Hezekiah
Judah · 715 – 686 BC · 29 years · 2 Kings 18 – 20; 2 Chronicles 29 – 32; Isaiah 36 – 39
His Story
Ahaz’s son — and his opposite in everything. In the first month of his reign he reopened and cleansed the Temple his father had shut, restored the Passover (inviting even the north), and “he brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made” when Israel began burning incense to it. When Sennacherib of Assyria came with 185,000 men and blasphemous letters, Hezekiah spread the letters before the LORD in the Temple and prayed — and one angel in one night emptied the Assyrian camp. God added fifteen years to his life when he wept at Isaiah’s sentence, and moved the shadow backward on the dial of Ahaz as the sign.
His Sin — How He Displeased the LORD
His lapses are named honestly: he paid Sennacherib tribute stripped from the Temple doors in his early submission (2 Kings 18:14 – 16); and after his recovery, pride entered — he showed Babylon’s envoys all his treasures, and hearing Isaiah’s prophecy that everything, including his sons, would go to Babylon, answered with a selfish relief: “Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19).
The Good He Did
“He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the LORD” (2 Kings 18:5 – 6). Reform, prayer, trust, and tears — he is Scripture’s pattern of a king who prayed in public and wept in private.
The LORD’s verdict
“And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did.”2 Kings 18:3 (KJV)
How His Reign Ended
He died after 29 years, having built the tunnel that still carries the Siloam water through Jerusalem’s rock, and was buried among the chiefest sepulchres of the sons of David, with all Judah honoring him.
Lessons for Believers Today
- Prayer answered by heaven is still the policy of kings: Hezekiah’s method with an impossible army was a letter spread before God and a song in the morning.
- “In my days” is the subtlest selfishness — take the long view for your children’s church. And note: the son of the worst king became the best; your father’s record is not your ceiling.