Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
2 Kings 20:20-21
The Final Comments On The Reign Of Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:20).
The great act for which Hezekiah was remembered was that of ensuring the supply of water for the city in the time of siege. That is thus referred to in the final mention of his acts. This involved cutting through the rock a long tunnel (over 520 metres (1700 feet) long) to connect the spring at Gihon (which must have been camouflaged in some way) with the reservoir to which it led, possibly to what is known as ‘the lower pool' (Siloam), or even to the upper pool. This digging was commenced at both ends and may have been in mind in Isaiah 22:11. The fact that both tunnels eventually met, although with some deviations, was an engineering triumph, given the instruments of those days. The tunnel is still accessible today and a favourite tourist attraction. It is mainly possible to walk through it upright, although with the occasional need to bend. (I have been through it myself. Calling back to those who were following in the darkness how low it was (theoretically and misleadingly) getting was part of the fun. We were young at the time). On the wall, about 5 metres (seventeen feet) inside the tunnel was discovered an inscription in ancient Hebrew which read, ‘--was being dug out. It was cut in the following manner. (They were swinging their) axes, each man towards his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, the voice of one man shouting to another was heard, showing that he was deviating to the right. When the tunnel was driven through the excavators met man to man, axe to axe, and the water flowed for twelve hundred cubits from the spring to the reservoir. The height of the rock above the head of the excavators was one hundred cubits'
‘Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?'
The remainder of the acts of Hezekiah (and most of the details that modern historians would love to know about his eventful reign) were written in the royal annals of Judah, accessible to the prophetic author, but not accessible to us. And these included the story of how Hezekiah brought water into the city in the way described above. Of the final part of his reign we know nothing, although he may well have been left alone by the Assyrians because of their adventures northward, reaching as far as Tarsus in 698 BC, and their major problems with the Elamites and their allies, which at times again included Babylon (which having initially been subjugated was having an up and down period and was again destroyed in 689 BC). For the end of Sennacherib's reign the Assyrian records do not help us.
‘And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and Manasseh his son reigned instead of him.'
Hezekiah died peacefully and ‘slept with his fathers' presumably in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 32:33. He was not buried in the royal tombs themselves but in ‘the ascent of the sepulchres of the sons of David', probably because by this time the actual rock hewn caves were full. (No burials are mentioned in them after this date). His son Manasseh followed him on the throne.