He removed the high places, and broke the columns, and cut down the Asherahs, and broke in pieces the serpent of brass that Moses had made; for to those days the children of Israel burned incense to it and he called it Nehushtan.
Hezekiah begins his reign by destroying every object his people had learned to bow to. The last one on the list is the bronze serpent Moses himself had made. How can a thing God once used become a thing God's servant must break in pieces?
Kings before Hezekiah had left the high places standing. He pulled them down, and that meant disagreeing with the most celebrated king in Israel's past.
How good to see that he removed the high places (v.4). Other kings before him had not done this. Solomon was the one who brought in worship at the high places. But by judging those high places, Hezekiah showed openly that he disagreed with Solomon. Solomon's reign was glorious, yet that gives no one the right to copy his acts of disobedience to God.
His measure was not his father or his grandfather but David, and that choice is what marks a genuine recovery.
"He did what was right in the sight of Jehovah, according to all that David his father had done" (v. 3). God traces his faithfulness back to the example given by David, a fact all the more remarkable in that it is not stated of his predecessors… The Word of God makes the same remarks about Josiah as about Hezekiah (2 Kings 22:2), thus confirming the fact that these two kings returned to that which was at the beginning. One cannot today call a revival a true revival which does not have this character.
Israel kept the serpent for centuries. The feeling behind that was warm and understandable, which is exactly what made it dangerous.
Is it not striking that the Word never mentions the bronze serpent again after Moses lifted it up in the wilderness? Yet Israel had kept it for more than seven hundred years, no doubt in memory of the wonderful deliverance that came to the people through it. Israel had been healed through it. Was it not natural for them to want to keep it as a visible witness to that healing? It was a respectable thing, an old picture of deliverance from sin and its consequences by the sacrifice of Christ. But in the hands of the enemy of our souls it had become a means of idolatry for the people, who burned incense to it. It took faithful Hezekiah to pick out this hidden idolatry and destroy it, dressed up as it was in the clothes of a divine institution. The serpent was a symbol. It had no miraculous power in itself.
Why was keeping it wrong? The answer lies in what God gave it for.
What happened with the bronze serpent shows us how the heart leans toward idolatry… It also teaches us how short the step is — with hearts like ours — from remembering a blessing to making an idol of the symbol of it. Faith gets rid of these things. God gave the bronze serpent to cure, not to be a keepsake to remember the cure by. Man kept it out of a very natural feeling. But this is not of God, and it soon became the instrument of Satan.
Why had no earlier reformer dealt with the serpent?
The kings who reformed before him probably lacked one of two things. Either they could not see the idolatry in the superstitious reverence people gave it, or they had no holy courage to destroy it against popular opposition. God had used it in the wilderness as a picture of Christ "made sin" for our salvation. But the nation had dragged it down, and themselves with it, by treating it with a half-idolatrous spirit… To his honour, Hezekiah did not hesitate to remove this cause of offence. He called it what it really was — a mere piece of brass.
The same danger did not die with Israel.
Like Nehushtan, the cross of Christ has given rise to superstitious practices. To own a piece of the "true cross," to kiss it, or to revere a piece of bronze or ivory showing the Lord dying on the cross — these are common practices in much of the Christian world. Man is attached to the symbol and sees some special value or power in it. He makes the symbol his God.
So how can you tell when a sacred thing has turned? Faith has a test.
Faith counts an ordinance valuable only while it brings God, in living power, to the soul — that is, while faith can enjoy Christ in it, as He Himself appointed. Beyond that it is worth nothing at all. If it comes between the heart and His precious work and His glorious Person, even a little, it stops being an ordinance of God and becomes an instrument of the devil. Superstition judges the other way: the ordinance is everything, and God is shut out.
- Given — God gave the serpent to cure, not to be a keepsake after the cure. The memorial was man's idea, not His.
- Kept — Israel held on to it for over seven hundred years, out of natural and even respectable gratitude.
