2 Kings 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Hezekiah of Judah becomes deathly ill, and Isaiah tells him he will die, but after Hezekiah prays and weeps, the LORD sends word that fifteen years will be added to his life and that the city will be protected from the king of Assyria. Isaiah has a fig poultice put on the boil, and gives Hezekiah a sign: the shadow moves ten steps backward. Later Hezekiah shows envoys from Babylon everything in his palace and storehouses, and Isaiah tells him all of it, along with some of his own descendants, will be carried off to Babylon. The chapter closes with a note about Hezekiah's water works and his death, followed by the reign of his son Manasseh.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • In those days Hezekiah became sick to the point of death.
   • The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to Hezekiah.
   • Isaiah told Hezekiah that this is what the LORD says.
   • The LORD commanded Hezekiah to give orders to his household.
   • The LORD said Hezekiah would die.
   • The LORD said Hezekiah would not live.
2. 20:2
   • Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.
   • Hezekiah prayed to the LORD.
   • Hezekiah spoke in his prayer.
3. 20:3
   • Hezekiah pleaded with the LORD.
   • Hezekiah asked the LORD to remember how he had walked before the LORD in faithfulness.
   • Hezekiah said he had walked before the LORD with a whole heart.
   • Hezekiah said he had done what was good in the LORD's sight.
   • Hezekiah wept greatly.
4. 20:4
   • Isaiah had not yet gone out of the middle court.
   • The word of the LORD came to Isaiah.
   • The word of the LORD spoke to him.
5. 20:5
   • The LORD told Isaiah to turn back.
   • The LORD told Isaiah to speak to Hezekiah.
   • The LORD called Hezekiah the leader of his people.
   • The LORD identified himself as the God of David, Hezekiah's father.
   • The LORD said he had heard Hezekiah's prayer.
   • The LORD said he had seen Hezekiah's tears.
   • The LORD said he would heal Hezekiah.
   • The LORD said Hezekiah would go up to the house of the LORD on the third day.
6. 20:6
   • The LORD said he would add fifteen years to Hezekiah's days.
   • The LORD said he would deliver Hezekiah from the hand of the king of Assyria.
   • The LORD said he would deliver this city from the hand of the king of Assyria.
   • The LORD said he would defend this city.
   • The LORD said he would do this for his own sake.
   • The LORD said he would do this for the sake of his servant David.
7. 20:7
   • Isaiah said to take a cake of pressed figs.
   • They took the cake of figs.
   • They laid it on the boil.
   • Hezekiah recovered.
8. 20:8
   • Hezekiah asked Isaiah what the sign would be that the LORD would heal him.
   • Hezekiah asked what the sign would be that he would go up to the house of the LORD on the third day.
9. 20:9
   • Isaiah said this would be the sign to Hezekiah from the LORD.
   • Isaiah said the sign would show that the LORD would do the thing he had spoken.
   • Isaiah asked whether the shadow should go forward ten steps or go back ten steps.
10. 20:10
    • Hezekiah answered that it is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps.
    • Hezekiah said no to that.
    • Hezekiah asked that the shadow go backward ten steps instead.
11. 20:11
    • Isaiah the prophet called out to the LORD.
    • The shadow was brought back ten steps.
    • The shadow had gone down on the steps of Ahaz.
12. 20:12
    • At that time Berodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters to Hezekiah.
    • Berodach-baladan sent a gift to Hezekiah.
    • Berodach-baladan did this because he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.
13. 20:13
    • Hezekiah listened to the messengers.
    • Hezekiah showed them all his treasure house.
    • He showed them the silver.
    • He showed them the gold.
    • He showed them the spices.
    • He showed them the fine oil.
    • He showed them the house of his weapons.
    • He showed them all that was found in his treasuries.
    • There was nothing in his house that Hezekiah did not show them.
    • There was nothing in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them.
14. 20:14
    • Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah.
    • Isaiah asked Hezekiah what those men had said.
    • Isaiah asked where the men had come from.
    • Hezekiah said they had come from a far country.
    • Hezekiah said they had come from Babylon.
15. 20:15
    • Isaiah asked what the men had seen in Hezekiah's house.
    • Hezekiah answered that they had seen everything in his house.
    • Hezekiah said there was nothing among his treasuries that he had not shown them.
16. 20:16
    • Isaiah said to Hezekiah to hear the word of the LORD.
17. 20:17
    • Days are coming when everything in Hezekiah's house will be carried to Babylon.
    • What Hezekiah's fathers had stored up until that day will be carried to Babylon.
    • Nothing will be left.
    • The LORD said this.
18. 20:18
    • Some of Hezekiah's sons who would come from him will be taken away.
    • These are sons Hezekiah would father.
    • They will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.
19. 20:19
    • Hezekiah said to Isaiah that the word of the LORD Isaiah had spoken is good.
    • Hezekiah then said, asking, whether there would not be peace and truth in his days.
20. 20:20
    • There are remaining acts of Hezekiah.
    • Hezekiah had might.
    • Hezekiah made the pool.
    • Hezekiah made the conduit.
    • Hezekiah brought water into the city.
    • These things are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
21. 20:21
    • Hezekiah slept with his fathers.
    • Manasseh his son reigned in his place.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

Hezekiah was king of Judah, the smaller southern kingdom whose capital was Jerusalem, ruling roughly 715–686 BC. Isaiah son of Amoz was a prophet active in Jerusalem through his reign. "In those days" is a loose connector: the events of this chapter are not necessarily later than the Assyrian siege described in the two previous chapters, and many readers place them earlier.

