I was reading in Isaiah and came across a place where I had written NO! in the margin. It was at Isaiah 39:2, where King Hezekiah had shown his entire treasure house to envoys from Babylon. "No, Hezekiah," I had wanted to shout--and laughed, because I now wanted to shout it again. "Do not show everything you've got. Do not cast your pearls before pigs (Matthew 7:6). Do not spread your nets in view of all the birds" (Proverbs 1:17). In short, some things are only between you and God (Matthew 6; Luke 2:19; Romans 14: 22; Proverbs 2:11, 11:13, 17:27).
Hezekiah was an interesting king, and not necessarily one we think a lot about. He was one of the most upstanding kings of Judah during the time of the divided kingdom. His story is told in 2 Kings 18-20, 2 Chronicles 29-32, and Isaiah 37-39. Perhaps ironically, he successfully repelled a threat from Assyria (the nation that had already conquered and exiled Israel) while inviting Babylon (the nation that would later conquer and exile Judah) into the henhouse, so to speak. Now hindsight is 20/20, so this may be understandable on that basis, but there's another, much bigger difference.
Hezekiah avoided capture by Assyria mainly by appealing to God. His prayer in the temple (Isaiah 37:14-20) not only asked God's help, but acknowledged that the threat was against God Himself, and concluded with a plea to save the nation so that the whole earth might know He was God. This wasn't just "get us out of this jam so we'll be okay." It was "an attack on Your people is an attack on You, and it questions Your power and even Your existence, so for Your own glory please reveal Who You are." God answered through a prophecy by Isaiah, in essence saying to the king of Assyria that he'd been a tool in God's hand all along and he would not even enter the city. This was followed by an angel of the Lord killing 185,000 soldiers in their camp. In other words, Judah didn't even have to go to war.
By contrast, the king of Babylon sent messengers and presents to Judah. Perhaps Hezekiah did what many of us do: seek God when there's a direct threat, but not when something supposedly good happens, as if we need God only in crisis. Pride, too, was operating. "Look at all my stuff!" Hezekiah was saying, a stark difference from his previous "Look at our God!" mindset. Isaiah then told him a time would be coming when all of that and more, plus the people, would be captured and carried off to Babylon. Hezekiah's indiscretion wasn't the sole cause of the exile, because Judah committed plenty of outright evil (as other kings including his own son would). But this is where God's pronouncement was made. This is where the exile became a sure thing. And then Hezekiah put the cherry on top: He didn't say a word about God's reputation in the earth this time, but agreed that God's judgment was good because it wouldn't happen in his lifetime. "That'll be my kid's problem," was his attitude. Yes, Hezekiah, and your kid is evil.
It's very interesting what the Scripture records between these two encounters with Assyria and Babylon. Hezekiah had gotten fatally ill; God told him he would die. He prayed to be spared and God added fifteen years to his life. Had God taken him when He originally planned, would the whole Judah/Babylon conquest and exile have happened? Probably; there were other reasons for it. But Hezekiah lived to play a part in bringing it about and received God's edict concerning it. Besides the pitfalls of pride and not seeking God in everything, we have to ponder that it's important to surrender to God's will in situations we don't have full insight to understand. Sometimes we pray and God gives us our way, even when it's not His best (Israel wanting a king like all the other nations, for example). The most important lesson might be to receive His "no" answers with full trust, and His "yes" answers with full humility.
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