A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: – If you remember, the last time I was writing in Isaiah, God had graciously, when Hezekiah was at the point of death, granted him a fifteen year extension to his life. It is not surprising that Hezekiah wants to express his praise to God in testimony! Do we always give God appropriate praise for all His blessings to us?
Hezekiah begins ……I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. – I think that in this context ‘Sheol’ means the place of the dead, the unknown place after death to which all go rather than ‘Hell’, the place of punishment.
I said, I shall not see the LORD, the LORD in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world.
My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent;
like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end;
I calmed myself until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. – apparently ‘distress of the mind’ was idiomatically likened to a wounded lion creeping back into his cave, licking his wounds and roaring in pain. Obviously with his distress, at the coming ‘passing beyond the veil of death’, the forgoing examples and his continuing to feel ‘like a bird bemoaning his future!’, expresses his torment. Hezekiah has a troubled night or two!
Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I moan like a dove.
My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety!
What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it.
I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.
O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit.
Oh restore me to health and make me live! Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction,
for you have cast all my sins behind your back. – A Christian is able to think pretty clearly about the afterlife. We live after Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus told us pretty clearly before He died and His Apostles explained it ever so clearly for us. Although there is much that we don’t comprehend we do know that we all will stand before God. We know what a difference that choosing aright makes. We know the difference that Jesus makes to both our before death relationship with God and after death relationship to Judgement; we can understand heaven and hell – it isn’t a matter of waiting until the end; we know about God’s Promise of ‘sins forgiven, and New Life in Jesus!’ Hezekiah, when he thinks about his future, seems to have a weak grasp of what is to come for him!
For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness.
The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness.
The LORD will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the LORD. – Hezekiah seems to have understood about the Living giving appropriate thanks to God, and to making sure that your children knows how good God is! And he took an active part in church life!
Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the LORD?” – It reads as if the fig poultice applied is somehow or other the very sign that Hezekiah needs to be reassured that God will do what He has promised.
Proverbs 9: 11 – “By me [wisdom] thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.”
Prayer: Help me to live in the knowledge that Your promise is that in Jesus we have life that is both everlasting in quantity and eternal in quality.