Isaiah 38:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And Hezekiah wept sore— Under the law, long life and uninterrupted health are promised as rewards of obedience, and immature death is denounced as a punishment. See Exodus 20:12.Deuteronomy 5:16; Deuteronomy 30:16. When we reflect on this, we need not be surprised at the sorrow which this good king expressed at his approaching dissolution. He looked upon it as a punishment, and consequently as a mark of the divine displeasure. Other reasons too might strongly operate upon a good mind, which yet was not perfect in the love of God: the suddenness of this terrible unexpected denunciation; the unsettled state both of his public and domestic affairs; and the natural dread of death inherent in the human mind, and which was not so commonly subdued by gracious souls under the law as under the Gospel, and which might in this case possibly be augmented from a sense of his own defects, and from a thorough persuasion that God was displeased at him, by cutting him off in such a manner in the very flower of his age, and when his kingdom and family so particularly required his best assistance. However, be the reasons what they might, it behoves us certainly to judge with great candour of a prince, whose character is so good as that of Hezekiah: and perhaps, blest as we are with a brighter view of a future state than Hezekiah enjoyed, there are but few comparatively who can look upon death, respectable as it is even to the best, without some degree of serious concern.