And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and shewed them all the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not.
Hezekiah hearkened unto them, х yishma` (H8085); but the parallel passage, Isaiah 39:2, has yismach (H8055), was glad. The latter must, from the tenor of the context, be regarded as the proper reading, because the Babylonians came not as suppliants for a favour, but as the bearers of a congratulatory message. It is confirmatory of the correctness of this view that the Septuagint has echaree ep' autois in both passages]. The king of Judah, flattered with this honour, showed the ambassadors х beeyt (H1004) keelaayw (H3627)
... kaal (H3605)] all the house of his precious things-his store-house containing the regalia and hereditary treasures belonging to the crown, his armoury (see 2 Kings 22:8) and warlike stores; and his motive for this was, evidently, that the Babylonian deputies might be the more induced to prize his friendship.
The silver, and the gold. He had paid so much tribute to Sennacherib as exhausted his treasury (2 Kings 18:16). But after the destruction of Sennacherib, presents were brought him from various quarters, out of respect to a king who, by his faith and prayer, saved his country (2 Chronicles 32:23); and, besides, it is by no means improbable that from the corpses in the Assyrian camp, all the gold and silver he had paid might be recovered. The vain display, however, was offensive to his divine liege-lord, who sent Isaiah to reprove him. The answer he gave the prophet (2 Kings 20:14) shows how he was elated by the compliment of their visit; but the display was wrong, as making a vain exhibition, for his own aggrandizement, of what had been offered him from reverence and respect to his God, and at the same time presenting a bait for the cupidity of these rapacious foreigners, who, at no distant period, would return from the same city of Babylon, and pillars his country, and transfer all the possessions he ostentatiously displayed to Babylon, as well as his posterity, to be court attendants in that country (see the notes at 2 Chronicles 32:31). Besides, it was wrong in a higher point of view still, as all alliances with foreign or pagan states were at variance with the fundamental principle of the theocratic kingdom of Judah.
This passage affords a strong argument as to the prophecy respecting the captivity to Babylon, showing that the words must have been spoken very long before the event. 'The folly of the king and the reproof of the prophet must stand or fall together; the one prompts the other; the truth of the one sustains the truth of the other; the date of the one fixes the date of the other. Thus the period of Hezekiah's display of his finances being determined to a period soon after the downfall of the Assyrians, this rebuke of the prophet, which springs out of it, is determined to the same. Then the rebuke was a prophecy; because as yet it remained for Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib to annex Babylon to Assyria by conquest; it remained for the two kingdoms to continue united for two generations more; it remained for Nabopolassar, the satrap of Babylon, to revolt from Assyria, and set up that kingdom for itself; and it remained for Nebuchadnezzar his son to succeed him, and by carrying away the Jews to Babylon, accomplish the words of Isaiah. But this interval occupied a hundred years and upwards; and so far therefore, must the spirit of prophecy have carried him forward into futurity, and that, too, contrary to all present appearances. For Babylon was as yet but a name to the people of Jerusalem; it was a far country, and was to be swallowed up in the great Assyrian empire, and recover its independence once more, before it could be brought to act against Judah' (Blunt's 'Undesigned Coincidences,' p. 222) (cf. Micah 2:10; Micah 4:10).