20:2

A king was almost never alone; attendants and officials would have been in the room. Turning to face the wall shut all of them out and was the closest thing to privacy available to him.

20:3

In the King James wording, "a perfect heart" does not mean a flawless one. The Hebrew word means whole or undivided, loyalty that is not split between the LORD and other gods. "Walked before thee" is a standard idiom for the way a person conducts their entire life, not for a particular journey.

20:4

The palace and the temple stood together in one walled complex on the high ground of Jerusalem, laid out around a series of courtyards. Isaiah was still inside the middle one, only moments away from the sickroom.

20:5

"The third day" counts the present day as day one, so it means the day after tomorrow, hence "two days from now." Ancient Hebrew reckoning almost always counts inclusively like this. Going up to the temple was the public proof of recovery: a seriously ill man was in no state to make the climb to the temple mount, the highest ground in the city.

20:6

Assyria was the dominant empire of the age, based in what is now northern Iraq. It had already destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and, under Sennacherib, had overrun the fortified towns of Judah and threatened Jerusalem itself. A promise of rescue "from the hand of the king of Assyria" was a promise about the largest military power Hezekiah's world knew.

20:7

A "lump of figs" is a cake of figs pressed into a solid mass, applied as a poultice, a soft dressing laid directly on the skin. Fig poultices for sores and swellings are attested in ancient Near Eastern medical texts, so this was a recognized remedy rather than an unusual act. The "boil" is an inflamed sore or ulcer; the Hebrew word covers a range of skin eruptions and does not identify the disease.

20:8

A sign was something you could see happen, proving that a promise would come true. Hezekiah was asking for proof he could watch with his own eyes.

20:9

The Hebrew word translated "degrees" literally means steps or stairs. A shadow moving "forward" means moving on in the normal direction as the day advances. Isaiah offers Hezekiah a choice between two directions of movement, and Hezekiah picks the one that could not happen naturally.

20:10

The logic of Hezekiah's answer: shadows lengthen forward on their own as the afternoon wears on, so forward movement would prove nothing. Backward is the direction that cannot happen naturally.

20:11

Ahaz was Hezekiah's father and the previous king of Judah. What the King James calls his "dial" is literally "the steps of Ahaz," and scholars are divided on what it was: either a flight of stairs built so that a shadow descending the steps marked the passing hours, or a stepped sundial of the kind known from Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Hebrew does not settle it.

20:12

The name appears elsewhere as Merodach-baladan; b and m were easily confused in copying, and both forms are found in the manuscripts. He was a Chaldean ruler who seized Babylon and twice led it in revolt against Assyria. In this period Babylon was a subject kingdom under Assyrian control, not yet an empire. Letters and a gift between kings were formal diplomacy, and an envoy sent to a distant king who was also resisting Assyria would normally be probing for an alliance.

20:13

Showing envoys the treasury and the armory was not simple hospitality or vanity: it was how a king demonstrated to a prospective ally what he could contribute to a joint war. The spices and fine oil were not kitchen goods but high-value trade commodities, stored and counted alongside silver and gold.

20:17

This came true about a century later, when Babylonian armies under Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and stripped the palace and temple, finally destroying the city in 586 BC. At the moment Isaiah speaks, Babylon is a struggling vassal of Assyria, which is part of the force of the statement.

20:18

Eunuchs were castrated men who served in royal households, often rising to positions of considerable trust as officials, stewards and administrators; castration was a common fate for high-ranking captives taken into a foreign court. The Hebrew word can sometimes mean simply a court official, but in the setting of a foreign king's palace the literal sense is the natural one. For a king's sons it meant service to a foreign master and the end of their own line.

20:19

"Truth" here carries the sense of stability or security rather than accuracy. Hezekiah's closing words are ambiguous in Hebrew and can be read either as something he says aloud or as a private thought, and either as calm acceptance or as relief that the disaster will fall on someone else. The Hebrew leaves both open.

20:20

The pool and conduit are almost certainly the works still visible in Jerusalem: a tunnel roughly 1,750 feet long, cut through solid rock, carrying water from the Gihon spring outside the city wall to a pool inside it, so that a besieging army could not cut off the supply. An inscription found in the tunnel in 1880 describes the two teams of diggers meeting in the middle. The "book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah" is a lost royal record repeatedly cited by the writer as a source; it is not the biblical books of Chronicles.

20:21

"Slept with his fathers" is a set phrase for dying and being laid in the ancestral tomb; it says nothing about the manner of death, and is used of kings who died peacefully.