- Degraded — a symbol with no power of its own became an object of incense. Idolatry dressed as a divine institution is harder to spot than the open kind.
- Broken — earlier kings lacked the discernment or the courage. Hezekiah called it Nehushtan, a piece of brass, and smashed it anyway.
- Tested — a sacred thing is worth keeping only while it brings Christ to the soul. The moment it stands between the heart and Him, faith lets it go.
He trusted in Jehovah the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor [among any] that were before him.
Judah was near collapse when Hezekiah became king. Assyria had already swallowed the northern kingdom. Of this king one word says everything — he trusted — and that word lifts him above every other king of Judah.
Read the verdict against its moment. Judah was falling apart from the inside as much as from the outside.
Judah at this time was extremely low — never so low. They had been weakened by the kingdom of Israel... For a nation never falls to outside power until it has been undermined from within. And so it was with Judah. But God, of His grace, saw fit in that dark and desolate day, to raise up a blessed man.
Why should one word rank a king so high?
Nothing describes Hezekiah's spiritual character so truly or so strongly as trust in God. And trust in God is the root of all that is blessed, I may say, in a believing man. There may be other qualities... but nothing can make up for a lack of trust. Trust is what magnifies God, and what keeps us low before God. It is the great expression of dependence, and for a man nothing is more lovely than depending on God.
Real trust shows itself in what it turns down.
Here is the particular and very striking mark of Hezekiah, and of the revival that came with his reign. It is trust in God. This trust made him reject all human help. He does not, like other kings, seek Egypt's help to escape Assyria (Isa. 30:1-5; 31:1-3), or lean, like his father, on Assyria against enemies from outside. Still, even there his faith shows its weaknesses, as we shall see.
Which comes first — the trusting or the obeying?
It is not the commandments that produce trust, but it is trust that enables the man to keep the commandments. The only people who ever kept the law in Israel were those who had faith in God, who leaned on Him.
That rules out one common claim:
Let us beware of so-called trust in God which links itself to disobedience of His Word. If I trust in Him, I will cleave to Him; if I cleave to Him, I will keep His Word... One may find, no doubt, trust in Him mixed with much ignorance, but ignorance is not disobedience.
A later king, Josiah, receives a similar verdict, and commentators handle the overlap in different ways. One resolves it by noting that each is measured by his own distinguishing mark:
What set Josiah apart was his care to keep the law of Moses, the book that had been found in the temple. What marked Hezekiah was trust in the LORD. In these two marks, each is unequalled in his walk.
Another writer ranks them, and puts Hezekiah's trust on different ground:
Clearly Hezekiah is on higher ground than Josiah... He is noted for his trust in the Lord (2 Kings 18:5), that is, he took the ground of grace. Josiah took instead the ground of law. Hezekiah fell sick and nearly died, and he was tested, so that he might know all that was in his heart. Just the way of God with His saints who live by faith.
Trust brought Hezekiah fame, and fame carried its own danger.
Popularity, a great name like the names of the great men of the earth, is the result of faith — the faith of a man who dealt with God in the sense of his own nothingness... Hezekiah "was magnified in the sight of all nations from then on"; yes — but sadly, he was magnified also in his own sight. In all our times of prosperity let us say, "O Lord, hold me up!"
- Grace first. Judah was falling apart from the inside. In that dark day God raised up this man.
- Trust is the root. Other qualities may run higher in other men. Nothing makes up for a lack of trust. It magnifies God and keeps a man low before Him.
- Trust refuses. It showed itself in what Hezekiah would not lean on — not Egypt, not Assyria.
- Trust obeys. Commandments never produce trust. Trust produces obedience. A trust that lives with disobedience to His Word is not the real thing.
- Trust gets tested. The same faith that brought him fame left him open to being magnified in his own eyes; the cry for prosperity is "O Lord, hold me up."
And he clave to Jehovah, and did not turn aside from following him, but kept his commandments, which Jehovah commanded Moses.
