Commentary - 2 Kings 20:1-11

Bird's-eye view

This remarkable passage details the near-death experience of King Hezekiah, his passionate prayer for life, and God's stunning, multi-faceted answer. The narrative functions on several levels. On the surface, it is a story of sickness and healing, demonstrating God's power over life and death. At a deeper level, it is a profound illustration of the relationship between God's sovereignty and the efficacy of prayer. God pronounces a death sentence, and then, in response to Hezekiah's plea, He reverses it, adding fifteen years to the king's life. This is not God changing His mind in a fickle way, but rather God ordaining to accomplish His purposes through the prayers of His people. The healing is then confirmed by a cosmic sign, the reversal of the shadow on a sundial, showing that the God who heals boils is the same God who commands the heavens. Ultimately, this story is a powerful Old Testament type of the gospel. A righteous king, son of David, is sentenced to death, but on the third day is promised a return to the house of God, a glorious picture of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The account is a testament to God's covenant faithfulness. While Hezekiah appeals on the basis of his own faithful walk, God's answer is ultimately grounded in His own name and His covenant with David. The king's personal crisis is inextricably linked to the fate of the nation, as God bundles the promise of healing with the promise of deliverance from Assyria. It is a story of grace, power, and the profound reality that the prayers of a righteous man avail much.

Outline

Context In 2 Kings

This event occurs "in those days," placing it squarely in the midst of the great crisis with Sennacherib and the Assyrian empire described in chapters 18 and 19. Hezekiah is the righteous king who has led a great reformation, cleansing the land of idolatry and trusting Yahweh in the face of an overwhelming military threat. His personal illness is therefore not just a private matter; it is a national crisis. The heir to the throne of David, the symbol of the covenant, is about to die, seemingly without an heir (Manasseh would be born within the next three years of Hezekiah's extended life). God's promise to heal Hezekiah is explicitly linked with His promise to "deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria." The health of the covenant king is tied to the health of the covenant nation. This passage shows that God's deliverance is holistic, dealing with both the invading army outside the walls and the deadly sickness within the king's own body.

Key Issues

The King, the Boil, and the Backward Sun

We live in a secular age that is squeamish about miracles. We are comfortable with God as a vague, distant force, but a God who gives and takes away life with a word, who rewinds the sun, and who answers specific prayers about boils, is a God who is altogether too involved for modern tastes. But this is the God of the Bible. He is not a deistic watchmaker; He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, intimately concerned with the lives of His people. This story confronts us with the raw reality of God's personal and absolute power. It is a story about a man who received a death sentence from the highest court in the universe and, through prayer, received not just a pardon, but a new lease on life. It is a story designed to make us ask what we truly believe about prayer, about healing, and about the God to whom we pray.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 In those days Hezekiah became ill to the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.’ ”

The story begins with a blunt and terrifying reality. Hezekiah, the godly king, is mortally ill. This is not a doctor's grim prognosis; this is a direct word from God through His authorized spokesman, Isaiah. The command to "set your house in order" was a standard instruction for a man on his deathbed, dealing with matters of inheritance and succession. The final phrase, "for you shall die and not live," is emphatic. It is a divine decree. From a human perspective, the case is closed. This is God's sovereign declaration. What this does is establish the absolute impossibility of Hezekiah's situation, so that what follows can only be understood as a direct, miraculous intervention.

2-3 Then he turned his face to the wall and prayed to Yahweh, saying, “Remember now, O Yahweh, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept greatly.

Hezekiah's response is immediate and visceral. He turns his face to the wall, a gesture of intense, private prayer, shutting out all other distractions to deal with God alone. His prayer is not the prayer of a man trying to earn salvation by his works. It is a covenantal appeal. He is the Davidic king, and he is appealing to God on the basis of his faithfulness within that covenant. To walk "in truth and with a whole heart" does not mean he was sinless; it means his life was characterized by integrity and a fundamental orientation toward God, as opposed to the double-minded hypocrisy of so many other kings. He is essentially saying, "Lord, you are a faithful God who keeps His promises. I have been a faithful king who has kept your covenant. Remember our relationship." The great weeping shows the depth of his distress. He is not stoic; he is a real man, pleading for his life.

4-5 Now it happened that Isaiah had not gone out of the middle court, and the word of Yahweh came to him, saying, “Return and say to Hezekiah the ruler of My people, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh.

