20:1-11 Hezekiah was sick unto death, in the same year in which the king of Assyria besieged Jerusalem. A warning to prepare for death was brought to Hezekiah by Isaiah. Prayer is one of the best preparations for death, because by it we fetch in strength and grace from God, to enable us to finish well. He wept sorely: some gather from hence that he was unwilling to die; it is in the nature of man to dread the separation of soul and body. There was also something peculiar in Hezekiah's case; he was now in the midst of his usefulness. Let Hezekiah's prayer, see Isa 38. interpret his tears; in that is nothing which is like his having been under that fear of death, which has bondage or torment. Hezekiah's piety made his sick-bed easy. O Lord, remember now; he does not speak as if God needed to be put in mind of any thing by us; nor, as if the reward might be demanded as due; it is Christ's righteousness only that is the purchase of mercy and grace. Hezekiah does not pray, Lord, spare me; but, Lord, remember me; whether I live or die, let me be thine. God always hears the prayers of the broken in heart, and will give health, length of days, and temporal deliverances, as much and as long as is truly good for them. Means were to be used for Hezekiah's recovery; yet, considering to what a height the disease was come, and how suddenly it was checked, the cure was miraculous. It is our duty, when sick, to use such means as are proper to help nature, else we do not trust God, but tempt him. For the confirmation of his faith, the shadow of the sun was carried back, and the light was continued longer than usual, in a miraculous manner. This work of wonder shows the power of God in heaven as well as on earth, the great notice he takes of prayer, and the great favour he bears to his chosen.

Verse 3. - I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart. There is no Pharisaical self-righteousness here. Hezekiah is conscious that he has honestly endeavored to serve God, and to do his will - that, whatever may have been his shortcomings, his heart has been right towards God. He ventures, therefore, on something like expostulation. Why is he to be cut off in the midst of his days, at the age of thirty-nine, when such a wicked king as Uzziah has lived to be sixty-eight (2 Kings 15:2), and Rehoboam to be fifty-eight (1 Kings 14:21)? It is to be remembered that, under the old covenant, length of days was expressly promised to the righteous (Proverbs 3:2; Proverbs 9:11; Proverbs 10:27, etc.), and that a shortened life was the proclaimed penalty of wicked-doing (Job 15:32, 33; Job 22:16; Psalm 55:23; Proverbs 10:27). Hezekiah's self-assertion is thus a sort of laying hold of God's promises. And have done that which is flood in thy sight; comp. 2 Kings 18:3-6; and note the similar pleadings of David, "With my whole heart have I sought thee" (Psalm 119:10); "I have remembered thy Name, O Lord, and have kept thy Law. This I had because I kept thy commandments" (Psalm 119:55, 56), and the like. And Hezekiah wept sore. Human nature shrinks from death instinctively, and it requires a very vivid imagination for even the Christian in middle life to feel with St. Paul, that "it is better for him to depart and to be with Christ." The Hebrew of Hezekiah's time had far mere reason to regard death as an evil. His hopes of a life beyond the grave were feeble - his conceptions of the life, if life there were, faint and unattractive. Sheol, like Hades, was a vague, awful, terrible thing. If we consider Hezekiah's words, "The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee" (Isaiah 38:18, 19), we may understand how the Hebrew shrank from the fearful change. And in Hezekiah's case there was a yet further reason for grief Hezekiah had as yet no male offspring (Josephus, 'Ant. Jud.,'10:2. § 1). Manasseh was as yet unborn (comp. ver. 6 with 2 Kings 21:1). If he died now, his house would be cut off, he would be without posterity - a sore grief to every Hebrew. Ewald's references to Isaiah 38:19 and Isaiah 39:7, as indicative of Hezekiah having sons at the time, are absolutely without value.

3. remember now how I have walked before thee, &c.—The course of Hezekiah's thoughts was evidently directed to the promise made to David and his successors on the throne (1Ki 8:25). He had kept the conditions as faithfully as human infirmity admitted; and as he had been all along free from any of those great crimes by which, through the judgment of God, human life was often suddenly cut short, his great grief might arise partly from the love of life, partly from the obscurity of the Mosaic dispensation, where life and immortality had not been fully brought to light, and partly from his plans for the reformation of his kingdom being frustrated by his death. He pleaded the fulfilment of the promise.

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