Three short statements sum up Hezekiah's reign: he held fast, he did not turn away, and he kept what God had given through Moses. They explain the verdict in the line before — that no king of Judah was like him — and they show what lay underneath such a life.
The order matters. Commentators point out that law-keeping is not where this starts. It grows out of the trust named in the verse before.
This is a very important thing to observe. It is not the commandments that produce trust; it is trust that enables a man to keep the commandments. The only people who ever did the law in Israel were those who had faith in God, who leaned on Him. It was not looking at the law, or merely deferring to it. Of course they did that... but what produces obedience is always trust.
That trust showed in how he dealt with the great powers around him:
This trust caused him to reject all human aid. He does not, like other kings, seek Egypt's help to escape Assyria. He does not lean on the Assyrian against other enemies from outside, as his father did.
The verb behind "held fast" is not a mild one. It is used for the deepest human attachment and was pressed on Israel again and again.
To cleave is the word God used at the very beginning of human history. It expresses the undivided and unchanging affection a man should keep for the wife of his choice (Gen. 2:24). This love is so close and so unifying that by cleaving "the two shall become one flesh" (Eph. 5:31). Cleaving also expresses the loving obedience and worshipping service which should mark the people of God. Six times Moses and Joshua urged the children of Israel to cleave to the LORD their God.
The verse links three things in one breath. Writers warn against holding the first without the last.
This trust is inseparable from obedience... Let us beware of so-called trust in God which links itself to disobedience of His Word. If I trust in Him, I will cleave to Him; if I cleave to Him, I will keep His Word, and I keep it just as He entrusted it to me at the beginning... One may find, no doubt, trust in Him mixed with much ignorance, but ignorance is not disobedience. The result of Hezekiah's faith is soon apparent: "the LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered" (v. 7). What a happy circle of blessings!
Hezekiah did not keep the customs of his own day. He kept what God had given through Moses, long before. Commentators treat that reach back as the mark of real revival.
The Word of God makes the same remarks about Josiah as about Hezekiah, confirming that these two kings returned to what was at the beginning. One cannot today call a revival a true revival which does not have this character. It was the same in the days of Ezra and of Nehemiah. In the very scene of ruin, the people returned to the divine foundations and to the Word of God... In no way did he compromise with the corruption that had entered Judah.
Scripture later says much the same of Josiah. The two men were not praised for the same thing.
What set Josiah apart was his care to keep the law of Moses, the book found in the temple. What marked Hezekiah was trust in the LORD. In these two things they are both unequalled in their walk.
Other writers press the difference further:
Clearly Hezekiah is on higher ground than Josiah, and Scripture says of him that none before or after were like him. What marks him is his trust in the Lord — that is, he took the ground of grace. Josiah took the ground of law instead. Hezekiah fell sick and came near death, and God tested him, so that he might know all that was in his heart. This is just the way of God with His saints who live by faith.
- Trust first. Commands never produce trust; trust produces the keeping of commands. Hezekiah obeyed because he leaned on God.
- Trust refuses props. Because he leaned on God, he would not buy safety from Egypt or Assyria the way his father had.
- Trust clings. "Held fast" speaks of an undivided, unchanging attachment — the word for marriage, and the call Moses and Joshua pressed on Israel six times.
- Clinging obeys. Trust, cleaving and obedience come as one package. A confidence in God that lives happily with disobedience to His Word is not the real thing. Ignorance, though, is not disobedience.
- Obedience goes back to the beginning. He kept what God said through Moses, not the religion of his own day. Commentators call that return to the original foundations the test of any real revival.
And Jehovah was with him; he prospered whithersoever he went forth. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not.
Hezekiah's father Ahaz had bought protection from Assyria, the great power of the day. This verse shows what came of Hezekiah holding fast to God instead: God's presence, success, and freedom from Assyria.
