2 Kings20:1–11

The same sickness told twice: 2 Kings 20 and Isaiah 38 verbal / quotation: confirmed

The narrative stands twice in Scripture, here and in Isaiah 38, and the Verifier's candidates track the overlap word by word: Isaiah 38:1 shares אָמוֹץ (ʼÂmôwts, H531) with v. 1 along with nâbîyʼ and châlâh; Isaiah 38:21 shares Yᵉshaʻyâh (H3470) and châyâh with v. 7; Isaiah 38:8 shares tsêl (H6738, shadow) with vv. 9 to 11. The relation is not citation but recension, and the differences are where the commentators work. Ellicott judges that the Isaiah placement of our vv. 7 and 8 at the end of the narrative is “obviously out of place” and suggests a copyist's insertion mark lost in transmission. K&D list the omissions precisely: Isaiah lacks “behold, I will cure thee, on the third day thou shalt go into the house of the Lord” and lacks “for mine own sake and my servant David's sake.” Cambridge notes that Isaiah 38:8 credits the return to the sun, where 2 Kings 20:11 credits it to the shadow. Ellicott's summary judgment is that “that narrative looks like an abbreviated transcript of the present, or of a common original.”

Isaiah 38:1 · Isaiah 38:8 · Isaiah 38:21

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes across the pair, including the rare H531 ʼÂmôwts (in 13 vv) and H3470 Yᵉshaʻyâh (in 39 vv) with Isaiah 38:1 and 38:21, plus H6738 tsêl (in 47 vv) and H6235 ʻeser (in 157 vv) with Isaiah 38:8. Hebrew to Hebrew, same-language verbal dependence; we record it as parallel recension of one narrative rather than as one book quoting the other, which the shared lexemes alone cannot settle.

Backward: the six-verse word verbal / quotation: confirmed

The direction Hezekiah asks for in v. 10 and receives in v. 11 is carried by אֲחֹרַנִּית (ʼăchôrannîyth, H322), an adverb the Verifier finds in only six verses of the Hebrew Bible. Its other occurrences are worth standing beside this one. At Genesis 9:23 Shem and Japheth walk backward to cover their father's nakedness, a reversal of gaze that preserves honour. At 1 Samuel 4:18 Eli falls backward off his seat and dies when the ark is taken, a reversal that is judgment. At 1 Kings 18:37 Elijah's prayer on Carmel speaks of God having turned the people's heart back again, and that verse shares a second lexeme with our unit, çâbab (H5437), the very verb of Hezekiah turning his face in v. 2. ⚙ The rare adverb clusters around moments when something that has gone one way is made to go the other; here alone the thing reversed is not a man but time's own marker.

Genesis 9:23 · 1 Samuel 4:18 · 1 Kings 18:37

basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H322 ʼăchôrannîyth (in 6 vv) with all three refs; 1 Kings 18:37 additionally shares H5437 çâbab (in 152 vv), the verb of v. 2. A genuine verbal link of a rare word, not a quotation of one passage by another.

“Isaiah the son of Amoz” and the Assyrian file structural / thematic: confirmed

The full designation in v. 1, יְשַׁעְיָהוּ בֶן־אָמוֹץ הַנָּבִיא, ties this narrative to a whole body of Hezekiah material: 2 Kings 19:2 and 19:20, Isaiah 37:2 and 37:21, 2 Chronicles 32:20, and the superscriptions at Isaiah 1:1, 2:1 and 13:1. Barnes and Pulpit both read the fullness of the naming as a source-critical clue rather than a stylistic flourish: Barnes says it “marks the original independence of this narrative,” and that the writer of Kings “may have found it altogether separate from the other records of Hezekiah, and added it in the state in which he found it”; Pulpit agrees it “indicates the original independency of the narrative.” ⚙ We record the link but downgrade its weight: a shared proper name establishes that the same prophet and king stand in these texts, not that one text draws on another.

2 Kings 19:20 · Isaiah 37:21 · 2 Chronicles 32:20 · Isaiah 1:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H531 ʼÂmôwts (in 13 vv), H3470 Yᵉshaʻyâh (in 39 vv), H2396 Chizqîyâh (in 116 vv), H5030 nâbîyʼ (in 288 vv). The rare lexeme is a personal name, so it establishes shared dramatis personae and a shared Hezekiah cycle, not verbal dependence; tiered down from verbal for that reason.

The Chronicler's other verdict on the same illness structural / thematic: confirmed

2 Chronicles 32:24-31 narrates this sickness and sign from another angle, and it supplies what Kings withholds: that Hezekiah did not render again according to the benefit done him, for his heart was lifted up, and that the Babylonian envoys came to enquire of the wonder done in the land. Several of the brief's voices reach for that chapter. Pulpit cites 2 Chronicles 32:31 to argue that the sign was local, “done in the land” of Judah and “not visible elsewhere.” Poole uses the same verse to argue the opposite scale, that the miracle “was noted by the Babylonians.” Ellicott cites it in the same connection; Cambridge, reading Kings alone, concludes from the display before the embassy “that Hezekiah could think of his own greatness and forget to point to God as its author.” ⚙ We flag the method rather than the conclusion: the commentators' moral reading of 2 Kings 20:1 depends on Chronicles supplying a motive Kings does not.

