Isaiah 38-39

What’s Happening?

Judah is about to experience a national death. The armies of Babylon are coming and Judah will soon be exiled from their land. These are the last chapters in Isaiah that deal with the expectancy of that coming exile, and the following chapters will address the hope of returning from this exile. So, to encourage his people on the brink of national death, God shows that he can raise them from the dead and bring them back after their exile. 

As a representative for his people King Hezekiah is brought to death’s door through an illness. Isaiah warned that his illness was fatal and to prepare for death (Isaiah 38:1). Hezekiah’s illness mirrored the impending death of his nation. Israel would not recover but go into the grave of exile. But on his sickbed, Hezekiah prays and remembers God’s faithfulness (Isaiah 38:2-3). His prayer in the face of death is a lesson for his people doomed to exile. They must remember the God who is faithful to his people. God answers Hezekiah’s prayer and gives him fifteen more years of life. Moreover, he promises to deliver Jerusalem from the current threat of Assyria’s armies (Isaiah 38:4-6). 

To prove this would happen, God gives Hezekiah a sign. The light of God’s presence shines from the temple. His glory is so bright that it overpowers the sun and changes the direction of the shadows in the area. Importantly, the shadow shifts backward over an idolatrous altar, sometimes called a stair, that had been set up in God’s temple by a former evil king named Ahaz (2 Kings 16:11-16; Isaiah 38:7-8, 22). In this sign, God shows two contrasting truths. First, God shows that he sees their idolatry. His light exposes this pagan altar from a foreign nation. This is why their exilic death is coming. But, secondly, God shows that he will overpower the foreign nations that will take them into exile. Just as the shadow reversed course on the altar, God shows that he will reverse the certain death of exile when he shows up in glory and brings their nation back to life. Once healed, Hezekiah goes to the temple and praises God who raised him from his deathbed and who can consequently reverse the shadow of death that will overcome his people in exile (Isaiah 38:9-20).

Israel’s only hope going into exile is a God who could raise a dead king. But this reversal would only come after a national death. The shadows of this death loom into the royal palace when the newly recovered Hezekiah receives ambassadors from Babylon. He gives Israel’s soon-to-be captors a tour of all his treasuries (Isaiah 39:1-4). When they leave, Isaiah tells Hezekiah that everything he showed the Babylonians will become their plunder (Isaiah 39:5-6). They will steal all the treasures the king’s forefathers stored up and they will steal all the descendants the king’s children may have (Isaiah 39:7). All their past and future life will be cut off. Hezekiah and his people’s only hope is the God who can bring life out of national death, a stolen heritage, and a ruined lineage.

Where is the Gospel?

Just as Isaiah foretold, the shadow of Babylon consumed Hezekiah’s nation. The people were exiled from their land, the palace treasuries were plundered, and Hezekiah’s royal line faded into oblivion. But through the years, the God who raises the dead began to reverse the shadow that swallowed his people. He raised up leaders who brought his people back to their land and rulers who returned the treasures that had been plundered (Ezra 2:1-2,68; 6:4-5). And ultimately, God raised up the ruined line of Hezekiah when he sent the greatest treasure of all.  The greatest son of Hezekiah’s forefathers and of all his descendants was born in the person of Jesus. Jesus came to be the king of his people who would live out the greatest reversal of all, rising from death itself.

For all his life, Jesus lived under the shadow of his own imminent exile into death. He told his disciples that as king representing God’s people, he would die and then be raised to life again (Matthew 16:21). But Jesus was not only representing Israel as a son of King Hezekiah; he was also the Son of God, representing all people. In Jesus, the glory of God appeared to his people to expose their idolatry, heal their sickness, and save them from exile. Brighter than the light that shone from the temple in Hezekiah’s day, Jesus is the light that came to perform a greater reversal. Jesus’ death and resurrection would begin to pull back the shadow of death that looms over all humanity.

When evil men captured Jesus to kill him, they plundered a treasure more precious than anything Babylon could have taken from Jerusalem’s temple. They filled their hands with the crown jewel of Heaven, Jesus the Son of God. They cut off Jesus’ lineage in death, ensuring no descendant would ever rise again. But the grave could not plunder Heaven’s treasure forever. The God who reverses death made the shadow over Jesus’ tomb go backward. God raised Jesus to live forever (Acts 3:15; Romans 6:9)! In Jesus’ resurrection, God gave Heaven’s treasure back to his people. As the stolen treasures of the temple were brought back in after exile, the stolen life of Jesus is brought back into our hearts in his resurrection. Jesus is the eternal king who ushered in a new kingdom where descendants live forever, never to be cut off by death. And even today, he is leading people out of death’s exile and into his kingdom where no shadow will ever threaten them again.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God who reverses the course of death. And may you see Jesus as the one who opened the treasures of heaven to give his people resurrection life.