The verse reports a result, not a coincidence. One writer ties it back to the trust and obedience of the verses before, and warns against separating the two.
This trust is inseparable from obedience: "He held fast to the LORD and did not depart from following Him, but kept the commandments that the LORD commanded Moses" (v. 6). Let us beware of so-called trust in God which links itself to disobedience of His Word. If I trust in Him, I will hold fast to Him; if I hold fast to Him, I will keep His Word... The result of Hezekiah's faith is soon clear: "The LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered." What a happy circle of blessings! God's favour and spiritual prosperity accompany faithfulness.
How could a small kingdom defy an empire? The order of the verse answers: God's presence comes first, and the courage comes from Him.
Having sought the Lord in this way, it is not surprising that "the LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered." Against this background "he rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him." A king who trusted the Lord, and whom the Lord strengthened, could easily defy the mighty king of Assyria, even though he was weak in himself. Like his father David, he did not rely on his own strength when defying the mighty. He relied on the strength of the Almighty.
The subjection Hezekiah threw off came from his father's bargain, not from God. That history decides how the word "rebelled" should be read.
Hezekiah, it seems to us, acted according to God in not recognising this authority. It was not the same later on for Judah, when it had to do with Babylon... God had transferred the sovereignty to Nebuchadnezzar, and He was using that yoke as a judgment on Judah. So to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar was to revolt against God. In Hezekiah's case, he was refusing to grant the Assyrian an authority that God had not given him over Judah at that time. Hezekiah was God's servant and could not be the servant of the king of Assyria.
Another writer reads the move the same way — as a refusal to acknowledge something his father had wrongly agreed to.
The evil alliance with the king of Assyria, which his father had made, the God-fearing king refused to own. "He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him."
Not every writer treats the rebellion as pure faith. Commentators differ, and what followed explains why.
He had been drawn into this position of subjection by his ungodly father. I do not pretend to say that Hezekiah was quite right. There was a holy feeling behind it. But did he clearly see the chastening that God had put on Judah? That is another question. In any case, his rebellion against the king of Assyria brought him into serious trouble. God did show Himself wonderfully on his behalf, but not without great humiliation.
A third writer suggests the good king's zeal ran ahead of his faith.
It would seem that this effort to throw off the yoke of Assyria was too early, or perhaps the good king went beyond his faith. When Sennacherib invaded his kingdom, we are pained to read that he took all the fortified cities. His desire was right, but in his zeal for the prosperity and glory of his kingdom, he may have gone ahead of God's time. Because of their former sins, Israel had become subject to the Assyrian, whom God had called "the rod of His anger."
God's presence let Hezekiah do what the northern kingdom, carried away by Assyria in his own lifetime, could not do.
He held fast to the Lord, putting His interests first, keeping His commandments as declared in the law of Moses (v. 6). Therefore of course the Lord was with him, making him prosper in every undertaking. Also by the power of God he was able to do what the king of Israel could not do. He rebelled against the king of Assyria rather than serving him (v. 7).
Success brings its own danger, and Hezekiah met it.
Popularity, a great name like the name of the great men on the earth, is the result of the faith that, in the sense of his own nothingness, had to do with God... Hezekiah "was magnified in the sight of all nations from that time on"; yes — but, sadly, he was magnified also in his own sight. In all times of our prosperity let us say, "O Lord, hold me up!"
- Cause — Holding fast to God and keeping His Word came first; God's presence and blessing followed. Trust and obedience belong together.
- Gift — God's presence, not Hezekiah's resources, is the explanation. Weak in himself, he could face the strongest empire because he leaned on the Almighty.
- Reach — He prospered in every undertaking. God's presence let him do what the king of Israel could not.
- Freedom — The yoke he refused was his father's bargain, not God's appointment. Commentators differ on whether the timing was faith or zeal running ahead.
- Risk — The same prospering that came from a sense of his own nothingness later made him great in his own eyes. Prosperity needs the prayer, "O Lord, hold me up."