Don Cram

As I was doing my daily reading I came to Isaiah 36-39, an historical section about King Hezekiah (hence the tongue-in-cheek title, “The Book of Hezekiah”), and it sounded to me as almost exactly what I had read about Hezekiah back in II Kings. I don’t mean just that both portions of the Old Testament told the same story; I’m saying that they used almost exactly the same words. Then I checked the parallel passage in II Chronicles about King Hezekiah and found some of the same words repeated there.

When God says something just once, it is all important to pay attention. When He says it twice, doubly so. Three times? My Bible pages seemed to flash with neon lights, “Get this!”

Hezekiah was the greatest of all the kings of Judah and Israel, maybe more than David and Solomon and probably more than Josiah who is also given superlative ratings in Scripture. Josiah was commended for returning to the Lord; Hezekiah was already following God when he became king. He is described as holding fast to the Lord unceasingly.

Here is the story:

Hezekiah became king at twenty-five years of age, at the time of Israel’s King Hoshea who was the final ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel when Assyria conquered them and took them into captivity and deportation. The northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria when Hezekiah was in his seventh year ruling Judah from Jerusalem.

Hezekiah cleaned up God’s worship in Judah by tearing down the sacred pillars and idols the people were still honoring. Then, in the fourteenth year of his reign, Assyria attacked Judah. The Assyrian commander, whose name or title was Rabshakeh, came to Jerusalem and delivered his threats.

Hezekiah took the threats to the prophet Isaiah who assured him that God would protect Judah. The Lord said the Assyrians would return home and there the Assyrian king would be killed. That very night the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrians, and the rest returned home where the Assyrian king was killed.

When Hezekiah was thirty-nine years old he became very ill. Isaiah came to him with God’s message that Hezekiah would soon die. Hezekiah turned on his side in bed, toward the wall, and wept. He prayed that God would let him live. Isaiah had not gone past the middle court of the palace when God told him to return to Hezekiah and tell him he was granted fifteen more years. As a sign, God made the sun’s shadow retreat ten steps on the stairway King Ahaz had built for access from the palace to the temple. In three days Hezekiah was well.

At that time some representatives of the King of Babylon came to Hezekiah because of the wonder that had happened. It is not clear to me whether they were referring to his miraculous return to health or to the delay in the sun’s passage. Hezekiah proudly showed them all his treasures, all the treasures in the temple, and all his armaments. When Isaiah heard what had happened, he rebuked Hezekiah and told him that those very Babylonians would be coming in about a hundred years to destroy Jerusalem and to take all Hezekiah’s wealth and all of his people away into captivity. Hezekiah’s only comment was to the effect that things weren’t that bad since it would all happen long after he was gone.

The words of the story as given in Isaiah 36-39 match almost exactly with those of II Kings 18:13-20:19. They appear to be about 90% identical apart from a handful of places where one has a word that is a synonym for the word used in the other. The only real difference is that Isaiah includes Hezekiah’s song of praise after he was restored to health (Isaiah 38:9-20).

If you have ever wondered why the books of Kings and the books of Chronicles cover the same events, on closer study you will find that Chronicles often includes God’s thoughts on the events as opposed to the telling of the history found in Kings. II Chronicles 32 covers the same events as II Kings 18-20 and Isaiah 36-39 with some significant omissions and additions. II Chronicles adds that Hezekiah consulted his military leaders when Assyria approached and that he decided he should protect the water conduit into Jerusalem, repair and increase the city’s walls, and manufacture a large number of weapons and shields. When you get to the end of the chapter you realize God’s view that all the work was useless or worse. II Chronicles 32 skips Rabshakeh’s long speech of threats, Hezekiah’s spreading of the Assyrian threat letter out before the Lord, and the Lord’s answer. To me, those events seem important spiritually and historically, but from a more focused view by God, not so. All three passages (II Kings, Isaiah, and II Chronicles) describe the killing of the 185,000 by the angel of the Lord. OK, got it. And, remarkably, II Chronicles skips the whole story of Hezekiah’s restoration from death and the shadow miracle, summarizing those events in just two short sentences. And, II Chronicles skips the story of the visitors (spies) from Babylon. If a double miracle and the set-up for the coming destruction and deportation are not important, what is? After abbreviating the two miracles, II Chronicles adds a paragraph which serves as God’s epitaph for good King Hezekiah:

“So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib the king of Assyria and from the hand of all others, and guarded them on every side.  And many were bringing gifts to the Lord at Jerusalem and choice presents to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations thereafter…But Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received, because his heart was proud; therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.  However, Hezekiah humbled the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come on them in the days of Hezekiah. Now Hezekiah had immense riches and honor; and he made for himself treasuries for silver, gold, precious stones, spices, shields and all kinds of valuable articles,  storehouses also for the produce of grain, wine and oil, pens for all kinds of cattle and sheepfolds for the flocks. He made cities for himself and acquired flocks and herds in abundance, for God had given him very great wealth.  It was Hezekiah who stopped the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all that he did.  Even in the matter of the envoys of the rulers of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.”

