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CHAPTER X.

HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS AND RECOVERY.

IN the fourteenth year of his reign, the year of the Assyrian invasion, Hezekiah " was sick nigh unto death." Some suppose this sickness preceded the overthrow of Sennacherib's army; because no mention is made of the latter event in Hezekiah's song of gratitude for recovery, and because God promises to deliver the city out of the hand of the king of Assyria. Others suppose that the sickness was sent to keep Hezekiah from being too much elated by his recent triumph.

The nature of the disease the history does not specify, though from the remedy prescribed by the prophet, many think it was the plague. "And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered." This mode of treating the plague is said to be still practised in the East. No one ever recovered from this disease, unless the boil of the pestilence came out upon him; and even then he could not always be cured."

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The plague is rapid in its progress, and at the furthest does its work in three or four days. Hence, if Hezekiah had any preparations to make in reference either to his private affairs or to his kingdom,

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they ought to be made promptly. Perhaps his friends and courtiers would fear to alarm him by a true statement of his case; and if they should hint that his situation was critical, he might not realize the full extent of the danger. But when Isaiah came with the message, Thus saith the Lord, Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live," Hezekiah must have felt that his end was nigh. It was a sad message for the king to hear and for the aged prophet to communicate. What must be the state of the kingdom when its pious and beloved monarch slept with his fathers? Might not the days of Ahaz return again, and idol-altars and groves reäppear, when the restraining hand of Hezekiah was powerless in death? How could the nation spare a sovereign in the prime of his days, whose reign had been so honored of Jehovah, and the source of so much prosperity to the country?

The welfare of his kingdom, the security of the national religion, and the natural love of life, must have conspired to make Hezekiah shrink from the abrupt and premature termination of his career. He had yet no son to succeed him on the throne; and he might be apprehensive not only of civil commotions after his decease, but that the reformation which he had effected and sustained with so much difficulty, would be ruined by his untimely departure. But whatever arrangements it was necessary for him to make for the present world,

happily he had not, in these hours of perplexity and distress, to begin the great work of life, preparation for a future existence. And equally happy was it for the prophet, that he had not at this crisis the painful task of urging such a duty on the conscience of his dying sovereign.

After the last farewell to his royal master, the venerable messenger retires from the sick chamber, sad and desponding for his country, but calm and submissive as he thinks of the vision about to break on the departing spirit. "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and upright men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness."

When Hezekiah heard the message of the prophet, he resorted to the Lord for help, as he had done in other trying scenes. He knew that evils are often threatened under the government of God, with the implied condition that there is no change in man which renders it proper for God to stay the threatening. Turning his face to the wall, "as a natural expression of strong feeling," Hezekiah prayed unto the Lord, saying, "Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore."

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The answer to this short and affecting supplication was almost instantaneous. Before Isaiah had "gone out into the middle court" of the palace— or, as some suppose, the middle part of the citythe Lord directed him to return, and tell Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years." With alacrity, heightened by his former sadness, the prophet hastened back with the joyful tidings of this unexpected reprieve. Hezekiah requiring some sign to satisfy him of the truth of the message, in answer to the prayer of the prophet, the Lord brought back the shadow on the dial of Ahaz ten degrees.

There can be no doubt that on the third day, Hezekiah, accompanied by a multitude of his pious subjects, went up to the temple, as predicted, with a thank-offering for so surprising a deliverance. Isaiah has incorporated in his prophecies the psalm which the king wrote in grateful commemoration of his recovery. A part of it follows, as found in

the common English version:

“I said, in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of

the world. Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life he will cut me off with pining sickness from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. I reckoned till morning, that as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove mine eyes fail with looking upward : O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day the father to the children shall make known thy truth."

Some have conjectured that the prophet himself was the author of this psalm, but "that Hezekiah should compose a psalm, is no more strange than that he should make a collection of proverbs. It would have been far more strange if one so much like David in character and spirit, had not followed his example in the practice of devotional composition."

There has been much disagreement among commentators and others in regard to the sign that 7

Hezekiah,

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