Hezekiah goes on to exclaim,
“Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. You delivered me from
the Pit of oblivion. For You removed all my sins from Your sight”
(38:17). Apparently, Hezekiah was made to be thankful for both the
sickness and the deliverance. Not only that, but by connecting his
sickness with sin (failure to rightly bear the divine image), Hezekiah
demonstrated that he understood that the sickness that he carried resulted from
his violations of the divine covenant. Not only was sickness understood
to be a curse that entered into the world with man’s fall, but sickness was
also associated with Israel’s failure to keep covenant with their God. The
Creator God had promised sickness to His people , while also promising that if
they repented from their failure to keep covenant, He would remove the
associated curses.
As it applied to the
whole of God’s covenant people, so it also applied to the king. Hezekiah,
as the representative of the people, linked the removal of his sickness with
the removal of sins. Furthermore, because being conquered by a foreign
people was part of the Creator God’s curse that would be directed toward His
people if they were to completely disregard His covenant, and as this recovery
from sickness and its attendant prayer follows closely on the heels of the
expulsion of Assyria from Judah when it looked as if they were about to suffer
the same fate as the northern kingdom of Israel, the removal of his sins
(forgiveness), as evidenced by his healing, is also closely linked to the
covenant God’s removal of the sins of His people (forgiveness), as evidenced by
God Himself by the narrative that presents their God Himself intervening and defeating
the Assyrians and sending them away.
Throughout the Hebrew
Scriptures, the kings of Israel and Judah were the representatives of God’s
people. When David numbered the people, though this was his action alone,
the people suffered. When Manasseh brought Judah to the pinnacle of its
idolatry, it was in conjunction with this that their God declared, with no
reversal (though the judgment would be briefly stayed), that Judah would be
conquered and sent into captivity (the promised curse would come). In
addition, Israel also held to the idea of a vicarious sacrifice for the removal
of sins, which can be seen in the scapegoat of the Day of Atonement. One
sees the representative principle at work here with Hezekiah, and it is in this
narrative context that the prayer of Hezekiah can be heard on the lips of Jesus
in the garden prior to His passion.
Jesus could quite
easily say that “the grief (or illness) I experienced was for My benefit,” as
He could reflect on the suffering servant prophecy of Isaiah fifty-three, fully
convinced that His suffering would benefit not only His people, but Himself as
well. Though He knew Himself to be walking the path of death (not only in
the time leading up to the crucifixion, but throughout His revolutionary ministry),
it is quite easy to hear Jesus say, with a faith like that which was exhibited
by Abraham when he confidently declared that both he and Isaac would return
from the mountain of sacrifice, that “You delivered Me from the Pit of
oblivion.”
However, it would
only be as Israel’s King---as Israel’s representative and as the representative
of all of those that would come to call Him King, in substitution for His
people, that Jesus could say “You removed all My sins from Your sight.”
This could only occur through God’s King bearing God’s cursing on behalf of
God’s people, though Jesus Himself is understood to have never failed to
rightly bear the divine image (thus, without sin). It is because of this
execution of faithfulness that Hezekiah could say, “The living person, the
living person, he gives you thanks, as I do today” (38:19a). Those that
share in the blessed and vital union with the Christ join with him in such a
prayer.
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