It is widely recognized that the prose chapters of Isaiah 36-39 prepare the way for a quite different posture from chapter 40 forward. The days when a facile division of the long book called Isaiah into three neatly divided and generally unrelated parts have passed. Yet the reality of the book’s two very different postures, if I may repeat the word so soon, is undeniable. Chapters 1-35 represent one and chapters 40-66 the other.
Chapters 36-39 mediate the difference.
One key element that appears on the roster of items to be mediated is the movement from the period of Assyrian domination to that of the exiling Babylonian overlord. Chapters 36-39 help to negotiate that passage, not least by way of the story of the visiting Babylonian emissaries in chapter 39.
If this is not King Hezekiah’s finest moment, we can perhaps recognize in the dynamic of Babylonian flattery and Hezekiah’s naiveté the operating principles of this dark moment, insinuating as it does that Babylonians will in time have more to say that flattering words.
At that time King Merodach-baladan son of Baladan of Babylon sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. Hezekiah welcomed them; he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and said to him, ‘What did these men say? From where did they come to you?’ Hezekiah answered, ‘They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.’ He said, ‘What have they seen in your house?’ Hezekiah answered, They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.’
Isaiah 39:1-4 (NRSV)
At the time, neither Merodach-baladan nor Babylon are imperial powers. Indeed, both are subject to Assyria, a common circumstance that the two nations likely experienced in different ways. However the text and its reader are aware that Babylon will become that suffocating empire, bent on the suppression of little Judah to whose king they now present flattering gifts upon the occasion of his recovery from illness.
Verse two captures Hezekiah’s response in terms of both sentiment and performance.
Hezekiah welcomed them; he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.
Isaiah 39:2 (NRSV, emphasis added)
NRSV veils the ostensible sentiment of Hezekiah’s welcome, perhaps correctly capturing an idiom or—less enviably—obscuring a key element of the description. The Hebrew expression—וישמח עליהם ישעיהו—reports that Hezekiah became delighted or happy because of them. It appears to this reader that the writer shines a light upon Hezekiah’s culpable penchant for flattery, a byproduct perhaps of a kind of negligent naiveté.
The king’s prophetic confidant will, of course, be unamused.
Canter Bridge 