Every believing parent has a deep desire that their children love the Lord with their whole heart. Yet, there is no way to guarantee this reality. Righteous children follow unrighteous parents, and righteous parents sometimes discover that their children will not follow the Lord.

Although Hezekiah was a righteous king, his son and Judah’s next king, Manasseh, was wicked. He began to reign when he was only 12. Sadly, he chose to be the opposite of his father. Whereas Hezekiah tore down the high places and idolatrous worship centers, Manasseh rebuilt them (vv. 3–4). While Hezekiah tried to be like David (18:3), Manasseh followed the example of Ahab, the wicked king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (21:3)! To know the future, he didn’t avail himself of God’s ordained prophets, but instead “consulted mediums and spiritists” (v. 6). He even “sacrificed his own son” (v. 6). Furthermore, he abused the citizens of Jerusalem, putting innocent people to death (v. 16).

Surprisingly, Manasseh had a 55-year long reign, the longest of any king of Israel or Judah (v. 1). A result of this long reign was that the nation followed him in his wicked ways. “Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed” (v. 9).

The result of all this wickedness was that God finally declared that Judah would go into exile. While the declaration for the northern kingdom came after its first king, God delayed this judgment for Judah, but judgment did come. “I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria…and I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down” (v. 13).

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Often our heroes have complicated legacies. No one is perfect, but finding out that someone we respected has made bad or evil choices is disappointing. In the Bible, Saul, David, Solomon each had complicated legacies. That pattern continues with one of David’s successors, Hezekiah (2 Kings 18–20).

We’ve seen that Hezekiah was a righteous king because he faithfully obeyed the commandments of the Lord (18:1–6). Yet he faced a significant crisis when Sennacherib, a new Assyrian invader, attacked Jerusalem in 701 BC. Sennacherib besieged the city and cut it off from the outside world. True to his convictions, Hezekiah turned to the Lord and was delivered by an angel (19:15, 35–37)! Later, facing a mortal illness, he asked God for mercy and was spared (20:1–10).

Therefore, it is difficult to discover that at the end of his life, Hezekiah did something to mar his legacy. He received visitors from Babylon, an up-and-coming power in the ancient Near East. But when he met the emissaries, instead of drawing their attention to Yahweh, he took the credit: “They saw everything in my palace…There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them” (v. 15). Here, Hezekiah takes full credit for his success. He chose to ignore the reality that he was saved only because God had delivered him!

God did not take kindly to this misrepresentation. “The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,” God said (v. 17). By showing off his kingdom’s power, Hezekiah revealed that his confidence was misplaced. He began his reign trusting God, he ended by taking the glory for himself.

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Life can change in a moment. A text message pops up with good news and things may never be the same. A phone call brings bad news, and your world is turned upside down. Most change takes a long time, but this is not because God is unable to come to our aid. When His time is right, He is fully capable of fixing things instantly.

Confronted with the encircling armies of Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, Hezekiah finally turned to the Lord for help. With the visible symbols of repentance on his body, torn clothing and sackcloth, he went into the Temple (v. 2). At the same time, he sent servants to Isaiah, the prophet, asking, “Pray for the remnant that still survives.” (v. 4). The cities of Judah had been destroyed. The capital of the country was surrounded. Hezekiah had tried everything! Now he was down to his last hope—the God of Israel.

Isaiah’s response came quickly. “This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard” (v. 6). It seems Hezekiah took these words to heart, because when Sennacherib sent another disheartening communiqué, he took the letter into the Temple and laid it out before the Lord. “Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God” (v. 16). He asked God to deliver them, “so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God” (v. 19).

God heard Hezekiah’s cry for help. Through the prophet Isaiah, He assured the king that his enemies would not enter the city. “I will defend this city and save it,” the Lord said. The defense came suddenly, and in one evening the lives of the Judeans were delivered (v. 35)!

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When you encounter challenges do you wonder where God is or why He hasn’t delivered you immediately? Have you ever doubted God’s power to resolve a difficult situation? You are not alone.

When Hezekiah was threatened by an Assyrian invasion, he decided to try to solve his problem without turning to the Lord. It didn’t work. The Assyrian king, Sennacherib, sent his armies and officials to besiege Jerusalem. They arrived with a message for the king, “On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me?” (v. 20).

The Assyrian king suspected that Hezekiah had made an alliance with Egypt for military defense and that Judea might be trusting their God to save them. To this he had a simple response, “Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?” (v. 33). “How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?” (v. 35).

His logic was simple. He looked at the circumstances of all the other nations his people had conquered. Those nations prayed to their gods to no avail. He thought: We have surrounded you and destroyed your cities. What makes you think your god is any different? What the Assyrian king did not know is that the God of Israel uses difficulty in the lives of His people. In each case, He has the good of His people in mind. The threat that Jerusalem and Judah were enduring said absolutely nothing about the Lord’s power.

Deep down Hezekiah knew that to be true. Therefore, he ordered his men not to answer the Assyrians while he went to the Temple (19:1). His faith understood how the world really worked. The next time you’re in difficult waters, guard your heart against the crippling thought that God isn’t in control. Turn to Him and wait.

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Have you ever felt like you didn’t deserve a bad thing that happened to you? You made the right choice, but you didn’t get the recognition you felt you deserved. Disappointments like that can lead to discouragement and even bad decisions.

