Isaiah 38:21-22

Final Conclusions (Isaiah 38:21).

It would be a mistake to see these as comments as words casually added on with no real significance, and to pass over them too quickly. The first states how his healing was brought about, by a laying of a poultice on his eruption of the flesh, bringing out that it was indeed God Who had restored him. The second was even more significant, for it leads on into what follows and stresses that it is to be seen in the light of the fact that Hezekiah had asked for and received a God-given miraculous sign.

At first sight both seem to be equally pious comments. Isaiah confident that Yahweh would heal him, Hezekiah eager to go up to the house of Yahweh. But what a difference in attitude. One was eager that God's power might be revealed, the other simply concerned about the certainty of his own healing.

Isaiah 38:21

‘Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and lay it for a plaster on the boil, and he will recover.'

Note that Isaiah's work of healing is not described as though it was the most important aspect of the account. It almost has the appearance of an afterthought. For the concentration of the passage is not on the healing but on the significance of Hezekiah's experience. But it is an important afterthought. It is brought in to emphasise that the healing was indeed genuinely of God through His prophet.

The boil and the seriousness of the illness possibly indicate some kind of plague illness. The method of using a poultice to draw the boil was clearly known. And it equally clearly worked. If it was a miracle no emphasis is laid on the fact that it was so. The emphasis is rather on the fact that it was God's doing. Once the boil was drawn healing could go on apace. But Hezekiah certainly saw it as a miracle of forgiveness and healing. A similar kind of plaster (of dried raisins) for use on horses is witnessed to in a Ugaritic text.

Isaiah 38:22

‘Hezekiah had also said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of Yahweh?” '

Hezekiah's main concern was whether the healing would occur as quickly as Yahweh had promised (1 Kings 20:28). This note is added in order to prepare for the following verses. ‘The sign' here must be the one described in Isaiah 38:7, for it is the only one mentioned in the passage. Here in Isaiah that sign was stated as having a twofold purpose, ‘Look,' had promised Yahweh, ‘I will add to your life fifteen years, and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city. And this will be the sign to you from Yahweh, that Yahweh will do this thing that He has spoken' (Isaiah 38:5). Thus the sign was intended to point both to his healing and the certainty of the coming miraculous deliverance.

But 1 Kings 20:28 explains that the sign that was given to Hezekiah had in fact been asked for by him as evidence that he would be healed so that he could go up to the house of Yahweh within three days. And it is made clear here that that is his main concern, his own healing, and progression from it. While God had wanted it also to be the greater sign of His power to deliver and His promise of future deliverance (Isaiah 38:6), Hezekiah only thought in terms of his own healing. So Hezekiah, instead of being taken up with, and excited about, the promise of future deliverance, expresses concern lest he be unable to go up to the house of Yahweh on the third day. This again brings out Hezekiah's selfish concentration on his own need rather than on his people's needs. It sounded pious enough, but it was proof of his mediocrity.

No doubt he also saw himself as being restrained from going up to the house of Yahweh because the eruption rendered him unclean (see Leviticus 13:18), and it suggests that he longed to do so as soon as appropriate. He wanted to be ‘clean' again. Such an ambition was not to be despised. It was good that he wanted to go up to the house of Yahweh. But why did he want to do it? Are we to see this as because he longed to carry out his intercessory prayer as the priest after the order of Melchizedek? (compare Isaiah 37:1; Isaiah 37:14). But that was no longer necessary. The sign had been God's guarantee of deliverance. Or are we to see it as in order that he might give thanks for his recovery? That he saw it as putting the cap on any delay in his recovery? The context suggests the latter.

In other words his mind was concentrated on the wrong thing. While God had tried to direct his thoughts to the great deliverance, all Hezekiah could think of was his own restoration. There could be no greater contrast than that between this current representative of the house of David, whose only desire was to survive and to whom the coming deliverance was secondary, and the coming Servant whom Isaiah will shortly describe, Whose whole concern will be to do the will of God and Whose whole attention will be on the final deliverance, even though He would have to face death in order to bring it about (Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12). The Hezekiah revealed here fits well with the Hezekiah revealed in Isaiah 39:8.