Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, Good [is] the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. And he said, [Is it] not [good], if peace and truth be in my days?
Ver. 19. Good is the word of the Lord, &c., ] i.e., It is just and equal; and blessed be God that it is no worse. Quintilian saith of Vespasian, that he was patientissimus veri, one that could endure to be freely and faithfully dealt with. Theodosius honoured Ambrose, and our Henry VIII father Latimer, the more for their plain dealing. So did David the prophet Nathan, and Hezekiah the prophet Isaiah, not raging at his so sharp a message, but patiently receiving it; judging himself, and justifying God. Good men are neither waspish nor sullen, when they are either chid or beaten by "the father of their spirits"; but patiently hold their backs to the stripes of a displeased mercy.
And he said, Is it not good? &c.] Is it not a mercy that I may escape that which my posterity shall suffer? He thankfully acknowledgeth a mixture, and that the judgment now denounced was not "an evil, an only evil," as Ezekiel 7:5 .