2 Chronicles 32:24 · 2 Chronicles 32:31

basis: Parallel narrative of the same event, cited for this unit by Pulpit, Poole and Ellicott; 2 Chronicles 32:20 and 32:32 appear in the Verifier's candidate list sharing H531, H3470 and H5030, but no Verifier-computed lexeme basis was supplied for 32:24 or 32:31 specifically, so the link recorded here is narrative and commentator-attested, not lexeme-verified.

The sun that stood still and the shadow that went back flagged: verify source

Benson closes his note on v. 11 by referring the reader to Joshua 10:12-13, and Poole argues from that passage that the sun itself, and not the shadow only, moved: “This may seem most probable, first, By comparing this with Joshua 10:13, where the sun itself stood still.” Ellicott resists the inference, observing that here “it is not said that the sun went back, but the shadow,” and that Isaiah 38:8's “the sun returned” is a natural way of speaking. ⚙ The two events are not the same kind of thing: Joshua's is prolongation, Hezekiah's is reversal, and the direction is the whole point of the sign. We record the link as the commentators' cross-reference and no more.

Joshua 10:12 · Joshua 10:13

basis: Asserted by Poole and referred to by Benson; no Verifier-computed shared lexeme was supplied for this pair, and the phenomena differ (a lengthened day versus a reversed shadow). Provenance is commentary, not text-internal verbal linkage.

On the third day he shall go up typological

Twice the promise is dated, in v. 5 from God and in v. 8 in the king's question: בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי, and on that day a man under sentence of death goes up to the house of the LORD. Ellicott notes the comparison with Hosea 6:2 while declining to press it: “Here, however, there is no ground for understanding the expression other than literally.” K&D read the dating as a pledge, not a symbol. ⚙ We hold the figural reading at arm's length and mark it as ours: the pattern of a third day on which one who was dying is found alive and in the sanctuary recurs elsewhere in Scripture, but this text does not say so, and Ellicott, the only voice in the brief who raises the question, answers it against us.

Hosea 6:2 · 1 Corinthians 15:4

basis: Figural, and novel as applied here. No shared-lexeme basis is possible with 1 Corinthians 15:4 (Greek to Hebrew); Hosea 6:2 is raised by Ellicott on this verse and then set aside by him. Recorded as our reading, offered to be tested, not as a claim about the author's intent.

Spared for another's sake ancient/widely-held

Hezekiah's prayer offers God his own record, truth and a whole heart and good done in God's sight. God's answer names two grounds and neither is that record: לְמַעֲנִי, for my own sake, and for the sake of David my servant. Gill reads the second clause as “the sake of his promise to David and his seed”; Poole reads the first as God vindicating his own glory; JFB read the whole reply as the Lord being “mindful of His promise to David.” Henry, commenting on the plea itself, refuses to let the king's integrity be the purchase: “it is Christ's righteousness only that is the purchase of mercy and grace.” ⚙ The pattern is the gospel's own shape. A man with a real but insufficient righteousness is heard, and the reason given is a covenant with another and a name not his. The promise to David runs forward past Hezekiah to the Son of David in whom it is kept, and the city spared for David's sake is a small down payment on a people spared for the sake of David's greater son.

2 Samuel 7:12 · Luke 1:32 · Ephesians 1:6

Heard from the wall, heard in the garden novel

The narrator records two things about Hezekiah's approach to God: he turned his face to the wall, and he wept a great weeping. God's reply takes up both, and takes up the second first in point of sense: “I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears.” ⚙ Hebrews 5:7 speaks of the Son offering up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and being heard. The correspondence is not verbal and cannot be, since one text is Hebrew and the other Greek; it is a correspondence of posture. But the two cases part at the decisive point. Hezekiah was spared death and given fifteen years that still ran out; the one who prayed in Gethsemane was heard and was not spared, and the life he came back with does not run out. We mark this as our own reading. No voice in the brief draws the line, and the reader should weigh it accordingly.

Hebrews 5:7 · Luke 22:42

A sign on the stairway of Ahaz novel

The sign is given on מַעֲלוֹת אָחָז, the steps Ahaz built. Gill and Cambridge both recall that Ahaz was the king who was offered a sign by God through this same prophet and would not ask for one (Isaiah 7:11), and Gill notes “it was resented in him that he did not.” The sign Ahaz refused was answered anyway, in Isaiah 7:14, by a child named God with us. ⚙ The two chapters are joined by the man and the household, not by a shared word, and we claim no more: God writes his son's sign across the father's own instrument, and the promise Ahaz would not ask for stands over the dial he built. The name given in Isaiah 7:14 is read of Christ throughout Christian tradition, and Matthew's gospel makes that reading explicit; the connection to Hezekiah's stairway is ours and is offered to be tested.

Isaiah 7:11 · Isaiah 7:14 · Matthew 1:23