Isaiah 38:13 Ulasan

This chapter proceeds in the history of Hezekiah. Here is, I. His sickness, and the sentence of death he received within himself (Isa 38:1). II. His prayer in his sickness (Isa 38:2, Isa 38:3). III. The answer of peace which God gave to that prayer, assuring him that he should recover, that he should live fifteen years yet, that Jerusalem should be delivered from the king of Assyria, and that, for a sign to confirm his faith herein, the sun should go back ten degrees (Isa 38:4-8). And this we read and opened before, Kg2 20:1, etc. But, IV. Here is Hezekiah's thanksgiving for his recovery, which we had not before (Isa 38:9-20). To which are added the means used (Isa 38:21), and the end the good man aimed at in desiring to recover (Isa 38:22). This is a chapter which will entertain the thoughts, direct the devotions, and encourage the faith and hopes of those that are confined by bodily distempers; it visits those that are visited with sickness.

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 38 This chapter gives an account of Hezekiah's sickness, recovery, and thanksgiving on that account. His sickness, and the nature of it, and his preparation for it, as directed to by the prophet, Isa 38:1, his prayer to God upon it, Isa 38:2 the answer returned unto it, by which he is assured of living fifteen years more, and of the deliverance and protection of the city of Jerusalem from the Assyrians, Isa 38:4, the token of his recovery, the sun going back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz, Isa 38:7, a writing of Hezekiah's upon his recovery, in commemoration of it, Isa 38:9, in which he represents the deplorable condition he had been in, the terrible apprehensions he had of things, especially of the wrath and fury of the Almighty, and his sorrowful and mournful complaints, Isa 38:10, he observes his deliverance according to the word of God; expresses his faith in it; promises to retain a cheerful sense of it; owning that it was by the promises of God that he had lived as other saints did; and ascribes his preservation from the grave to the love of God to him, of which the forgiveness of his sins was an evidence, Isa 38:15, the end of which salvation was, that he might praise the Lord, which he determined to do, on stringed instruments, Isa 38:18, and the chapter is closed with observing the means of curing him of his boil; and that it was at his request that the sign of his recovery was given him, Isa 38:21.

Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter,.... Rather, "like a crane and a swallow", like both; sometimes loud and clamorous, like a crane (o), when the pain was very acute and grievous; and sometimes very low, through weakness of body, like the twittering of a swallow; or the moan he made under his affliction was like the mournful voices of these birds at certain times. Some think he refers to his prayers, which were quick and short, and expressed not with articulate words, but in groans and cries; at least were not regular and orderly, but interrupted, and scarce intelligible, like the chattering of the birds mentioned: I did mourn as a dove; silently and patiently, within himself, for his sins and transgressions; and because of his afflictions, the fruit of them: mine eyes fail with looking upwards; or, "on high"; or, as the Septuagint and Arabic versions express it, "to the height of heaven"; to the Lord there, whose Shechinah, as the Targum, is in the highest heavens: in his distress he looked up to heaven for help, but none came; he looked and waited till his eyes were weak with looking, and he could look no longer; both his eyes and his heart failed him, and he despaired of relief; and the prayer he put up was as follows: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me; or, "it oppresseth me (p)"; that is, the disease; it lay so heavy upon him, it bore him down with the weight of it, he could not stand up under it; it had seized him, and crushed him; it held him fast, and he could not get clear of it; and therefore entreats the Lord to "undertake" for him, to be his surety for good, as in Psa 119:122, he represents his disease as a bailiff that had arrested him, and was carrying him to the prison of the grave; and therefore prays that the Lord would bail him, or rescue him out of his hands, that he might not go down to the gates of the grave. So souls oppressed with the guilt of sin, and having fearful apprehensions of divine justice, should apply to Christ their surety, and take refuge in his undertakings, where only peace and safety are to be enjoyed. So Gussetius renders the words, "I have unrighteousness, be surety for me" (q); and takes them to be a confession of Hezekiah, acknowledging himself guilty of unrighteousness, praying and looking to Christ the Son of God, and to his suretyship engagements, who, though not yet come to fulfil them, certainly would. (o) So it is said in the Talmud, "Resh-Lakish cried like a crane", T. Bab. Kiddushin, col. 42. 1. (p) "Opprimit me, sub.infirmitas, vel morbus", Munster. (q) "njustitia est mihi hoc est, habeo injustitiam, reus suro injustitia, sponde pro me", Ebr. Comment, p. 654.

