The Living Bible (125 page)

2 Kings
20

Hezekiah now became deathly sick, and Isaiah the prophet went to visit him.

    
“Set your affairs in order and prepare to die,” Isaiah told him. “The Lord says you won’t recover.”

    
²
 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.

    
³
 “O Lord,” he pleaded, “remember how I’ve always tried to obey you and to please you in everything I do. . . . ” Then he broke down and cried.

    
⁴
 So before Isaiah had left the courtyard, the Lord spoke to him again.

    
⁵
 “Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people, and tell him that the Lord God of his ancestor David has heard his prayer and seen his tears. I will heal him, and three days from now he will be out of bed and at the Temple!
⁶
 I will add fifteen years to his life and save him and this city from the king of Assyria. And it will all be done for the glory of my own name and for the sake of my servant David.”

    
⁷
 Isaiah then instructed Hezekiah to boil some dried figs and to make a paste of them and spread it on the boil. And he recovered!

    
⁸
 Meanwhile, King Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, “Do a miracle to prove to me that the Lord will heal me and that I will be able to go to the Temple again three days from now.”

    
⁹
 “All right, the Lord will give you a proof,” Isaiah told him. “Do you want the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten points or backward ten points?”

    
¹⁰
 “The shadow always moves forward,” Hezekiah replied; “make it go backward.”

    
¹¹
 So Isaiah asked the Lord to do this, and he caused the shadow to move ten points backward on the sundial of Ahaz!
*

    
¹²
 At that time Merodach-baladan (the son of King Baladan of Babylon) sent ambassadors with greetings and a present to Hezekiah, for he had learned of his sickness.
¹³
 Hezekiah welcomed them and showed them all his treasures—the silver, gold, spices, aromatic oils, the armory—everything.

    
¹⁴
 Then Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked him, “What did these men want? Where are they from?”

    
“From far away in Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.

    
¹⁵
 “What have they seen in your palace?” Isaiah asked.

    
And Hezekiah replied, “Everything. I showed them all my treasures.”

    
¹⁶
 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Listen to the word of the Lord:
¹⁷
 The time will come when everything in this palace shall be carried to Babylon. All the treasures of your ancestors will be taken—nothing shall be left.
¹⁸
 Some of your own sons will be taken away and made into eunuchs who will serve in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

    
¹⁹
 “All right,” Hezekiah replied, “if this is what the Lord wants, it is good.” But he was really thinking, “At least there will be peace and security during the remainder of my own life!”

    
²⁰
 The rest of the history of Hezekiah and his great deeds—including the pool and conduit he made and how he brought water into the city—are recorded in
The Annals of the Kings of Judah.
²¹
 When he died, his son Manasseh became the new king.

2 Kings
21

New king of Judah: Manasseh

    
His age at the beginning of his reign: 12 years old

    
Length of reign: 55 years, in Jerusalem

    
Mother’s name: Hephzibah

    
Character of his reign: evil; he did the same things the nations had done that were thrown out of the land to make room for the people of Israel

    
^3-5
 He rebuilt the hilltop shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He built altars for Baal and made a shameful Asherah idol, just as Ahab the king of Israel had done. Heathen altars to the sun god, moon god, and the gods of the stars were placed even in the Temple of the Lord—in the very city and building that the Lord had selected to honor his own name.
⁶
 And he sacrificed one of his sons as a burnt offering on a heathen altar. He practiced black magic and used fortune-telling, and patronized mediums and wizards. So the Lord was very angry, for Manasseh was an evil man, in God’s sight.
⁷
 Manasseh even set up a shameful Asherah idol in the Temple—the very place that the Lord had spoken to David and Solomon about when he said, “I will place my name forever in this Temple, and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the cities of the tribes of Israel.
⁸
 If the people of Israel will only follow the instructions I gave them through Moses, I will never again expel them from this land of their fathers.”

    
⁹
 But the people did not listen to the Lord, and Manasseh enticed them to do even more evil than the surrounding nations had done, even though Jehovah had destroyed those nations for their evil ways when the people of Israel entered the land.

