2 Kings 18:1-8

Hezekiah rules Judah

1 Hezekiah, Ahaz's son, became king of Judah in the third year of Israel's King Hoshea, Elah's son.

2 He was 25 years old when he became king, and he ruled twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi; she was Zechariah's daughter.

3 Hezekiah did what was right in the LORD's eyes, just as his ancestor David had done.

4 He removed the shrines. He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the sacred pole. He crushed the bronze snake that Moses made, because up to that point the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (The snake was named Nehushtan.)

5 Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, Israel's God. There was no one like him among all of Judah's kings—not before him and not after him.

6 He clung to the LORD and never deviated from him. He kept the commandments that the LORD had commanded Moses.

7 The LORD was with Hezekiah; he succeeded at everything he tried. He rebelled against Assyria's king and wouldn't serve him.

8 He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territories, from watchtower to fortified city.

2 Kings 18:1-8 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO 2 KINGS 18

This chapter begins with the good reign of Hezekiah king of Judah, the reformation he made in the kingdom, and the prosperity that attended him when Israel was carried captive, 2Ki 18:1-12 and gives an account of the siege of Jerusalem by the king of Assyria, and of the distress Hezekiah was in, and the hard measures he was obliged to submit unto, 2Ki 18:13-18 and of the reviling and blasphemous speech of Rabshakeh, one of the generals of the king of Assyria, urging the Jews to a revolt from their king, 2Ki 18:19-37.

Footnotes

• [a]. Cf 2 Chron 29:1 Abijah
• [b]. Heb asherah, perhaps an object devoted to the goddess Asherah