1At that time Merodach-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylonia sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that Isaiah had fallen ill and regained strength. 2And Hezekiah rejoiced over the envoys and showed them all his house of precious things, the silver and the gold and the spices and the goodly oil and his armory and all that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in his house and in all his kingdom. 3And Isaiah the prophet came to Hezekiah and said to him, “What did these men say to you, and from where did they come to you?” And Hezekiah said, “From a distant land, from Babylonia.” 4And he said, “What did they see in your house?” And Hezekiah said, “All that is in my house they saw. There was nothing that I did not show them of my treasuries.” 5And Isaiah said, “Listen to the word of the LORD: 6‘Look, a time is coming when everything that is in your house and that your fathers stored up till this day will be borne off to Babylonia. Nothing will remain,’ said the LORD. 7‘And of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, they will be taken, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylonia.’” 8And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.” And he thought, “For there will be peace and trust in my days.”
CHAPTER 39 NOTES
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1. At that time. The narrative continues to replicate the text from the Book of Kings, with some minor divergences. The name Merodach-Baladan appears as Berodan-Baladan in the parallel passage in 2 Kings 20:12–19.
king of Babylonia. The Babylonians were threatened by the Assyrian empire to the north and so would have been eager to make common cause with the kingdom of Judah.
for he had heard. The translation reproduces the version in 2 Kings 20:12. The text here reads, illogically, “and he heard.”
2. the envoys. The received text has only “over them,” and this identification is added in the translation for clarity.
6. a time is coming when everything that is in your house . . . will be borne off to Babylonia. This dire prophecy is presented as punishment for Hezekiah’s imprudence in exposing all his treasures to the eyes of the Babylonian visitors. Many scholars think that the episode was added over a century later in an effort to explain the despoiling of Jerusalem during the reign of Johaiakim in 597 B.C.E. or in the final destruction of the city eleven years later, in 586.
7. they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylonia. Although sarisim sometimes may refer to court officials who are not necessarily castrated, one suspects that the core meaning of castration is invoked here: there could be no greater curse for a king than to have his sons turned into eunuchs, incapable of begetting offspring.
8. The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good. This response by Hezekiah to the grim prophecy is astonishing. On the surface, he seems to be saying to Isaiah that he accepts the word of the LORD, that it must be good because it is God’s will. In the next sentence, however, he thinks to himself that what is good about it is that the disaster will not happen in his lifetime—something that in fact Isaiah has not clearly told him. This self-centered view of national catastrophe puts the virtuous Hezekiah in a somewhat questionable light. The narrative material taken from 2 Kings breaks off abruptly at this point, and the book resumes with the soaring poetry of the anonymous prophet of the Babylonian exile called by scholars Second Isaiah. The editorial placement of chapter 39 serves as a bridge to Second Isaiah because it involves a prophecy of the Babylonian conquest: after the devastating conquest and the exile of a large part of the Judahite population, the comforting words of Second Isaiah announce a glorious return from exile.