Reading: 2 Kings 18-19, Psalm 106

We are on the final stretch of the book of Kings. Following the collapse of the northern kingdom and the rather unfortunate kingship of Ahaz in Judah, the slide from bad to worse gets a halt with the reign of Hezekiah the son of Ahaz. We are not directly told why Hezekiah departs from his father’s policy of playing all sides, but it is at least implied that the fall of the northern kingdom may have been a wake up call to Judah. Hezekiah is only a few years into his reign when Assyria comes and captures Samaria. Assyria was God’s instrument against Samaria, but it will be a different story with Hezekiah and the city of Jerusalem.

Hezekiah rebels against Assyria and refused to serve them or their gods, and sets out on a campaign of major reform. He gets rid of the foreign gods, and even destroys the old shiny serpent that Moses made in the desert way back in the book of Numbers. This plays right into the idea of the son of David who would fulfill the covenant blessings of Israel, and ties all the way back to Genesis 3 and the promise of the descendant of Eve who would crush the serpent’s head. Hezekiah may have been consciously associating himself with that prediction, or it may simply be coincidental, but when we get to the book of the prophet Isaiah (who makes his first appearance in the narrative right here) we will see many of God’s promises begin to coalesce around the person of Hezekiah.

Assyria, not an empire to be defied without consequences, comes and invades Judah, capturing most of its cities, and despite an attempt to buy them off, laying siege to Jerusalem. There is a scene where the heralds of the king of Assyria claim to have been sent by the God of Israel to destroy Jerusalem in response to Hezekiah knocking down the “high places” where the people were worshiping. It appears that the people of Jerusalem understand that this won’t play, since God instructed his people to worship him in his house, first the Tabernacle and then the Temple. The heralds of Assyria were trying to get the people to revolt against Hezekiah, both by religious appeal and by mocking the weakness of their army, but they are having none of it.

The situation for Hezekiah is desperate. He has attempted to be faithful to the God of Israel, but now the army of Assyria is on his doorstep, and there is no chance of the people in Jerusalem defeating them. Hezekiah goes to the Temple in sackcloth, and he asks the prophet Isaiah what God intends to do. Isaiah gives a remarkable response: God will not only deliver Jerusalem, but the king of Assyria will not survive. The following scene is quite a moment in the history of Israel, as God smites 185,000 Assyrians, destroying their army and sending Sennacherib, their king, scurrying home. When he gets there, he is assassinated in the temple of his god by his sons. Judah is not only saved, but the Assyrian Empire is distracted by a succession conflict, and so won’t be bothering them any time soon.

The story of Hezekiah is one of the high points in the book of Kings. It shows how God responds to a righteous king, which is what the author of the book has been looking to show all along. The righteous action of Hezekiah leads to the deliverance of the people. His righteousness is imputed to his people. Unfortunately, most of the kings we have been and will read about are not righteous, but wicked, and that too is imputed to their people. The northern kingdom has already been destroyed because of their bad kings. The south is under constant threat of collapse under a wicked king. Hezekiah will not be the last good king we come to, in fact, he’s not even the best one. But the author of Kings is telling a story that makes clear that in the end, one righteous king is not enough. What Israel needs is a permanent righteous king.