    
¹⁰
 Then the Lord declared through the prophets,
¹¹
 “Because King Manasseh has done these evil things and is even more wicked than the Amorites who were in this land long ago, and because he has led the people of Judah into idolatry:
¹²
 I will bring such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror.
¹³
 I will punish Jerusalem as I did Samaria, and as I did King Ahab of Israel and his descendants. I will wipe away the people of Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish and turns it upside down to dry.
¹⁴
 Then I will reject even those few of my people who are left, and I will hand them over to their enemies.
¹⁵
 For they have done great evil and have angered me ever since I brought their ancestors from Egypt.”

    
¹⁶
 In addition to the idolatry which God hated and into which Manasseh led the people of Judah, he murdered great numbers of innocent people. And Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with the bodies of his victims.

    
¹⁷
 The rest of the history of Manasseh’s sinful reign is recorded in
The Annals of the Kings of Judah.
¹⁸
 When he died he was buried in the garden of his palace at Uzza, and his son Amon became the new king.

    
^19-20
 New king of Judah: Amon

    
His age at the beginning of his reign: 22 years old

    
Length of reign: 2 years, in Jerusalem

    
Mother’s name: Meshullemeth (daughter of Haruz, of Jotbah)

    
Character of his reign: evil

    
²¹
 He did all the evil things his father had done: he worshiped the same idols
²²
 and turned his back on the Lord God of his ancestors. He refused to listen to God’s instructions.
²³
 But his aides conspired against him and killed him in the palace.
²⁴
 Then a posse of civilians killed all the assassins and placed Amon’s son Josiah upon the throne.
²⁵
 The rest of Amon’s biography is recorded in
The Annals of the Kings of Judah.
²⁶
 He was buried in a crypt in the garden of Uzza, and his son Josiah became the new king.

2 Kings
22

New king of Judah: Josiah

    
His age at the beginning of his reign: 8 years old

    
Length of reign: 31 years, in Jerusalem

    
Mother’s name: Jedidah (daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath)

    
Character of his reign: good; he followed in the steps of his ancestor King David, obeying the Lord completely

    
^3-4
 In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent his secretary Shaphan (son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam) to the Temple to give instruction to Hilkiah, the High Priest:

    
“Collect the money given to the priests at the door of the Temple when the people come to worship.
^5-6
 Give this money to the building superintendents so that they can hire carpenters and masons to repair the Temple, and to buy lumber and stone.”

    
⁷
 (The building superintendents were not required to keep account of their expenditures, for they were honest men.)

    
⁸
 One day Hilkiah the High Priest went to Shaphan the secretary and exclaimed, “I have discovered a scroll in the Temple, with God’s laws written on it!”

    
He gave the scroll to Shaphan to read.
^9-10
 When Shaphan reported to the king about the progress of the repairs at the Temple, he also mentioned the scroll found by Hilkiah. Then Shaphan read it to the king.
¹¹
 When the king heard what was written in it, he tore his clothes in terror.
^12-13
 He commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Shaphan, and Asaiah, the king’s assistant, and Ahikam (Shaphan’s son), and Achbor (Michaiah’s son) to ask the Lord, “What shall we do? For we have not been following the instructions of this book: you must be very angry with us, for neither we nor our ancestors have followed your commands.”

    
¹⁴
 So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the Mishneh section of Jerusalem to find Huldah the prophetess. (She was the wife of Shallum—son of Tikvah, son of Harhas—who was in charge of the palace tailor shop.)
^15-16
 She gave them this message from the Lord God of Israel:

    
“Tell the man who sent you to me that I am going to destroy this city and its people, just as I stated in that book you read.
¹⁷
 For the people of Judah have thrown me aside and have worshiped other gods and have made me very angry; and my anger can’t be stopped.
^18-19
 But because you were sorry and concerned and humbled yourself before the Lord when you read the book and its warnings that this land would be cursed and become desolate, and because you have torn your clothing and wept before me in contrition, I will listen to your plea.
²⁰
 The death of this nation will not occur until after you die—you will not see the evil that I will bring upon this place.”

    
So they took the message to the king.