treat with Hezekiah, being
himself in revolt against Assyria. Unable to come to any decision about
the conflicting numbers, we leave uncertain the date of the events
recounted in chaps. xxxviii., xxxix. The original form of the narrative,
but wanting Hezekiah's hymn, is given in 2 Kings xx.[72]
[72] Isa. xxxviii., xxxix., has evidently been abridged from 2 Kings xx.
and in some points has to be corrected by the latter. Chap. xxxviii. 21,
22, of course, must be brought forward before ver. 7.
* * * * *
We have given to this chapter the title "An Old Testament Believer's
Deathbed; or, The Difference Christ has made," not because this is the
only spiritual suggestion of the story, but because it seems to the
present expositor as if this were the predominant feeling left in
Christian minds after reading for us the story. In Hezekiah's conduct
there is much of courage for us to admire, as there are other elements
to warn us; but when we have read the whole story, we find ourselves
saying, What a difference Christ has made to me! Take Hezekiah from two
points of view, and then let the narrative itself bring out this
difference.
Here is a man, who, although he lived more than twenty-five centuries
ago is brought quite close to our side. Death, who herds all men into
his narrow fold, has crushed this Hebrew king so close to us that we can
feel his very heart beat. Hezekiah's hymn gives us entrance into the
fellowship of his sufferings. By the figures he so skilfully uses he
makes us feel that pain, the shortness of life, the suddenness of death
and the utter blackness beyond were to him just what they are to us. And
yet this kinship in pain, and fear and ignorance only makes us the more
aware of something else which we have and he has not.
Again, here is a man to whom religion gave all it could give without the
help of Christ; a believer in the religion out of which Christianity
sprang, perhaps the most representative Old Testament believer we could
find, for Hezekiah was at once the collector of what was best in its
literature and the reformer of what was worst in its worship; a man
permeated by the past piety of his Church, and enjoying as his guide and
philosopher the boldest prophet who ever preached the future
developments of its spirit. Yet when we put Hezekiah and all that Isaiah
can give him on one side, we shall again feel for ourselves on the other
what a difference Christ has made.
This difference a simple study of the narrative will make clear.
I.
_In those days Hezekiah became sick unto death._ They were critical days
for Judah--no son born to the king (2 Kings xxi. 1), the work of
reformation in Judah not yet consolidated, the big world tossing in
revolution all around. Under God, everything depended on an experienced
ruler; and this one, without a son to succeed him, was drawing near to
death. We will therefore judge Hezekiah's strong passion for life to
have been patriotic as well as selfish. He stood in the midtime of his
days, with a faithfully executed work behind him and so good an example
of kinghood that for years Isaiah had not expressed his old longing for
the Messiah. The Lord had counted Hezekiah righteous; that twin-sign had
been given him which more than any other assured an Israelite of
Jehovah's favour--a good conscience and success in his work. Well,
therefore, might he cry when Isaiah brought him the sentence of death,
_Ah, now, Jehovah, remember, I beseech Thee, how I have walked before
Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good
in Thine eyes. And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping._
There is difficulty in the strange story which follows. The dial was
probably a pyramid of steps on the top of which stood a short pillar or
obelisk. When the sun rose in the morning, the shadow cast by the pillar
would fall right down the western side of the pyramid to the bottom of
the lowest step. As the sun ascended the shadow would shorten, and creep
up inch by inch to the foot of the pillar. After noon, as the sun began
to descend to the west, the shadow would creep down the eastern steps;
and the steps were so measured that each one marked a certain degree of
time. It was probably afternoon when Isaiah visited the king. The shadow
was _going down_ according to the regular law; the sign consisted in
causing the shadow to shrink up the steps again. Such a reversal of the
ordinary progress of the shadow may have been caused in either of two
ways: by the whole earth being thrown back on its axis, which we may
dismiss as impossible, or by the occurrence of the phenomenon known as
refraction. Refraction is a disturbance in the atmosphere by which the
rays of the sun are bent or deflected from their natural course into an
angular one. In this case, instead of shooting straight over the top of
the obelisk, the rays of the sun had been bent down and inward, so that
the shadow fled up to the foot of the obelisk. There are many things in
the air which might cause this; it is a phenomenon often observed; and
the Scriptural narratives imply that on this occasion it was purely
local (2 Chron. xxxii. 31). Had we only the narrative in the book of
Isaiah, the explanation would have been easy. Isaiah, having given the
sentence of death, passed the dial in the palace courtyard, and saw the
shadow lying ten degrees farther up than it should have done, the sight
of which coincided with the inspiration that the king would not die; and
Isaiah went back to announce to Hezekiah his reprieve, and naturally
call his attention to this as a sign, to which a weak and desponding man
would be glad to cling. But the original narrative in the book of Kings
tells us that Isaiah offered Hezekiah a choice of signs: that the shadow
should either advance or retreat, and that the king chose the latter.
