2 Kings 20:10-20

10 Hezekiah answered, "It's easy to have the shadow go forward ten steps! Have it go back ten steps."

11 Isaiah prayed to the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back ten steps on the stairway set up by King Ahaz.

12 About that same time the king of Babylonia, Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, heard that King Hezekiah had been sick, so he sent him a letter and a present.

13 Hezekiah welcomed the messengers and showed them his wealth - his silver and gold, his spices and perfumes, and all his military equipment. There was nothing in his storerooms or anywhere in his kingdom that he did not show them.

14 Then the prophet Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked, "Where did these men come from and what did they say to you?" Hezekiah answered, "They came from a very distant country, from Babylonia."

15 "What did they see in the palace?" "They saw everything. There is nothing in the storerooms that I didn't show them."

16 Isaiah then told the king, "The Lord Almighty says that

17 a time is coming when everything in your palace, everything that your ancestors have stored up to this day, will be carried off to Babylonia. Nothing will be left. ¹

18 Some of your own direct descendants will be taken away and made eunuchs to serve in the palace of the king of Babylonia." ²

19 King Hezekiah understood this to mean that there would be peace and security during his lifetime, so he replied, "The message you have given me from the Lord is good."

20 Everything else that King Hezekiah did, his brave deeds, and an account of how he built a reservoir and dug a tunnel to bring water into the city, are all recorded in [The History of the Kings of Judah.]

2 Kings 20:10-20 Meaning and Commentary

In this chapter is an account of Hezekiah's sickness, and of the means of his recovery, and of the sign given of it, 2 Kings 20:1 of the king of Babylon's congratulatory letter to him upon it, when he showed to the messengers that brought it his treasures, in the pride and vanity of his heart, 2 Kings 20:12 for which he was reproved by the prophet Isaiah, and was humbled, and submitted to the sentence pronounced on his house, 2 Kings 20:14, and the chapter is concluded with his reign and death, 2 Kings 20:20.

Cross References

• 1. 20.17 2 K 24.13;2 Chronicles 36.10.
• 2. 20.18 2 K 24.14, 15;Daniel 1.1-7.

Footnotes

• [a]. steps; [or] degrees.
• [b]. steps; [or] degrees.
• [c]. steps; [or] degrees.
• [d]. stairway; [or] sundial. [Archaeological evidence suggests that the stairway referred to in this passage was one specially constructed to tell time.]