2 Kings 18:1-8
He broke the bronze serpent
He trusts in the LORD so that after him was none like him among the kings of Judah, nor any before him. The thing he destroys is the one Moses made, because it had become an object of worship.
People of the Bible
Hezekiah
Spread a threatening letter out in the temple and left it there, and woke to find the siege gone.
Hezekiah opens the doors of the house in the first month of his first year and reopens a temple his father had shut. He removes the high places, breaks the pillars, and destroys the bronze serpent Moses made, because the people had been burning incense to it for centuries. Then Assyria takes forty-six fortified cities of Judah and arrives outside Jerusalem, and the field commander makes a speech in Hebrew from the wall so the people can hear it. Hezekiah takes the letter, goes into the house of the LORD, and spreads it open.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Hezekiah
- 01
- 02
2 Kings 18:17-37
The speech in Hebrew from the wall
The Rabshakeh is asked to speak Aramaic so the people on the wall will not understand, and answers by raising his voice in Hebrew. The people hold their peace, because the king had commanded it.
- 03
2 Kings 19:14-19
He spread it before the LORD
He takes the letter from the messengers, reads it, goes up to the house and lays it out. Open your eyes and see, and hear the words. Then he asks for deliverance so that all kingdoms may know.
- 04
2 Kings 19:32-37
He shall not come into this city
The answer is specific: no arrow, no shield, no siege mound. In the morning the camp is dead, and Sennacherib goes home to Nineveh and is killed by his own sons in a temple.
- 05
2 Kings 20:12-19
He showed them all his treasures
Envoys arrive from Babylon after his illness and he shows them everything, silver, gold, spices, armoury, all of it. Isaiah tells him it will all be carried to Babylon. He says the word is good.
Why it matters
Hezekiah is the best king since David by the account’s own verdict, and it is the prayer with the letter that earns it: he does not argue with the threat, he lays it out and asks God to read it. The deliverance is total and the reform is real. The last chapter is a caution rather than a fall: given fifteen more years, he shows everything in his treasury to envoys from Babylon, and is told that all of it will be carried there, and his response is that there will be peace in his days.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