The sign came in answer to Isaiah's prayer, and is narrated to us as a
special Divine interposition. But a medicine accompanied it, and
Hezekiah recovered through a poultice of figs laid on the boil from
which he suffered.
While recognising for our own faith the uselessness of a discussion on
this sign offered to a sick man, let us not miss the moral lessons of so
touching a narrative, nor the sympathy with the sick king which it is
fitted to produce, and which is our best introduction to the study of
his hymn.
Isaiah had performed that most awful duty of doctor or minister the
telling of a friend that he must die. Few men have not in their personal
experience a key to the prophet's feelings on this occasion. The leaving
of a dear friend for the last time; the coming out into the sunlight
which he will nevermore share with us; the passing by the dial; the
observation of the creeping shadow; the feeling that it is only a
question of time, the passion of prayer into which that feeling throws
us that God may be pleased to put off the hour and spare our friend; the
invention, that is born, like prayer, of necessity: a cure we suddenly
remember; the confidence which prayer and invention bring between them;
the return with the joyful news; the giving of the order about the
remedy--cannot many in their degree rejoice with Isaiah in such an
experience? But he has, too, a conscience of God and God's work to which
none of us may pretend: he knows how indispensable to that work his
royal pupil is, and out of this inspiration he prophesies the will of
the Lord that Hezekiah shall recover.
Then the king, with a sick man's sacramental longing, asks a sign. Out
through the window the courtyard is visible; there stands the same
step-dial of Ahaz, the long pillar on the top of the steps, the shadow
creeping down them through the warm afternoon sunshine. To the sick man
it must have been like the finger of death coming nearer. _Shall the
shadow_, asks the prophet, _go forward ten steps or go back ten steps?
It is easy_, says the king, alarmed, _for the shadow to go down ten
steps_. Easy for it to go down! Has he not been feeling that all the
afternoon? "Do not," we can fancy him saying, with the gasp of a man who
has been watching its irresistible descent--"do not let that black thing
come farther; but _let the shadow go backward ten steps_."
The shadow returned, and Hezekiah got his sign. But when he was well, he
used it for more than a sign. He read a great spiritual lesson in it.
The time, which upon the dial had been apparently thrown back, had in
his life been really thrown back; and God had given him his years to
live over again. The past was to be as if it had never been, its guilt
and weakness wiped out. _Thou hast cast behind Thy back all my sins._ As
a newborn child Hezekiah felt himself uncommitted by the past, not a
sin's-doubt nor a sin's-cowardice in him, with the heart of a little
child, but yet with the strength and dignity of a grown man, for it is
the magic of tribulation to bring innocence with experience. _I shall go
softly_, or literally, _with dignity or caution, as in a procession, all
my years because of the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, upon such things
do men live; and altogether in them is the life of my spirit.... Behold,
for perfection was it bitter to me,_ so _bitter_. And through it all
there breaks a new impression of God. _What shall I say? He hath both
spoken with me, and Himself hath done it._ As if afraid to impute his
profits to the mere experience itself, _In them is the life of my
spirit_, he breaks in with _Yea, Thou hast recovered me; yea, Thou hast
made me to live_. And then, by a very pregnant construction, he adds,
_Thou hast loved my soul out of the pit of destruction; that is, of
course, loved, and by Thy love lifted_, but he uses the one word loved,
and gives it the active force of _drawing_ or _lifting_. In this lay the
head and glory of Hezekiah's experience. He was a religious man, an
enthusiast for the Temple services, and had all his days as his friend
the prophet whose heart was with the heart of God; but it was not
through any of these means God came near him, not till he lay sick and
had turned his face to the wall. Then indeed he cried, _What shall I
say? He hath both spoken with me, and Himself hath done it!_
Forgiveness, a new peace, a new dignity and a visit from the living God!
Well might Hezekiah exclaim that it was only through a near sense of
death that men rightly learned to live. _Ah, Lord, it is upon these
things that men live; and wholly therein is the life of my spirit._ It
is by these things men live, and therein I have learned for the first
time what life is!
