Study Desk

Hezekiah took the letter from the envoy and read it. He went to The Temple of God and spread it out before God . And Hezekiah prayed—oh, how he prayed! God , God of Israel, seated in majesty on the cherubim-throne. You are the one and only God, sovereign over all kingdoms on earth, Maker of heaven, maker of earth.

Open your ears, God , and listen, open your eyes and look. Look at this letter Sennacherib has sent, a brazen insult to the living God!

The facts are true, O God : The kings of Assyria have laid waste countries and kingdoms.

But now O God , our God, save us from raw Assyrian power; Make all the kingdoms on earth know that you are God , the one and only God.

It wasn't long before Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: God 's word: You've prayed to me regarding Sennacherib king of Assyria; I've heard your prayer. This is my response to him: The Virgin Daughter of Zion holds you in utter contempt; Daughter Jerusalem thinks you're nothing but scum.

The remnant will come from Jerusalem, the survivors from Mount Zion. The Zeal of God will make it happen.

To sum up, this is what God says regarding the king of Assyria: He won't enter this city, nor shoot so much as a single arrow there; Won't brandish a shield, won't even begin to set siege;

He'll go home by the same road he came; he won't enter this city. God 's word!

And it so happened that that very night an angel of God came and massacred 185,000 Assyrians. When the people of Jerusalem got up next morning, there it was—a whole camp of corpses!

Sennacherib king of Assyria got out of there fast, headed straight home for Nineveh, and stayed put. One day when he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer murdered him and then escaped to the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon became the next king.

Hezekiah turned from Isaiah and faced God , praying: Remember, O God , who I am, what I've done! I've lived an honest life before you, My heart's been true and steady, I've lived to please you; lived for your approval. And then the tears flowed. Hezekiah wept.

Isaiah, leaving, was not halfway across the courtyard when the word of God stopped him: "Go back and tell Hezekiah, prince of my people, ‘ God 's word, Hezekiah! From the God of your ancestor David: I've listened to your prayer and I've observed your tears. I'm going to heal you. In three days you will walk on your own legs into The Temple of God . I've just added fifteen years to your life; I'm saving you from the king of Assyria, and I'm covering this city with my shield—for my sake and my servant David's sake.'"

Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "How do I know whether this is of God and not just the fig plaster? What confirming sign is there that God is healing me and that in three days I'll walk into The Temple of God on my own legs?"

"This will be your sign from God ," said Isaiah, "that God is doing what he said he'd do: Do you want the shadow to advance ten degrees on the sundial or go back ten degrees? You choose."

So Isaiah called out in prayer to God , and the shadow went back ten degrees on Ahaz's sundial.

Then Isaiah spoke to Hezekiah, "Listen to what God has to say about this: The day is coming when everything you own and everything your ancestors have passed down to you, right down to the last cup and saucer, will be cleaned out of here—plundered and packed off to Babylon. God 's word! Worse yet, your sons, the progeny of sons you've begotten, will end up as eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."

Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "If God says it, it must be good." But he was thinking to himself, "It won't happen during my lifetime—I'll enjoy peace and security as long as I live."

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king. He ruled for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah. In God 's judgment he was a bad king—an evil king. He reintroduced all the moral rot and spiritual corruption that had been scoured from the country when God dispossessed the pagan nations in favor of the children of Israel. He rebuilt all the sex-and-religion shrines that his father Hezekiah had torn down, and he built altars and phallic images for the sex god Baal and sex goddess Asherah, exactly what Ahaz king of Israel had done. He worshiped the cosmic powers, taking orders from the constellations. He even built these pagan altars in The Temple of God , the very Jerusalem Temple dedicated exclusively by God 's decree ("in Jerusalem I place my Name") to God 's Name. And he built shrines to the cosmic powers and placed them in both courtyards of The Temple of God . He burned his own son in a sacrificial offering. He practiced black magic and fortunetelling. He held séances and consulted spirits from the underworld. Much evil—in God 's judgment, a career in evil. And God was angry.

As a last straw he placed the carved image of the sex goddess Asherah in The Temple of God , a flagrant and provocative violation of God 's well-known statement to both David and Solomon, "In this Temple and in this city Jerusalem, my choice out of all the tribes of Israel, I place my Name—exclusively and forever. Never again will I let my people Israel wander off from this land I gave to their ancestors. But here's the condition: They must keep everything I've commanded in the instructions my servant Moses passed on to them."

But the people didn't listen. Manasseh led them off the beaten path into practices of evil even exceeding the evil of the pagan nations that God had earlier destroyed.