Hezekiah (18:1–12)

Hezekiah … began to reign (18:1). With the fall of Samaria and the incorporation of much of Syria-Palestine into the Assyrian Empire, only Judah was left as a relatively independent remnant of what had been Israel. Although Ahaz’s son Hezekiah attained regal status just a few years before the end of the northern kingdom (727 B.C.), he was not yet sole ruler of the kingdom; his fourteenth year in 18:13 is in fact correlated with Sennacherib of Assyria’s invasion of Judah in 701 B.C., implying a sole accession date of 714 B.C. and a period of coregency with Ahaz from 727–714 B.C.152

High places … sacred stones … Asherah poles (18:4). See comments respectively on 12:3; 3:2; and 13:6. Even the most righteous of Judean kings thus far had always failed to remove “the high places” (man-made structures, sometimes located on mountain tops or on raised platforms, within which or upon which cultic acts were performed); and the possibility always existed, therefore, that they would become focal points for the kind of slide from true worship of Yahweh into apostasy that we see during the reign of Ahaz (16:4). Hezekiah now appears in 2 Kings as the one who addresses this issue, although it is not clear from the evidently generalized and perhaps hyperbolic language of the text what this closure of the high places may have looked like “on the ground” in terms of its severity and geographical extent.

In stratum VIII at Arad, for example, the burial of a prior installation evidences both a change in the cult during Hezekiah’s reign and the continued functioning of the cultic site in a different way thereafter.153 The apparent burial of a cultic site in order to take it out of commission is attested in the much earlier case (twelfth century B.C.) of the Mount Ebal altar, which was buried under stones.154 At other excavated sites there is as yet little clear evidence of Hezekiah’s reforms, and this raises questions about how far his centralization of worship in Jerusalem involved actual physical action against other cultic sites155 and how far the king was satisfied with the cessation of worship there—especially the cessation of apostasy. Nevertheless, we should always remember that archaeology in its nontextual forms is typically much more helpful in identifying broad cultural trends than in contributing to our understanding of specific events.156

Standing stones at Hazor high place

Kim Walton

Bronze snake … Nehushtan (18:4). The bronze snake that Moses had made in the desert (Num. 21:4–9) had perhaps been deposited in the temple in Jerusalem, like other religious items from the Mosaic age (1 Kings 8:1–9). Nehushtan is not presented to us in the Old Testament tradition as having originally been made for worship; nor is it likely that the authors of Kings mean us to understand that it was, in fact, worshiped continually even in the monarchic period. Like the high places, it was capable in principle of finding its proper place within authentic worship of Yahweh, but it eventually became in practice a focal point for idolatry, perhaps because of its association with the goddess Asherah.157

An eighth-century bronze bowl found at ancient Calah in Assyria, which perhaps came there as tribute to Tiglath-pileser III from Hezekiah’s father Ahaz, has engraved on its rim a winged snake mounted on a standard of just the kind envisaged by our biblical texts.158

He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him (18:7). Since at least 733–732 B.C., and probably since near the end of Azariah’s reign, Judah was in tributary relationship with Assyria and had avoided the fate meted out to other states in the region—absorption into the Assyrian provincial system and the deportation of significant segments of their populations (especially the leading members of communities). Hezekiah, however, was not his father Ahaz, and eventually he rebelled against his Assyrian overlord.

Hezekiah may have begun on this path as early as 720 B.C., when one of Sargon II’s inscriptions describes Sargon as “the subduer of the country Judah which lies far away,” apparently in connection with a campaign undertaken to crush a revolt that had broken out in Syria-Palestine under the leadership of Hamath.159 If the so-called “Azekah Inscription” belongs to Sargon II rather than his successor Sennacherib, Hezekiah may also have been involved immediately after his sole accession to the throne (714 B.C.) in a revolt against Assyria spearheaded by the Philistine city of Ashdod, which led to the absorption of Ashdod into the Assyrian provincal system in 712 B.C.160 However, the first event described in Assyrian records that can be securely related to the statement in 18:7 that Hezekiah “rebelled against the king of Assyria” is the widespread revolt that broke out in Syria-Palestine, as in other parts of the empire, after Sargon’s unexpected death on the battlefield in 705 B.C.

He defeated the Philistines (18:8). Hezekiah prepared himself well for the expected Assyrian assault, making a preemptive strike against Philistine territory. Sennacherib’s own account of the campaign identifies in particular as loyal allies King Mitinti of Ashdod, King Sillibel of Gaza,161 and King Padi of Ekron, whom it claims Hezekiah imprisoned.