In all this at least we cannot go beyond Hezekiah, and he stands an
example to the best Christian among us. Never did a man bring richer
harvest from the fields of death. Everything that renders life really
life--peace, dignity, a new sense of God and of His forgiveness--these
were the spoils which Hezekiah won in his struggle with the grim enemy.
He had snatched from death a new meaning for life; he had robbed death
of its awful pomp, and bestowed this on careless life. Hereafter he
should walk with the step and the mien of a conqueror--_I shall go in
solemn procession all my years because of the bitterness of my soul_--or
with the carefulness of a worshipper, who sees at the end of his course
the throne of the Most High God, and makes all his life an ascent
thither.
This is the effect which every great sorrow and struggle has upon a
noble soul. Come to the streets of the living. Who are these, whom we
can so easily distinguish from the crowd by their firmness of step and
look of peace, walking softly where some spurt and some halt, holding,
without rest or haste, the tenor of their way, as if they marched to
music heard by their ears alone? These are they which have come out of
great tribulation. They have brought back into time the sense of
eternity. They know how near the invisible worlds lie to this one, and
the sense of the vast silences stills all idle laughter in their hearts.
The life that is to other men chance or sport, strife or hurried flight,
has for them its allotted distance; is for them a measured march, a
constant worship. _For the bitterness of their soul they go in
procession all their years._ Sorrow's subjects, they are our kings;
wrestlers with death, our veterans: and to the rabble armies of society
they set the step of a nobler life.
Count especially the young man blessed, who has looked into the grave
before he has faced the great temptations of the world, and has not
entered the race of life till he has learned his stride in the race with
death. They tell us that on the outside of civilisation, where men carry
their lives in their hands, a most thorough politeness and dignity are
bred, in spite of the want of settled habits, by the sense of danger
alone; and we know how battle and a deadly climate, pestilence or the
perils of the sea have sent back to us the most careless of our youth
with a self-possession and regularity of mind, that it would have been
hopeless to expect them to develop amid the trivial trials of village
life.
But the greatest duty of us men is not to seek nor to pray for such
combats with death. It is when God has found these for us to remain
true to our memories of them. The hardest duty of life is to remain true
to our psalms of deliverance, as it is certainly life's greatest
temptation to fall away from the sanctity of sorrow, and suffer the
stately style of one who knows how near death hovers to his line of
march to degenerate into the broken step of a wanton life. This was
Hezekiah's temptation, and this is why the story of his fall in the
thirty-ninth chapter is placed beside his vows in the thirty-eighth--to
warn us how easy it is for those who have come conquerors out of a
struggle with death to fall a prey to common life. He had said, _I will
walk softly all my years_; but how arrogantly and rashly he carried
himself when Merodach-baladan sent the embassy to congratulate him on
his recovery. It was not with the dignity of the veteran, but with a
childish love of display, perhaps also with the too restless desire to
secure an alliance, that he showed the envoys _his storehouse, the
silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all the
house of his armour and all that was found in his treasures. There was
nothing which Hezekiah did not show them in his house nor in all his
dominion._ In this behaviour there was neither caution nor sobriety, and
we cannot doubt but that Hezekiah felt the shame of it when Isaiah
sternly rebuked him and threw upon all his house the dark shadow of
captivity.
It is easier to win spoils from death than to keep them untarnished by
life. Shame burns warm in a soldier's heart when he sees the arms he
risked life to win rusting for want of a little care. Ours will not burn
less if we discover that the strength of character we brought with us
out of some great tribulation has been slowly weakened by subsequent
self-indulgence of vanity. How awful to have fought for character with
death only to squander it upon life! It is well to keep praying, "My
God, suffer me not to forget my bonds and my bitterness. In my hours of
wealth and ease, and health and peace, by the memory of Thy judgements
deliver me, good Lord."
II.
So far then Hezekiah is an example and warning to us all. With all our
faith in Christ, none of us, in the things mentioned, may hope to excel
this Old Testament believer. But notice very particularly that
Hezekiah's faith and fortitude are profitable only for this life. It is
when we begin to think, What of the life to come? that we perceive the
infinite difference Christ has made.
We know what Hezekiah felt when his back was turned on death, and he
came up to life again. But what did he feel when he faced the other way,
and his back was to life? With his back to life and facing deathwards,
Hezekiah saw nothing, that was worth hoping for. To him to die was to
leave God behind him, to leave the face of God as surely as he was
leaving the face of man. _I said, I shall not see Jah, Jah in the land
of the living; I shall gaze upon man no more with the inhabitants of the
world._ The beyond was not to Hezekiah absolute nothingness, for he had
his conceptions, the popular conceptions of his time, of a sort of
existence that was passed by those who had been men upon earth. The
imagination of his people figured the gloomy portals of a nether
world--_Sheol_, the _Hollow_ (Dante's "hollow realm"), or perhaps the
_Craving_--into which death herds the shades of men, bloodless,
voiceless, without love or hope or aught that makes life worth living.