One thing I discovered from this study is to beware of passing the tests of adversity only to fail the test of prosperity. God have mercy on us and guard our hearts through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In my daily reading I am approaching the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. The message of that chapter and what follows is so wonderful and contrasts so markedly with the condemnations and judgments of the first thirty-nine chapters, that some have regarded chapters 40-66 as the work of a different author. The weight of scholarship since the end of the eighteenth century has been heavy in promoting this idea. Many were taught it in seminary as if it were fact, indisputable.

And yet it is a theory based on the sudden change of theme between chapters thirty-nine and forty. The idea that Isaiah was written by two different persons or groups has never made sense to me. The evidence has always seemed tendentious given the desired conclusion.

Two reasons: I am a writer and understand that any author not only may change the focus of the story at any time but must at a certain crisis point in the story. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah is time for some good news. It follows an historical interlude about King Hezekiah and the Assyrians in chapters 36-39. It is time for the change. Enough promises of future judgment. Build on God’s historic deliverance of Jerusalem as described in 36-39 and elsewhere and deliver the good news. As a writer, the timing of the shift in chapter forty makes perfect sense.

The other reason is that Isaiah clearly is preparing for chapter forty in the chapters that precede the historical section. Look at the final verse in chapter 33 which speaks about a promised deliverance from the sickness of sin, for just one example. That verse could just as well be in Isaiah 40 or 53.

As to the many parts of Isaiah 40-66 that speak retrospectively about the destruction and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the return of God’s people, this is the prophetic imperfect in Hebrew grammar, quite common, where the speaker regards the prophecy as so absolutely certain that it is couched in the past tense. Isaiah believed what he prophesied.

Modern Christians can be so credulous, including those taking seminary courses. Look at the evidence of the book of Isaiah itself instead of buying into the theories of the big names, some of whom very much wanted to separate the idea of judgment for sin from the good news of the Gospel. And think of the effect on the believers who hear when someone says, “Open your Bibles to Second Isaiah.” The effect is to believe one must rely on the seminary-trained expert for understanding the Bible because what the Bible seems to be is not what it is. That is not the kind of disciple our Lord wants.

You are safe in taking the Bible to be exactly what it purports to be.

Yes, I’ve been to seminary. But, thank God, I was taught to put more credence in the content of Isaiah than in eighteenth century theories about it.

At the close of an article on Zeus I read today in the Jan/Feb 2018 edition of Archaeology was the answer to whether Zeus was born on Mount Ida in Crete or on Mount Lykaion (the subject of the article) in Greece. When an exasperated poet, Callimachus, asked Zeus to settle the dispute, the answer was, “Cretans are liars.”

This led me to the 6th century BC poem by Epimenides of Crete referring to the Cretan view that Zeus was mortal and had died:

“They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one, the Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies, but you are not dead, since you live and abide forever, for in you we live and move and have our being.”

Which, of course, led me to the New Testament:

“For this reason I left you in Crete…One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.'” Titus 1:5,12

“…that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said….” Acts 17:27-28 at Athens

“for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” I Peter 1:23 probably from Rome.

The Epimenides Paradox in the study of logic arises from asking whether Epimenides of Crete could have been telling the truth when he said that all those from Crete are liars. There is no paradox in the New Testament use of this poem by Epimenides. No one was suggesting Zeus as another form of Christ or that the people of Crete are any different from the rest of us in falsehoods, evil, and our delight in the excesses of pleasures. This is simply the fundamental principle of evangelism and missions, shown in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Himself and in the history of missionary activity since, that the most effective way of reaching a people is to use their own culture and history as a starting place. Don Richardson wrote a wonderful book illustrating the principle in 1975 called Peace Child. Get a copy and read it. The book had such an effect on me that I did missionary work in Indonesia (near where the Richardsons labored) and have used the principle in evangelistic conversations ever since. If you can’t afford a new copy and can’t find an older one, let me buy it for you.