The Good Word and the Rotting Root Text: Isaiah 39:5-8
Introduction: The High Cost of a Good Report Card
We come now to one of the most sobering and frankly, disappointing, episodes in the life of an otherwise good king. Hezekiah began his reign as a great reformer. He cleansed the temple, smashed idols, and called the nation back to a magnificent Passover. When Sennacherib and his Assyrian hordes came breathing threats and blasphemies, Hezekiah took the matter to the Lord, and God answered with a thunderous deliverance. God even granted him fifteen more years of life, rolling back the sun as a sign. By all accounts, Hezekiah was one of the bright spots in the sorry history of Judah's kings.
But the story does not end there. A man can start well and finish poorly. A long obedience in the same direction can be derailed by a moment of pride in the final stretch. After his miraculous recovery, envoys from Babylon come to congratulate him. And what does Hezekiah do? Instead of giving them a tour of God's mighty works, he gives them a tour of his own mighty treasury. He shows them the silver, the gold, the spices, the armor, everything. He mistakes God's blessing for his own accomplishment. He was proud of his stuff, and God had left him to himself, to test him, to see what was truly in his heart (2 Chron. 32:31).
What God found there was pride, and what Isaiah the prophet delivers here is the receipt for that pride. The judgment is severe, but it is also meticulously just. Hezekiah showed the Babylonians his treasures, and God informs him that those very Babylonians will one day carry all those treasures away. He boasted in his house, and God tells him his own sons will be made eunuchs in the house of Babylon's king. This is the law of the harvest, sown in pride and reaped in humiliation. But the true tragedy, the thing that should make us sit up straight, is not the prophecy itself, but Hezekiah's appalling response to it.
This passage is a stark warning against the subtle sin of pride, but it is more than that. It is a lesson in generational thinking. It forces us to ask what kind of inheritance we are leaving for our children and our children's children. Are we living for our own peace and security, or are we laboring for a future we will not see? Hezekiah's failure here is a failure of covenantal faithfulness. He saw the future devastation of his own line and his own nation, and because it would not touch him personally, he called it "good." This is the language of a man who has forgotten that the covenant is a multi-generational project.
The Text
Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of Yahweh of hosts,
‘Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have treasured up to this day will be carried to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says Yahweh.
‘And some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, will be taken away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ”
Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of Yahweh which you have spoken is good.” For he said, “For there will be peace and truth in my days.”
(Isaiah 39:5-8 LSB)
The Unvarnished Word of Judgment (vv. 5-7)
We begin with the prophet's confrontation. After Hezekiah confesses to showing the Babylonian envoys every last thing in his treasury, Isaiah lowers the boom.
"Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, 'Hear the word of Yahweh of hosts, ‘Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have treasured up to this day will be carried to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says Yahweh. ‘And some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, will be taken away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’'" (Isaiah 39:5-7)
Notice the formality: "Hear the word of Yahweh of hosts." This is not Isaiah's opinion. This is not a political forecast. This is a divine verdict from the Lord of the armies of heaven. The judgment is presented as a direct and fitting consequence of the sin. Hezekiah, you were proud of your treasures? You acted like they were yours, like you had secured your own future? Very well. The nation you tried to impress, this up-and-coming world power, Babylon, they will be the very instrument of your family's and your nation's bankruptcy. Everything you showed them, they will take.
The prophecy is devastatingly specific. "All that is in your house." Not some, but all. "Nothing will be left." God's judgments are thorough. The pride was total, showing them everything, and so the stripping will be total. This is a fundamental principle of God's government. What you worship, you become enslaved to. What you boast in, apart from God, will be the source of your undoing. Hezekiah boasted in his wealth and military might as the foundation of his security, and God simply says, "I will pull that foundation out from under your descendants."
But it gets worse, far more personal. "And some of your sons who will issue from you...will be taken away." This is not just about stuff. This is about his legacy, his posterity, his own flesh and blood. They will be taken into captivity. And their fate is one of ultimate humiliation for a king: "they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon." The word used here is often translated as "eunuchs." His royal sons, the heirs of David's throne, will be made servants, unable to continue their own family line, serving the very king who plundered their home. This is the utter reversal of the Davidic covenant promise, all because one king forgot for a moment who had given him everything he had.
