As one of the few good kings in Second Kings and Second Chronicles, Hezekiah erred terribly at times but generally left a commendable record during his reign over Judah from 716 to 697 B.C.
The Rev. Terry Pugh and Rabbi Jordan Parr say Hezekiah was commended for his mandate to worship God only and eschew all idols.
“God told him he was going to die and he brought up all the good things he had done and asked to live longer, so God told him he would live for another 15 years,” said the Rev. Pugh, pastor of the First United Pentecostal Church.
“But he made some bad choices during that 15 years, so it would have been better for him to die when God had intended for him to do.”
Pugh explained that, as described in Second Kings 20:12-19, Hezekiah showed emissaries from Babylon all the kingdom’s treasures and the Babylonians soon returned to take them by force. “Hezekiah was a good king who never led Israel into idolatry as a lot of the kings did,” he said.
“God fully intends for us to change our lifestyles and live holy lives. Where many people have a problem is that they don’t want any restraints on the way they live and that’s pretty appealing to their flesh. Our society doesn’t bow down to any kind of image and make sacrifices, but our culture only believes parts of the Bible and people try to get God to fit into their own personal desires.
“Most have a tendency to want God to agree with what they’re doing, but the reality is that we have to adjust our lives to his expectations,” Pugh said. “They say, ‘I don’t think God will judge me for this,’ but what does the Bible say? He is not going to adjust his word just because we think something.”
One of the extraordinary stories from Hezekiah’s reign is in Second Kings 18:13-36, where King Sennacherib of the Assyria invades Judah and says disrespectful things about God, whereupon an angel comes during the night and kills Sennacherib’s whole 185,000-man army.
Parr, rabbi at Temple Beth El, said the Bible “looks favorably on Hezekiah for bringing the people back to the right path and recognizes that he was a positive force for the kingdom.
“He wasn’t perfect, but he was basically very good to his people,” Parr said. “He was very much for purifying the temple and bringing the people back to the Jewish God and away from idol worship. He made some big mistakes, but he was a pretty good guy who did the best he could.
“When you show off your riches, you allow them to be taken. He displeased God because he appeared to be arrogant and did not show the proper humility toward God or his guests. But he is remembered as one of the good kings. Hezekiah and Josiah put the people on the path where ultimately they were able to survive.”
Asked why the people were so prone to worshipping idols, Parr said, “Every other tribe in the world was practicing idolatry, especially in the northern kingdom of Israel.
“The worship of God was coalescing at the time and the Torah was still coming from several hundred documents. They didn’t even have Deuteronomy. When you don’t have the text and you rely on prophets, prophets can lead you astray.
“A lot of people saw monotheism as sinful. It was a difficult concept to go from worshipping a hundred gods to worshipping a God with no image or form as an intellectual concept and an act of faith. People wanted to see what they were praying to.”