Hezekiah came to the throne and immediately set about doing good. That meant returning Israel to proper worship of the Lord by destroying the high places and idolatrous statues (v. 4). Judah had fallen so far into idol worship that they had even been worshiping the bronze serpent that Moses made for Israel while they were in the wilderness (Num. 21:9)! Hezekiah’s actions were so commendable that the text says, “There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him” (v. 5). With the Lord on his side, Hezekiah went on to rebel against the Assyrian king who had become Judah’s overlord.

So, it is a bit of a surprise to read in verse 13 that the king of Assyria marched against Judah and “attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.” Had not Hezekiah behaved righteously? Why would the Lord permit this invasion? It must have been a distressing situation for the king of Judah because he buckled under the strain. Instead of submitting to the will of the Lord, he submitted to the king of Assyria. Instead of trusting God, he used his diplomatic skills and economic resources to resolve the crisis. He started with faith but crumbled in crisis.

This isn’t the end of the story, but it is important to pause and reflect. Was Hezekiah surprised that difficulty followed acts of righteousness? He wrongly assumed that his past righteous acts would guarantee him a safe future. But his compromise would have significant consequences.

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When a person commits a crime, the consequences can be enduring. Depending on the severity of the punishment, the consequences can even span generations. In the case of Israel, their willful disobedience led to a severe judgment, exile. The consequences of this judgment extended for centuries.

When the Assyrians conquered Israel, they deported most of the population and replaced them with other people from Assyria (v. 24). It was likely an attempt to break Israel’s connection to their former homeland. These new people were not worshipers of Yahweh but worshiped the gods of their former homelands. God had declared that this land was the place where He caused His name to dwell and demonstrated this by establishing His Temple there (Neh. 1:9). Therefore, when foreigners worshiped other gods there it offended God’s holiness. As punishment, He sent lions to kill some of them (v. 24). This shocking predicament alarmed the people. Therefore, when the king of Assyria heard about it, he responded according to the theology of the day.

It was customary to believe that each nation had their own god who had to be worshiped according to the local customs. The Assyrians reasoned they had offended the local god by leaving him out of their worship, so they needed to learn to worship him (v. 27). An Israelite priest was sent to teach them, but the people simply added Yahweh as one of the deities. They continued to worship the gods of their nations alongside the God of Israel (v. 32). This situation persisted for generations (v. 41) as the newcomers intermingled with the Israelites who had been left behind. The disobedience of Israel resulted in generations distant from the God who delivered them from Egypt.

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The phrase “divided nation” refers to the division of God’s people into two kingdoms. After King Solomon, Israel became the northern kingdom with Judah to the south. Second Kings 14 looks back to when Amaziah was king in Judah, but the focus is on the king in Israel, Jeroboam II. This was a time of expansion for both kingdoms. Amaziah expanded Judah’s borders to the south (vv. 21–22) and Jeroboam II expanded Israel’s borders in the north and the south.

Jeroboam II was wicked. He worshiped the golden calves set up by the first Jeroboam long before. Under his reign, Israel continued their idolatrous behavior. So why would God bless the people when they were disobeying Him so flagrantly? The answer is plain: He was being kind to them so they would repent. He also spoke to them through the ministry of a prophet from Gath Hepher named Jonah the son of Amittai (v. 25).

You probably recognize Jonah from the Old Testament book that bears his name (Jonah 1:1). There we read how Jonah was sent to the Gentile city of Nineveh to proclaim a message of warning (Jonah 1:2). Jonah knew his mission was another example of God’s redemptive character. While Jonah was not happy about it and “ran away from the Lord” (Jonah 1:3), he eventually went to Nineveh as commanded.

But God had not abandoned Israel—Jonah ministered in his own country. Jonah predicted expansion for the nation, a time of victory characterized as salvation. Why did this happen? “The Lord saw the affliction of Israel was very bitter” (14:26). In His infinite compassion, God chose to lighten the load of judgment on His people. He sent Jonah to predict victory for the nation. Temporary salvation would come through wicked Jeroboam II (v. 27).

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Victory has a way of going to our heads. After we win once, we think we’re invincible. If we make a killing in stocks during a bullish market, we think we are infallible investors. Or if we earn one advanced degree, we think we’re an expert on everything. Yet God has a way of humbling the proud and bringing us back to reality.

Amaziah of Judah took the throne after his father was assassinated (2 Kings 12:20–21). Although he was a righteous king, under his rule the nation still worshiped at high (idolatrous) places (14:3–4). Nevertheless, he had early success. He punished the men who overthrew his father and consolidated power in Jerusalem. He marshaled the army and defeated Edom, the kingdom to the east, killing 10,000 enemy soldiers (v. 7).

This victory increased Amaziah’s confidence to the point that he was willing to confront the kingdom of Israel to his north. He issued a challenge to Jehoash of Israel. Jehoash sarcastically dismissed him with a humorous tale (vv. 8–10). But Amaziah would not be convinced. He met his enemy in battle and was soundly defeated. Jehoahaz captured him, brought him to Jerusalem, looted the Temple, and destroyed a portion of the city’s wall. The event was so humiliating that the nation revolted against the king and assassinated him, as they did his father (v. 19).

Amaziah’s early victories convinced him that he could not lose. Although he did what was right, he allowed pride to fill him to the point that he could not recognize that his true strength came from the Lord who put him on the throne. His pride was responsible for his downfall. Have you had success in life? Has it taught you to be thankful or has it led you to take greater risk? Consider that the Lord has blessed you for a reason. He desires your faithfulness, not your victory.

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