(Verse 13) I hoped until morning; like a lion, it has crushed all my bones. From morning until evening you will finish me. In the morning, he says, you will finish me until evening: I hoped until morning: which Job also says he endured in his distress and bodily torments (Job IV), when in daylight he awaited night, and in darkness awaited light, thinking that the punishments could be changed by the shifting of seasons. He knows this to be true who is burning with great fevers, whose internal fire, like that of a lion, consumes all his bones, and who does not think he will survive beyond the magnitude of his pain.

776. Third, he laments his anxiety of heart. And first, as to the continual expectation of death: from morning, namely, I was speaking, even tonight you will make an end of me, in death. And then, not dying, I hoped, again, till morning, so that simultaneously with death the sorrow of sickness was ended; nonetheless, as a lion so has he, infirmity or God himself through the sorrow of sickness, broken all my bones: if I lie down to sleep, I shall say: when shall I rise? And again, I shall look for the evening, and shall be filled with sorrows even till darkness (Job 7:4).

The princes of Judah, taking offense at Jeremiah on account of his predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Chaldeans, cause him to be cast into a deep and miry dungeon, Jer 38:1-6. Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian, gets the king's permission to take him out, Jer 38:7-13. Jeremiah advises the king, who consulted him privately, to surrender to the Chaldeans, Jer 38:14-23. The king promises the prophet that he will not put him to death, and requires him not to reveal what had passed to the princes; to whom he accordingly gives an evasive answer, telling them only so much of the conference as related to his request for his life, Jer 38:24-28.

The last line of the foregoing verse מיום עד לילה תשלימני miyom ad layelah tashlimeni, "In the course of the day thou wilt finish my web; "or, as the common version has it, "From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me, "is not repeated at the end of this verse in the Syriac version; and a MS. omits it. It seems to have been inserted a second time in the Hebrew text by mistake. I reckoned till morning, etc. "I roared until the morning like the lion" - For שויתי shivvithi, the Chaldee has נהמית nihameith: he read שאגתי shaagti, the proper term for the roaring of a lion; often applied to the deep groaning of men in sickness. See Psalm 22, Psa 32:3; Psa 38:9; Job 3:24. The Masoretes divide the sentence, as I have done; taking כארי caari, like a lion, into the first member; and so likewise the Septuagint.

HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS; PERHAPS CONNECTED WITH THE PLAGUE OR BLAST WHEREBY THE ASSYRIAN ARMY HAD BEEN DESTROYED. (Isa. 38:1-22) Set . . . house in order--Make arrangement as to the succession to the throne; for he had then no son; and as to thy other concerns. thou shall die--speaking according to the ordinary course of the disease. His being spared fifteen years was not a change in God's mind, but an illustration of God's dealings being unchangeably regulated by the state of man in relation to Him.

I reckoned . . . that--rather, I composed (my mind, during the night, expecting relief in the "morning," so Job 7:4): for ("that" is not, as in the English Version, to be supplied) as a lion He was breaking all my bones [VITRINGA] (Job 10:16; Lam 3:10-11). The Hebrew, in Psa 131:2, is rendered, "I quieted." Or else, "I made myself like a lion (namely, in roaring, through pain), He was so breaking my bones!" Poets often compare great groaning to a lion's roaring, so, Isa 38:14, he compares his groans to the sounds of other animals (Psa 22:1) [MAURER].

There is nothing to surprise us in the fact that we are carried back to the time when Jerusalem was still threatened by the Assyrian, since the closing vv. of chapter 37 merely contain an anticipatory announcement, introduced for the purpose of completing the picture of the last Assyrian troubles, by adding the fulfilment of Isaiah's prediction of their termination. It is within this period, and indeed in the year of the Assyrian invasion (Isa 36:1), since Hezekiah reigned twenty-nine years, and fifteen of these are promised here, that the event described by Isaiah falls - an event not merely of private interest, but one of importance in connection with the history of the nation also. "In those days Hizkiyahu became dangerously ill. And Isaiah son of Amoz, the prophet, came to him, and said to him, Thus saith Jehovah, Set thine house in order: for thou wilt die, and not recover. Then Hizkiyahu turned (K. om.) his face to the wall, and prayed to Jehovah, and said (K. saying), O Jehovah, remember this, I pray, that I have walked before thee in truth, and with the whole heart, and have done what was good in Thine eyes! And Hizkiyahu wept with loud weeping." "Give command to thy house" (ל, cf., אל, Sa2 17:23) is equivalent to, "Make known thy last will to thy family" (compare the rabbinical tsavvâ'âh, the last will and testament); for though tsivvâh is generally construed with the accusative of the person, it is also construed with Lamed (e.g., Exo 1:22; cf., אל, Exo 16:34). חיה in such a connection as this signifies to revive or recover. The announcement of his death is unconditional and absolute. As Vitringa observes, "the condition was not expressed, because God would draw it from him as a voluntary act." The sick man turned his face towards the wall (פּניו הסב, hence the usual fut. cons. ויּסּב as in Kg1 21:4, Kg1 21:8, Kg1 21:14), to retire into himself and to God. The supplicatory אנּה (here, as in Psa 116:4, Psa 116:16, and in all six times, with ה) always has the principal tone upon the last syllable before יהוה = אדני (Neh 1:11). The metheg has sometimes passed into a conjunctive accent (e.g., Gen 50:17; Exo 32:31). אשׁר את does not signify that which, but this, that, as in Deu 9:7; Kg2 8:12, etc. "In truth," i.e., without wavering or hypocrisy. שׁלם בלב, with a complete or whole heart, as in Kg1 8:61, etc. He wept aloud, because it was a dreadful thing to him to have to die without an heir to the throne, in the full strength of his manhood (in the thirty-ninth year of his age), and with the nation in so unsettled a state.

