HEZEKIAH, son and successor of Ahaz, one of the greatest of the kings of Judah. He flourished at the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 7th century B.C. in critical times. There are difficulties about the chronology of his reign, the one fixed point being 701 B.C. when Judah was invaded by Sennacherib. Whether he came to the throne before or after the fall of Samaria (722— '721 B.C.) is disputed. Shortly before 701 B.C. the whole of west ern Asia was in a ferment ; Sargon had died and Sennacherib had come to the throne (in 705) ; vassal kings plotted to recover their independence and Assyrian puppets were removed by their oppo nents. Judah was in touch with a general rising in S.W. Palestine, in which Ekron, Lachish, Ascalon (Ashkelon) and other towns of the Philistines were supported by the Kings of Musri and Meluhha. Sennacherib completely routed them at Eltekeh (a Danite City), and thence turned against Hezekiah, who had been in league with Ekron. In this invasion Sennacherib claims entire success; 46 towns of Judah were captured, 200,150 men and many herds of cattle were carried off among the spoil, and Jerusalem itself was closely invested. Hezekiah was imprisoned "like a bird in a cage"—to quote Sennacherib.
The brief account in 2 Kings xviii. 14-16, supplements the As syrian record by the statement that Sennacherib besieged Lachish, a fact which is confirmed by a bas-relief (now in the British Museum) depicting the king in the act of besieging the town. This historical fragment is followed in 2 Kings by two narra tives which tell how the king sent an official from Lachish to demand the submission of Hezekiah and conclude with the unex pected deliverance of Jerusalem. Both these stories appear to belong to a biography of Isaiah, and are open to the suspicion that historical facts have been subordinated to idealize the work of the prophet (cf. the similar accounts about Elijah and Elisha). See KINGS, FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF.
The narratives are (a) 2 Kings xviii. 13, 17–xix. 8; cf. Isa. xxxvi. i.–xxxvii. 8, and (b) xix. 9b-35; cf. Isa. xxxvii. 9-36 (2 Chron. xxxii. 9, .sqq. is based on both). Jerusalem's deliverance is attributed to a certain rumour (xix. 7), to the advance of Tirha kah, king of Ethiopia (v. 9), and to a remarkable pestilence (v. 35) which finds an echo in a famous story related, not with out some confusion of essential facts, by Herodotus (ii. 141; cf. Josephus Antiq. X. i. 5) . It has been widely assumed that the two narratives are duplicates. It is, however, much more probable that they refer to different events. Sennacherib really made two expeditions against Judah. In the first of these, 701 B.C., the Assyrian Monarch was bought off by payment of a heavy tribute, cf. 2 Kings xviii. 14-16, and deprived Judah of a good deal of territory. In the second expedition which took place after the accession of Tiharkah, King of Egypt, 691 or 688 B.C. occurred the disaster described in 2 Kings xix. 9-35; cf. Herodotus II. § 141. An attractive solution of the chronological difficulty would be to reckon the 15 years, extension to Hezekiah from 705, in which case his reign would have been prolonged to 69o.
The reforms mentioned in 2 Kings xviii. 1-8, cannot have been carried out until after 701 when the prestige of the Prophet and the Temple had been enormously enhanced by the Deliverance of Jerusalem. The most striking of the reforms was the destruction of the brazen serpent, the cult of which was traditionally traced back to the time of Moses (Num. xxi. 9).
According to Prov. xxv. 1, Hezekiah was a patron of literature (see PROVERBS). The hymn which is ascribed to the king (Isa. xxxviii. 9-20, wanting in 2 Kings) is of post-exilic origin (see Cheyne, Introd. to Isaiah, 222 seq. ), but is further proof of the manner in which the Judaean king was idealized in subsequent ages, partly, perhaps, in the belief that the deliverance of Jeru salem was the reward for his piety.
For special discussions, see Stade, Zeits. d. alttest. Wissenschaft, 1886, pp. 173, sqq.; Winckler, Alttest. Untersuch., 26 sqq.; Driver, Isaiah, his Life and Times, pp. ; A. Jeremias, Alte Test, 304-310; K. Fullerton, Bibliotheca sacra 1906, pp. ; A. Alt, Israel u. Agypten (Leipzig, 1909) ; Lewy, Orient. Lit. Zeitung, 1928, cols. 150 163 ; also bibliography to ISAIAH. (S. A. C. ; G. H. B.)