3

and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not. Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country unto me, even from 4 Babylon. Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All that is in mine house have they seen there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them. Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, 6 Hear the word of the LORD of hosts: Behold, the days

5

could not have been the case after the ruinous fine exacted by Sennacherib (2 Ki. xviii. 14-16).

the spices, and the precious ointment] the spices and the fine oil. (Cf. 2 Chron. xxxii. 27.) These natural products of the land were probably stored for commerce and are mentioned as a source of wealth.

the house of his armour] better: his armoury. It is probably the same as the "house of the forest (of Lebanon)" in ch. xxii. 8.

3. The prophet's appearance on the scene shews that he suspected the king of coquetting with a foreign alliance, although it is remarkable that on neither side is there any explicit allusion to the political aspect of the affair. Perhaps the first evasive answer of Hezekiah betrays a consciousness of wrong-doing.

from a far country] He answers that part of the question which involved least embarrassment. It is hardly likely that he means to hint that an alliance with so distant a country was out of the question; more probably he will excuse himself on the ground of hospitality to strangers who had come so far. It is noticeable that he does not mention the ostensible motive of the embassy.

5. Hear the word of the LORD] Isaiah's tone is threatening, because he sees in this thing a sin against Jehovah. It was not necessary to specify wherein the offence consisted; king and prophet understood each other perfectly. The reception of an embassy from the sworn enemy of the king of Assyria was in itself an act of rebellion likely to precipitate a conflict which Isaiah strove to avert; and the childish vanity displayed by Hezekiah, his pride in earthly resources, and his readiness to enter into friendly relations with the powers of this world, were tendencies against which Isaiah's ministry had been a continuous protest. All these tendencies sprang from a single root, the lack of that absolute faith in Jehovah as the all-sufficient guide and protector of the nation which was the fundamental article of Isaiah's political programme.

6, 7. This is the only occasion on which a prophecy of the Babylonian Exile appears to be attributed to Isaiah. It is not easy to reconcile such a prediction with the particular circumstances in which it is

come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon nothing shall be left, saith the LORD. And of 7 thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah to 8 Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in my days.

reported to have been uttered. The announcement naturally left on Hezekiah's mind the impression that his own days would be spent in peace, whereas in reality the most critical juncture of his reign still lay before him, and it is hardly credible that Isaiah should have disclosed to him the remote fate of his descendants, without warning him of the more immediate and personal consequences of his folly. This difficulty would be removed if we could hold that the prophecy was uttered after the deliverance from Sennacherib; but we have seen that this supposition is inadmissible on historical grounds. A more serious consideration is that Isaiah's Messianic ideal leaves no room for a transference of the world-power from Assyria to Babylon, or the substitution of the latter for the former as the instrument of Israel's chastisement. He uniformly regards the intervention of Jehovah in the Assyrian crisis as the supreme moment of human history and the turning point in the destinies of the kingdom of God, to be succeeded immediately by the glories of the Messianic age. The prediction, moreover, is without a parallel in the prophetic literature of Isaiah's age (in Mic. iv. 1o the clause "and thou shalt go to Babylon" is inconsistent with the context, and in all probability a gloss). These objections are partly neutralised by the hypothesis that some nearer and more limited judgment is referred to, such as the imprisonment of Manasseh in Babylon (2 Chron. xxxiii. 11) in the reign of Asshurbanipal. The terms of the prophecy fall short of a deportation of the people and a destruction of the city, only the fate of the treasures and the royal family being indicated. No great stress, however, can be laid on this limitation (comp. a somewhat similar case in Am. vii. 17) and the suggestion fails to harmonise the prediction with Isaiah's known anticipation of the course of events. It is possible that the prophet's actual communication had reached the late writer of this narrative in a form coloured by subsequent events.

7. The words which thou shalt beget seem, according to usage, to imply that the calamity would fall on Hezekiah's own children.

8. Good is the word of the LORD] An expression of pious resignation, including repentance; cf. 1 Sam. iii. 18.

there shall be peace and truth (or steadfastness) in my days] In the Old Testament the postponement of a calamity is always regarded as a mitigation of its severity; see I Ki. xxi. 28f.; 2 Ki. xxii. 18 ff. Hezekiah's words probably mean no more than that mercy is mingled with judgment in the sentence pronounced on him.