Journey
Hezekiah and Josiah, the reforming kings
Hezekiah prays under Assyrian threat. Josiah hears a book of the law found in the temple and renews the covenant.
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Opening stop: Breaking the brasen serpent, 2 Kings 18:1
Hezekiah's father Ahaz had paid Assyria for protection and shut the doors of the temple (2 Kings 16:7-8, 2 Chronicles 28:24). Hezekiah reverses both, reopening the temple doors in his first month (2 Chronicles 29:3) and refusing to serve Assyria. Kings had praised earlier rulers who still left the high places standing (2 Kings 15:3-4, 15:34-35). Hezekiah removes them. The brasen serpent dated from the wilderness, where looking at it healed the bitten (Numbers 21:8-9). A gift from God had become an object of worship. Jesus later used the lifted serpent as a picture of himself (John 3:14).
Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.
King James Version
Hezekiah the son of Ahaz begins to reign over Judah at twenty-five and reigns twenty-nine years; his mother is Abi. The narrator says he does right as David did, removes the high places, breaks the images and groves, and breaks in pieces the brasen serpent Moses made, which Israel had been burning incense to; he calls it Nehushtan. He trusts in the Lord as no king of Judah before or after him, rebels against Assyria, and smites the Philistines to Gaza. The narrator restates Samaria's fall in Hezekiah's sixth year. In his fourteenth year Sennacherib takes Judah's fenced cities. Hezekiah sends to Lachish admitting offence, is assessed three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, and pays with the temple silver and the gold stripped from the temple doors and pillars. The king of Assyria then sends Tartan, Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh with a great host to Jerusalem. Eliakim, Shebna and Joah meet them, and Rab-shakeh delivers the great king's message: what does Hezekiah trust in? Egypt is a bruised reed, the Lord's own altars have been removed by Hezekiah, and the Lord himself sent Assyria. Asked to speak Syrian rather than the Jews' language, he refuses and cries aloud to the men on the wall not to let Hezekiah make them trust in the Lord, promising a land like their own and asking which god has ever delivered its land. The people keep silent at the king's command, and the officials return to Hezekiah with torn clothes.
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This journey has 12 stops. The opening stop is free. Premium opens the rest of the guided path, and every Scripture chapter stays free to read.