39:3
Isaiah then came to Hezekiah to inquire about the situation and to give a Godly perspective on it. God sends prophets to speak to leaders, for all leaders are ultimately under God’s authority, whether they like it or not whether they appreciate it or not. Isaiah inquired as to where they came from and what they wanted. Hezekiah informs Isaiah that they came from Babylon, “a distant land”. At the time Babylon was inferior to Assyria, and would be defeated by her.
39:4-8
Then Isaiah asked what the Babylonians saw in the palace, and Hezekiah says, rather proudly, that they saw everything. Isaiah then declares that the Babylonians would carry off everything from the palace, along with some of Hezekiah’s descendants. They would become eunuchs in Babylon. The city would be utterly decimated by Babylon, as indeed happened.
Hezekiah takes the word quite happily, for there would be “peace and security” in his lifetime. So what are we to make of all this/ Hezekiah had made good reforms in the land. He had just been healed, along with a promise that Assyria would not succeed in conquering Jerusalem. He now seems to be rather self-centred and self-satisfied, and then he will act in faith over the Assyrian invasion (though not without a struggle). 2 Chron 32:31 says that the Babylonian envoys were sent to test Hezekiah, to show what was in his heart, and the results were not good. Hezekiah is not actually criticised directly for letting the Babylonians see everything, it is just used as a parable of what would happen in the future. Hezekiah, like all of us, is a mixture of good and bad. There is no one who is wholly good, except God.
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