Hezekiah's Prayer (part 1)

This is the prayer of Hezekiah of Judah when he was sick and then recovered from his illness – Isaiah 38:9 (NET)

As we are able to find correspondence between the lives of King David and Jesus, and King Solomon and Jesus, so too are we able to find a linking of King Hezekiah and Jesus. In his prayer, this link is quite explicit. We hear Hezekiah saying, “I thought, ‘In the middle of my life I must walk through the gates of Sheol, I am deprived of the rest of my years’.” (38:10) Like Hezekiah, Jesus, in the middle of His life and ministry, walked through the gates of Sheol, into death. This was something that Jesus anticipated throughout the duration of His ministry, as He frequently spoke of the expectation of the premature cutting off of His natural life.

Hezekiah thought, “I will no longer see the Lord in the land of the living, I will no longer look on humankind with the inhabitants of the world” (38:11). When he was sick, Hezekiah expected death to come. Jesus also expected death to come. Because he had been sick and expecting death, but was allowed to recover and continue, Hezekiah figuratively experienced a death and resurrection. However, not only did Jesus expect a Resurrection, but He received one as well. At the same time, He could agree with Hezekiah that He would no longer see the Lord in the land of the living either. How can that be? It is because the world into which Jesus was resurrected was a changed world, now subject to Him as its King. It would no longer merely be the land of the living, but the land of eternal life through union with Him. Jesus would come forth from the grave into a new creation that had been inaugurated with His Resurrection.

He Himself had been given a transformed, resurrected body, animated by the power of God. Because of that, He could no longer look out upon humankind as merely another one of the inhabitants of the old world that had now been fundamentally changed. He was different. He had received a glorified body. It is not the case that He would no longer look upon man as an inhabitant of the world because He was going to stay in the grave. Rather, He would look upon man with new eyes, as the first of a different form of humanity. With His Resurrection, Jesus now inhabited a different world. Through belief in Him, by faith, His disciples would come to inhabit that same world, with a down payment of Resurrection power that would allow them to look upon humankind, not as one of its inhabitants, but as new creations, viewing man with the compassion and love that comes as a gift from God, desirous to tell forth the Gospel of Jesus that is an invitation to share in this inaugurated new creation.

Hezekiah continues, and we read “My dwelling place is taken away from me like a shepherd’s tent. I rolled up my life like a weaver rolls cloth; from the loom he cuts me off. You turn day into night and end my life” (38:12). Likewise, in this we hear and see Jesus. His physical body, the one that went to the cross, that dwelling place in which God had struck a tent for a period of time, was taken away from Him. It was, of course, replaced with a new body, which, if we are in union with Him (believing the Gospel), provides the context for our hope for the same.

Hezekiah speaks of the turning of day into night and the end of his life, and we think of the darkness that crept over the land when Jesus hung upon the cross, as physical death crept over and eventually consumed Him. We read, “I cry out until morning; like a lion he shatters all my bones; you turn day into night and end my life” (38:13). As we once again read about the turning of day into night and the ending of life, we reflect on the fact that the ordeal that Jesus underwent lasted from evening to morning, and continued on the through the middle of the day. Also, though His bones were not broken, He was scourged, which might very well have left Him with exposed bones, as victims of scourging were often flayed to the very bone.