In strophe 2 the retrospective glance is continued. His sufferings increased to such an extent, that there was nothing left in his power but a whining moan - a languid look for help. I waited patiently till the morning; like the lion, So He broke in pieces all my bones: From day to night Thou makest it all over with me. Like a swallow, a crane, so I chirped; I cooed like the dove; Mine eyes pined for the height. O Lord, men assault me! Be bail for me." The meaning of shivvithi may be seen from Psa 131:2, in accordance with which an Arabic translator has rendered the passage, "I smoothed, i.e., quieted (sâweitu) my soul, notwithstanding the sickness, all night, until the morning." But the morning brought no improvement; the violence of the pain, crushing him like a lion, forced from him again and again the mournful cry, that he must die before the day had passed, and should not live to see another. The Masora here has a remark, which is of importance, as bearing upon Psa 22:17, viz., that כּארי occurs twice, and לישׁני בתרי with two different meanings. The meaning of עגוּר סוּס is determined by Jer 8:7, from which it is evident that עגּור is not an attribute of סּוס here, in the sense of "chirping mournfully," or "making a circle in its flight," but is the name of a particular bird, namely the crane. For although the Targum and Syriac both seem to render סוס in that passage (keri סיס, which is the chethib here, according to the reading of Orientals) by כּוּרכּיא) (a crane, Arab. Kurki), and עגוּר, by סנוּניתא) (the ordinary name of the swallow, which Haji Gaon explains by the Arabic chuttaf), yet the relation is really the reverse: sūs (sı̄s) is the swallow, and ‛âgūr the crane. Hence Rashi, on b. Kiddusin 44a ("then cried Res Lakis like a crane"), gives âg, Fr. grue, as the rendering of כרוכי; whereas Parchon (s.verse ‛âgūr), confounds the crane with the hoarsely croaking stork (ciconia alba). The verb 'ătsaphtsēph answers very well not only to the flebile murmur of the swallow (into which the penitential Progne was changed, according to the Grecian myth), but also to the shrill shriek of the crane, which is caused by the extraordinary elongation of the windpipe, and is onomatopoetically expressed in its name ‛âgūr. (Note: The call of the parent cranes, according to Naumann (Vgel Deutschlands, ix. 364), is a rattling kruh (gruh), which is uncommonly violent when close, and has a trumpet-like sound, which makes it audible at a very great distance. With the younger cranes it has a somewhat higher tone, which often passes, so to speak, into a falsetto.) Tsiphtsēph, like τρίζειν, is applied to every kind of shrill, penetrating, inarticulate sound. The ordinary meaning of dallū, to hang long and loose, has here passed over into that of pining (syn. kâlâh). The name of God in Isa 38:14 is Adonai, not Jehovah, being one of the 134 ודּין, i.e., words which are really written Adonai, and not merely to be read so. (Note: Vid., Br, Psalterium, p. 133.) It is impossible to take עשׁקה־לּי as an imperative. The pointing, according to which we are to read ‛ashqa, admits this (compare shâmrâh in Psa 86:2; Psa 119:167; and on the other hand, zochrālli, in Neh 5:19, etc.); (Note: Vid., Br, Thorath Emeth, pp. 22, 23.) but the usage of the language does not yield any appropriate meaning for such an imperative. It is either the third person, used in a neuter sense, "it is sorrowful with me;" or, what Luzzatto very properly considers still more probable, on account of the antithesis of ‛ashqâh and ‛ârbēni, a substantive (‛ashqah for ‛osheq), "there is pressure upon me" (compare רזי־לי, Isa 24:16), i.e., it presses me like an unmerciful creditor; and to this there is appended the petition, Guarantee me, i.e., be bail for me, answer for me (see at Job 17:3).