This is a hard word. But it is a just word. God is not mocked. A man, and a nation, reaps what he sows. Hezekiah sowed the wind of pride, and his children would reap the whirlwind of exile.
The Shocking Resignation (v. 8)
Now we come to the verse that truly takes our breath away. We might expect repentance, pleading, sackcloth and ashes. We have seen Hezekiah do this before when his own life was on the line. But here, with the future of his line and his nation at stake, we get something else entirely.
"Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, 'The word of Yahweh which you have spoken is good.' For he said, 'For there will be peace and truth in my days.'" (Isaiah 39:8 LSB)
On the surface, the first phrase sounds pious. "The word of Yahweh...is good." It sounds like humble submission. It sounds like what Eli said when he heard a similar prophecy of doom against his house: "It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him" (1 Sam. 3:18). But the second phrase reveals the appalling state of Hezekiah's heart. He explains why he thinks the word is good. It is good because the disaster will not happen on his watch. "For there will be peace and truth in my days."
This is one of the most selfish statements in all of Scripture. It is the quiet confession of a man who has ceased to care about the future. His piety is a thin veneer over a heart that has grown fat and comfortable. He is relieved, not because God is just, but because the consequences of his sin will be paid by someone else. His sons, his grandsons, the people of Judah, they will bear the calamity. But he will die in a peaceful bed. He has his. "Peace and truth in my days." It is the motto of a failed father and a failed king.
What is this but the very spirit of our age? We run up astronomical national debts that our grandchildren will have to pay. We pollute and exhaust the culture, leaving behind a spiritual wasteland for the next generation to inhabit. We pursue personal peace and affluence, and as long as the music doesn't stop on our watch, we call it good. We have become a generation of Hezekiahs, content to have "peace in our time" while the foundations are being destroyed for those who come after.
This is a complete abdication of covenantal responsibility. The covenant God made with Abraham, with Israel, with David, was always generational. "I will be a God to you and to your children after you." True faith has a long view. True faith plants trees whose shade it will never enjoy. Hezekiah here shows that his faith has become shrunken, withered, and self-centered. The fifteen extra years God gave him did not, it seems, make him wiser, but only more invested in his own comfort.
After Us, the Deluge
So what do we do with a passage like this? First, we must see the warning in it for ourselves. Pride is a subtle cancer. It often grows best in the soil of God's blessings. When God has delivered you, when He has prospered you, when He has used you, the temptation is always to start taking credit. The temptation is to think that the treasury is yours, that the accomplishments are yours. And when God tests you, as he tested Hezekiah, what is in your heart will come out.
Second, we must repudiate the spirit of Hezekiah in our thinking about the future. We are not called to secure our own little slice of peace and quiet while the world burns. We are called to be faithful stewards for the generations to come. This applies to how we raise our children, how we build our churches, and how we engage the culture. We are building an inheritance for our children's children. We are in a long, multi-generational war, and we must not grow weary or selfishly declare a truce that only lasts for our lifetime.
But finally, we must see in Hezekiah's failure our desperate need for a better King. Hezekiah, one of the best kings, failed spectacularly at the end. He was content to let his children face the judgment he deserved. But there is another Son of David, a greater King, who saw the judgment that we deserved. And He did not say, "It is good, because it will not fall on me." No, He stood in the breach and said, "It is good that it falls on Me, so that they may have peace and truth for all their days, and for eternity."
Jesus Christ did not come to secure His own peace, but to purchase ours with His own blood. He did not shrink back from the wrath we earned, but took it all upon Himself on the cross. Where Hezekiah showed a shocking lack of concern for his sons, God the Father showed an infinite love by giving His only Son for us, who were His enemies. The gospel is the ultimate repudiation of Hezekiah's selfishness. Our salvation was secured by the one who did not consult His own comfort, but for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.
Therefore, let us confess our own selfish, short-sighted pride. Let us repent of our lack of concern for the generations to come. And let us look to the perfect King, who did not just leave us an inheritance, but purchased us to be His inheritance forever. He is the one who secures a true and lasting peace, not just for our days, but for all eternity.