With such an existence beyond, to die to life here was to Hezekiah like
as when a weaver rolls up the finished web. My life may be a pattern for
others to copy, a banner for others to fight under, but for me it is
finished. Death has cut it from the loom. Or it was like going into
captivity. _Mine age is removed and is carried away from me into exile,
like a shepherd's tent_--exile which to a Jew was the extreme of
despair, implying as it did absence from God, and salvation and the
possibility of worship. _Sheol cannot praise Thee; death cannot
celebrate Thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy
faithfulness._
Of this then at the best Hezekiah was sure: a respite of fifteen
years--nothing beyond. Then the shadow would not return upon the dial;
and as the king's eyes closed upon the dear faces of his friends, his
sense of the countenance of God would die too, and his soul slip into
the abyss, hopeless of God's faithfulness.
It is this awful anticlimax, which makes us feel the difference Christ
has made. This saint stood in almost the clearest light that revelation
cast before Jesus. He was able to perceive in suffering a meaning and
derive from it a strength not to be exceeded by any Christian. Yet his
faith is profitable for this life alone. For him character may wrestle
with death over and over again, and grow the stronger for every grapple,
but death wins the last throw.
It may be said that Hezekiah's despair of the future is simply the
morbid thoughts of a sick man or the exaggerated fancies of a poet. "We
must not," it is urged, "define a poet's language with the strictness of
a theology." True, and we must also make some allowance for a man dying
prematurely in the midst of his days. But if this hymn is only poetry,
it would have been as easy to poetise on the opposite possibilities
across the grave. So quick an imagination as Hezekiah's could not have
failed to take advantage of the slightest scintilla of glory that
pierced the cloud. It must be that his eye saw none, for all his poetry
droops the other way. We seek in heaven for praise in its fulness; there
we know God's servants shall see Him face to face. But of this Hezekiah
had not the slightest imagination; he anxiously prayed that he might
recover _to strike the stringed instruments all the days of his life in
the house of Jehovah. The living, the living, he praiseth thee, as I do
this day; the father to the children shall make known Thy truth._ But
_they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy faithfulness_.
Now compare all this with the Psalms of Christian hope; with the faith
that fills Paul; with his ardour who says, _To me to depart is far
better_; with the glory which John beholds with open face: the hosts of
the redeemed praising God and walking in the light of His face, all the
geography of that country laid down, and the plan of the new Jerusalem
declared to the very fashion of her stones; with the audacity since of
Christian art and song: the rapture of Watts' hymns and the exhilaration
of Wesley's praise as they contemplate death; and with the joyful and
exact anticipations of so many millions of common men as they turn their
faces to the wall. In all these, in even the Book of the Revelation,
there is of course a great deal of pure fancy. But imagination never
bursts in anywhither till fact has preceded. And it is just because
there is a great fact standing between us and Hezekiah that the pureness
of our faith and the richness of our imagination of immortality differ
so much from his. That fact is Jesus Christ, His resurrection and
ascension. It is He who has made all the difference and brought life and
immortality to light.
And we shall know the difference if we lose our faith in that fact. For
_except Christ be risen from the dead_ and gone before to a country
which derives all its reality and light for our imagination from that
Presence, which once walked with us in the flesh, there remains for us
only Hezekiah's courage to make the best of a short reprieve, only
Hezekiah's outlook into Hades when at last we turn our faces to the
wall. But to be stronger and purer for having met with death, as he was,
only that we must afterwards succumb, with our purity and our strength,
to death--this is surely to be, as Paul said, _of all men the most
miserable_.
Better far to own the power of an endless life, which Christ has sealed
to us, and translate Hezekiah's experience into the new calculus of
immortality. If to have faced death as he did was to inherit dignity and
peace and sense of power, what glory of kingship and queenship must sit
upon those faces in the other world who have been at closer quarters
still with the King of terrors, and through Christ their strength have
spoiled him of his sting and victory! To have felt the worst of death
and to have triumphed--this is the secret of the peaceful hearts,
unfaltering looks and faces of glory, _which pass in solemn procession
of worship_ through all eternity before the throne of God.
* * * * *
We shall consider the Old Testament views of a future life and
resurrection more fully in chaps. xxvii. and xxx. of this volume.