Hezekiah – Part two

Now here is a most remarkable thing That such a man as Ahaz should sire such a son as Hezekiah That the one who temporized with a lack of faith, rejecting because of the weight of their spiritual demands, the waters of Shiloah, and preferred instead the raging torrent of the Euphrates, should give rise to the other who above all else, ‘trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him

A Faint Hearted Person Cannot Live by Faith

To lead a life of faith, trusting in the waters of Shiloah, requires many things But chief amongst the attributes of the man of faith is courage A faint hearted person cannot lie by faith for he has to constantly demonstrate his belief in that which cannot be demonstrated because it is invisible to ordinary eyes Ahaz did not have that kind of courage In trying to deal with the Syrian-Israeli threat, a relatively minor problem as Isaiah had tried to point out to him, Ahaz made monstrous compromises Not so much in his private or even in his public, political life, mark you, but in his religious life and the religious life of the nation He actually invited the waters of the Euphrates into Judah by making a present of the wealth to be found in the house of the Lord ! (2 Kings 16 8) There is a very salutary warning here We can only enrich our relationships with the world by impoverishing our relationship with God Also, Ahaz went to Damascus to meet the king of Assyria with whom he had made a league, saw there a Syrian altar, liked the design, had a copy made for use in the house of the Lord, modified the divinely appointed furniture of the temple, interfered with the ordered worship in the temple and even altered the temple layout — to suit the king of Assyria! (2 Kings 16:10-18)

Hezekiah was only 25 years old when he began to reign but immediately showed that the religious life of the nation must be paramount. It is possible to conclude that his very first act, on coming to the throne, was to clear up the spiritual mess left by his father Ahaz. Compare the numbers given in 2 Chronicles 29:3 and 29:17. If the first months are the same in each case then he began the revival on the first day of his reign! The only time when Hezekiah ever seems to have deliberately turned aside from his uncompromising integrity to the Truth is recorded in 2 Kings 18:13-16 where he appears to make the same sort of deal with the king of Assyria as had Ahaz before him. But there is an explanation. He was desperately sick. The deal was almost certainly made in his name by lesser man, quite probably without his knowledge. Compare 2 Kings 18:2, 20:6 and 18:13 and do the necessary arithmetic.

This apparent compromise only compounded the difficulty of his position in turning the tide of the Euphrates and trusting instead to the waters of Shiloah, for until that time, not only had the Assyrians had cause to expect his resistance to their claims over Judah, but the people of Judah had themselves been strong in their resolve to stand firm against the Assyrian overlord. But this deal had changed all that. Now, both Judah and the Assyrian king would have sensed his weakness.

Hezekiah’s Position … All But Impossible

Hezekiah’s position, humanly speaking, was all but impossible. When Sennacherib sent the Tartan, the Rabshakeh and the Rabsaris, with a great army, to parley with Hezekiah’s men, Judah’s fate held by the single strand of Hezekiah’s personal courage. Not his military courage, for Judah’s army was utterly powerless before the might of Assyria, but the courage of his faith in God.

You see where the exchange took place: “And the king of Assyria sent Tartan, and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field.” The very spot where, a generation before, in thought and word, Isaiah had laid before Ahaz the consequences of Immanuel — God with us — as either the waters of Shiloah which go softly, or the raging torrent of the Euphrates! But now the contest was joined in good earnest. What was to Ahaz merely a thought, a proposition, was to Hezekiah (through his representatives), and surrounded by the silent

Our World is no Less a Challenge

watchers on the walls whose fate was to be decided by his own personal faith, a real and rending issue which must be faced, and decided. By him alone. Where else do we find one man, alone, facing and conquering the issues of sin and capitulation to its rule, brought on him by a previous generation ? Thus do we begin to sense the issue facing that lonely man, the results of whose courage and faith have been imputed to us as righteousness by the unbounded grace of God. The question is: should we expect to be able, as of right, to live at a lower level of commitment to the Truth, or be content that others should live by faith — while we continue to live by sight? Our world is no less a challenge to faithful living than was Hezekiah’s or that of Jesus. If it seems so to us then it is just possible we look amiss.

“And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?” (2 Kings 20:20) Well, yes, but what is this about Hezekiah building a conduit to bring water into the city? Surely the conduit was there in the days of his father, and before? True, but with a difference The original conduit was an open aqueduct through which the water of Gihon moved more or less directly along the lower slopes of the Kedron Valley until enclosed by the wall of Jerusalem where it dipped at its south east corner at the junction of the Valleys of Hinnom and Kedron Hezekiah, at enormous effort, carved a tunnel through the rock, a total distance of about 1770 feet, then stopped up the aqueduct known by his father and filled in the Gihon spring (2 Chron 32 4, 30) Hezekiah’s tunnel is not straight, but twists and turns to take advantage of fissures, and to avoid other obstacles It traverses a straight line distance of 1090 feet, is about 5 feet high and as little as 20 inches wide The height of rock over the roof of the tunnel is as much as 150 feet There is a Hebrew inscription, partly obliterated, which, it is said, reads as follows was being dug out It was cut in the following manner Axes, each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, the voice of one man calling to the other was heard, showing that he was deviating to the right When the tunnel was driven through, the excavators met man to man, axe to axe, and the water flowed for 1200 cubits from the spring to the reservoir The height of the rock above the heads of the excavators was 100 cubits ‘ The inscription was quite possibly written by Hezekiah s men

But why all the effort ? The answer is in the words of the princes and mighty men whom Hezekiah Inspired for this effort, why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water ? ‘ (2 Chron 32) Here we find several things Firstly, Hezekiah, as a good leader must, was inspiring those who were with him, to prodigious efforts in maintaining their spiritual independence (and thus their spiritual health) Then, it is clear that he recognized that the waters of Shiloh are essential to the life of God s people He showed this by carving out the tunnel through which the waters of Shiloah should go softly, without interference, to the pool he built to receive them The pool s name enshrines the name coined by Isaiah in the days of Ahaz for the waters it contains — the pool of Siloam, as it has been known ever since But also, perhaps without being conscious of the issues involved, by depriving the Assyrians of access to the waters of Shiloah he was proclaiming a truth which needs to be constantly reiterated amongst us today — The waters of Shiloah and the waters of the great river (Euphrates) must always be kept separate There is no effort too great to be expended in our determination to prevent the ‘Assyrian” from getting into the city of our God We may live, if we are sustained entirely by the waters of Shiloah To partake of the waters of the great river will lead to captivity to sin that like the Assyrian they represent, will lead us, in bondage, to death Jesus did in practice, what Hezekiah did in principle when he built that tunnel — he prevented sin and death from prevailing for ever Have you ever noticed ? The Assyrians reached their peak in Sennacherib After their confrontation with Hezekiah, the Assyrians slid rapidly into oblivion Thus in Hezekiah, the waters of Shiloah which go softly prevailed over the waters of the great river The foolish choice of Ahaz, corrected by his greater son The foolish choice of Adam, undone by his greatest son