Hezekiah, Hezekiah

Sennacherib recorded on his monumental inscription, "The Prism of Sennacherib", how in his campaign against Hezekiah (" Ha-za-qi-(i)a- ") he took 46 cities in this campaign (column 3, line 19 of the Sennacherib prism), and besieged Jerusalem (" Ur-sa-li-im-mu ") with earthworks. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965) 287-288.

Various ambassadors came to congratulate him on his recovery, among them Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon (; 2 Kings 20:12). Hezekiah is also remembered for giving too much information to Baladan, king of Babylon, for which he was confronted by Isaiah the prophet (). The Talmudic account states that Isaiah went to tell Hezekiah that he was going to die because he deliberately did not have children. This was on account of the fact that Hezekiah had seen prophetically that his child would be an idolator and therefore he preferred not to have children.

Isaiah then suggested perhaps if his own daughter married Hezekiah in the merit of righteous parents their children would also be righteous.

He repented in his later years after being taken to Babylon in captivity. According to Jewish tradition, The victory over the Assyrians and Hezekiah's return to health happened at the same time, the first night of Passover.

Idolatry, which had resumed under his father's reign, was banned. Hezekiah abolished the shrines and smashed the pillars and cut down the sacred post. () He also smashed the bronze serpent which Moses had made, "for until that time the Israelites had been offering sacrifices to it". () Hezekiah also resumed the Passover pilgrimage and the tradition of inviting the scattered tribes of Israel to take part in a Passover festival. (, 10, 13, 26) While the historicity of has been questioned, recovery of LMLK seals from the northwest territory of Israel (corresponding to ) may indicate that some sort of administrative relationship existed between Hezekiah and a minority of northern Israelites. See An Administrative Center of the Iron Age in Nahal Tut by Amir Gorzalczany.

Also, the original division of duties between the priests and Levites was made by David and Solomon, so that Hezekiah was re-establishing, not creating, these divisions.

Ezra, the Aaronid priest, for instance, reports much later that even as late as the Exile there were images of serpents painted all over the walls of the inner chamber of the temple. Dever and others argue that in order to establish the sanctity of their view, the P Source writers had to show it was anchored in the actions of Hezekiah.

On the other hand, states that Sennacherib invaded Judah in the 14th year of Hezekiah's reign. Dating based on Assyrian records date this invasion to 701 BC, and Hezekiah's reign would therefore begin in 716/715 BC. Leslie McFall, A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles, Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (1991) p. 33. ( Link ) This dating would be confirmed by the account of Hezekiah's illness in chapter 20, which immediately follows Sennacherib's departure (). This would date his illness to Hezekiah's 14th year, which is confirmed by Isaiah's statement (() that he will live fifteen more years (29-15=14). As shown below, these problems are all addressed by scholars who make reference to the ancient Near Eastern practice of coregency.

By Albright's calculations, Jehu's initial year is 842 BC; and between it and Samaria's destruction the Books of Kings give the total number of the years the kings of Israel ruled as 143 7/12, while for the kings of Judah the number is 165. This discrepancy, amounting in the case of Judah to 45 years (165-120), has been accounted for in various ways; but every one of those theories must allow that Hezekiah's first six years fell before 722 BC. (That Hezekiah began to reign before 722 BC, however, is entirely consistent with the principle that the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency began in 729 BC.) Nor is it clearly known how old Hezekiah was when called to the throne, although states he was twenty-five years of age. His father died at the age of thirty-six (); it is not likely that Ahaz at the age of eleven should have had a son. Hezekiah's own son Manasseh ascended the throne twenty-nine years later, at the age of twelve. This places his birth in the seventeenth year of his father's reign, or gives Hezekiah's age as forty-two, if he was twenty-five at his ascension. It is more probable that Ahaz was twenty-one or twenty-five when Hezekiah was born (and suggesting an error in the text), and that the latter was thirty-two at the birth of his son and successor, Manasseh.

This is in contrast with the general consensus among those who accept the biblical and near Eastern practice of coregencies that Hezekiah was installed as coregent with his father Ahaz in 729 BC, and the synchronisms of 2 Kings 18 must be measured from that date, whereas the synchronisms to Sennacherib are measured from the sole reign starting in 716/715 BC. The two synchronisms to Hoshea of Israel in 2 Kings 18 are then in exact agreement with the dates of Hoshea's reign that can be determined from Assyrian sources, as is the date of Samaria's fall as stated in 2 Kings 18:10. An analogous situation of two ways of measurement, both equally valid, is encountered in the dates given for Jehoram of Israel, whose first year is synchronized to the 18th year of the sole reign of Jehoshaphat of Judah in 2 Kings 3:1 (853/852 BC), but his reign is also reckoned according to another method as starting in the second year of the coregency of Jehoshaphat and his son Jehoram of Judah (2 Kings 1:17); both methods refer to the same calendrical year.

Therefore, his conclusion is that it had a double meaning: while it refers to the steps over which the shadow has already passed, it may have meant the instrument (?) of Ahaz which had obviously contained more than ten units, and on which Hezekiah could observe the movement of the sun's shadow. But whatever was the original meaning of the Hebrew word, Ponori-Thewrewk says, the shadow had made an abnormal movement on it. He imagines a pole or gnomon that casts a shadow on a plane that is perpendicular to it. The shadow can move ahead for a while, then it can move backward on that plane.

Source: Wikipedia > Hezekiah