The speed of God's answer is breathtaking. Isaiah has barely left the king's presence when God intercepts him with a new message. The first word was a death sentence; this word is a life sentence. God explicitly states the reason for His change of course: "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears." Prayer is not an exercise in futility; it is a real transaction with the living God who hears and sees. The promise is specific: healing. And the timeline is prophetically significant: "On the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh." For a man on his deathbed, this is a promise of resurrection. He will be restored to life and public worship. It is impossible for a Christian to read this without seeing a foreshadowing of the greater Son of David, who, on the third day, would rise from the dead.

6 And I will add fifteen years to your life, and I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake.”

God's grace is abundant. He doesn't just heal Hezekiah; He gives him a precise, guaranteed extension of his life. Fifteen years. Furthermore, God links the king's personal deliverance to the nation's deliverance. The healing of the king and the defense of the city are part of the same package of grace. And notice the ultimate basis for this grace. While God responded to Hezekiah's prayer, the ultimate ground of His action is His own character and His own promises. He does it "for My own sake," for the glory of His name, and "for My servant David's sake," because of the unconditional covenant He made with the house of David. God is answering Hezekiah's prayer, but He is doing so in a way that is consistent with His own sovereign, covenantal plan.

7 Then Isaiah said, “Take a cake of figs.” And they took and laid it on the boil, and he was restored to life.

Here we see the beautiful interplay of the supernatural and the natural. God has miraculously promised healing, but He ordains that the healing come through means. A fig poultice was a known, though likely insufficient, ancient remedy for boils. God could have healed Hezekiah with a word alone, but He chose to use a physical instrument. This is a permanent lesson for the church. We are not to be hyper-spiritualists who despise ordinary means. We should pray for the sick as though everything depends on God, and we should call the doctor and apply the medicine as though everything depends on us. Faith and works, prayer and figs, go together.

8 Now Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What will be the sign that Yahweh will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of Yahweh the third day?”

Hezekiah asks for a sign. In our cynical age, this might be seen as a lack of faith. But in the biblical world, when God makes a stupendous, life-altering promise, it is often appropriate to ask for confirmation. Gideon asked for a sign with the fleece, and God graciously granted it. Hezekiah has just had his entire world turned upside down twice in one afternoon. He has received a death sentence and a resurrection promise. He is not doubting God so much as he is seeking a tangible anchor for his faith in this incredible news.

9-10 And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from Yahweh, that Yahweh will do the thing that He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten steps or turn back ten steps?” So Hezekiah answered, “It is easy for the shadow to stretch forward ten steps; no, but let the shadow turn backward ten steps.”

God, through Isaiah, offers a sign related to the measurement of time, which is fitting for a promise about extending the time of a man's life. The choice is between the mundane and the miraculous. For the shadow to go forward ten steps would simply be a rapid acceleration of a natural process. But for it to go backward is a reversal of the laws of nature. Hezekiah, in a moment of brilliant faith, chooses the harder sign. He understands that a true sign from God should be unmistakably supernatural. He is asking for something that only the Creator of the sun, moon, and stars could possibly do.

11 Isaiah the prophet cried to Yahweh, and He turned the shadow on the stairway back ten steps by which it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.

The prophet prays, and God answers. The text states it simply and factually. The shadow moved backward. Whether this was a local atmospheric phenomenon or a literal shift in the earth's rotation is a matter of debate, but it is ultimately irrelevant. The point is that the God who created the cosmos has absolute authority over it. He can make time, or at least the measurement of it, run in reverse. This cosmic sign was the divine exclamation point on His promise. The God who can do this with a shadow can certainly heal a boil, extend a life, and rout the Assyrian army. He is the Lord of all.

Application

The story of Hezekiah's healing is rich with application for the Christian. First, it teaches us about the power and purpose of prayer. We, like Hezekiah, are all under a death sentence. The wages of sin is death. Our prayers for life should not be based on our own righteousness, but should be covenantal appeals to what God has promised in His Son. We plead the merits of the greater David, Jesus Christ, who walked with a perfect heart. God hears such prayers. He sees our tears.

Second, it reminds us that God's sovereignty is not a barrier to prayer, but the very foundation of it. We pray to a God who is powerful enough to change things, even to reverse a sentence of death. He has ordained that the story of the world will be written through the prayers of His saints. Our prayers are not an interruption of His plan; they are a part of His plan.

Finally, the story points us to the ultimate sign. We don't need to see the sun go backward, because we have seen something far greater. We have seen the Son of God go into the tomb and come out again on the third day. The empty tomb is the ultimate confirmation that God has heard us, that He will heal us from the ultimate sickness of sin, and that He will give us not just fifteen more years, but an eternity of life. Hezekiah was raised from his deathbed to go to the earthly temple. We have been raised with Christ to be seated in the heavenly places, and one day we will go up to the true house of Yahweh, never to be sick again.