Judah Alone

2 Kings 18 – 25; 2 Chronicles 29:1 – 36:21 = 722 B.C. – 586 B.C.

Hezekiah

 At the time Sargon of Assyria swept into Israel, the Northern kingdom, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, had been king of Judah for six years. He reigned 29 years. In contrast with his evil father Ahaz, Hezekiah was one of the best kings of Judah. He worked diligently to restore Judah to the Lord and successfully resisted the power of Assyria, the mightiest nation in the Jewish world at that time.

It was no accident that the greatest of the literary prophets, Isaiah, was serving the Lord in Jerusalem in close alliance with King Hezekiah throughout his reign. Isaiah began to prophesy in the year King Uzziah died, ca. 750 B.C. until the death of King Hezekiah. Through the righteous rule of the king, and the mighty preaching of Isaiah and his less known, younger, country contemporary Micah, Judah remained loyal to the Lord and was spared destruction by Assyria.

Hezekiah called upon the people to renew their covenant with the Lord. Under the direction of King Hezekiah, the Levites and priests cleansed and restored the temple and restored the sacrifices to the Lord. Hezekiah restored the temple worship as King David had arranged it. The people throughout the land tore down all the high places where they had offered unlawful and idolatrous worship. The king summoned Israel throughout all Palestine to keep the Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem. They had the greatest Passover since the beginning of the reign of Solomon. The king restored the tithes and free will offerings for the support of the priests and Levites, and the people willingly followed his lead.

In the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, came against Judah with a great army and destroyed all the fortified cities of Judah. King Hezekiah agreed to submit to Assyria and sent King Sennacherib the huge payment of 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold he demanded. To do this, he had to strip the gold from inside the temple.

But this didn’t satisfy Sennacherib. He sent his officials to Jerusalem to demand that they surrender the city and submit to being taken to another land. His officials shouted crude, insulting language to the Jewish officials on the wall of Jerusalem and blasphemed God. They did this in the Hebrew language so all the Jews could understand their threats.

King Hezekiah sent word of this to Isaiah, and Isaiah prophesied that Assyria would not be able to harm the city and that Sennacherib would return to his own land and there be killed by the sword. Hezekiah took the insulting, blasphemous letter of Sennacherib to the house of God, spread the letter out before the Lord, and prayed to the Lord for deliverance. Isaiah again promised him deliverance. During the night 185,000 Assyrian soldiers died in their camp. Sennacherib returned to his capital, Nineveh, and later two of his own sons murdered him with swords as he worshiped in the house of his idol god, Nisroch.

Later King Hezekiah became mortally ill with a boil, and Isaiah told him he would die. Hezekiah wept and prayed fervently to the Lord, and the Lord revealed to Isaiah that Hezekiah would live another fifteen years. The Lord granted Hezekiah a stupendous sign that he would indeed live. He allowed the shadow of the sun to go backward ten degrees on the sundial. Time went backward!

Later King Hezekiah did wrong by showing all his treasures to a delegation from the king of Babylon. Isaiah rebuked him and prophesied that in years to come the Jews would be carried captive to Babylon.

Manasseh 

When Hezekiah died, his twelve year old son Manasseh became king and reigned 55 years. Manasseh was as wicked as Hezekiah was righteous. He was the worst king of Judah. He turned the people to every form of idolatry, false worship, and immorality and corrupted the temple into a place of idol worship. His rule was unjust and cruel. Because of Manasseh’s very long, extremely evil reign, Israel became more wicked than the Canaanites they had displaced, and the Lord decided the nation would have to be destroyed.

During the latter part of Manasseh’s reign, Assyria came against Judah and led Manasseh as a captive to Nineveh. There Manasseh repented and prayed to the Lord. The Lord allowed him to return to Judah, and he tried to undo the great harm he had caused. But it was too late. The people had become thoroughly corrupt, and Judah was doomed.

The prophet Habakkuk may have written his book during the reign of Manasseh.

Amon

At Manasseh’s death, his son Amon ascended the throne. He was wicked and idolatrous, and after a reign of only two years, his servants assassinated him.

Josiah

Josiah, son of wicked Amon, was perhaps the best king Judah ever had. He became king when he was just eight years old, and he began seeking the Lord when he was sixteen. At the age of thirty he began to cleanse the temple and all Israel of all the idolatrous and false worship that had been practiced from the times of Solomon, Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh. He tore down all the high places, burned the idols, and defiled their places of false worship. He restored the temple and its worship, and all Israel observed a great Passover.

As they were cleaning out the temple, Hilkiah the high priest found a copy of the lost book of the law of Moses. Shaphan the scribe brought it to King Josiah and read from it the punishments with which the Lord had threatened Israel for idolatry and disobedience. King Josiah tore his clothes in sorrow, for he knew Judah had been committing all these sins. The king sent to Huldah the prophetess to inquire of the Lord if these curses would come upon Judah. She answered that they would but, because of Josiah’s faithfulness, not in his day.

Then the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the house of the LORD, with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem – the priests and the Levites, and all the people, great and small. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD. Then the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the LORD, to follow the LORD, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin take a stand. So the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. Thus Josiah removed all the abominations from all the country that belonged to the children of Israel, and made all who were present in Israel diligently serve the LORD their God. All his days they did not depart from following the LORD God of their fathers (2 Chronicles 34:29-33).

As Josiah’s reign drew to a close, world events, under the providential hand of the Lord God, quickly turned toward Judah’s downfall. Babylon revolted against the rule of Assyria, defeated Assyria, destroyed Nineveh, and pursued the Assyrian army to obliterate it. Pharaoh Necho of Egypt sided with Assyria, and raced northward with his army to fight Babylon. King Josiah went out to stop him at Megiddo, and the Egyptians killed him

During the days of Josiah, Zephaniah prophesied against the nations, and Nahum foretold the fall of Assyria. The great prophet Jeremiah began his work in the latter part of the reign of Josiah and mourned Josiah’s death. All during the turbulent period that followed Josiah’s death until Jerusalem was destroyed, Jeremiah unsuccessfully tried to get Judah to repent and accept Babylonian rule as punishment for their sins.

Jehoahaz

The people made Jehoahaz, son of Josiah, king upon his father’s death. But Pharaoh Necho deposed and imprisoned him after a three-month reign, put Judah under tribute, and made Jehoiakim his brother king. Jehoahaz and the kings who followed him were all very wicked. Now things fall apart in Judah quickly. Judah has sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.