(7) King of Babylon. Among others Mero dach-Baladan, king of Babylon, sent ambassadors with presents to make inquiries into those matters and to congratulate the king on his recovery. Since the time of Solomon the appearance of such embassies from distant parts had been rare at Jerusalem ; and the king, in the pride of his heart, made a somewhat ostentatious display to Bala dan's ambassadors of all his treasures, which he had probably recovered from the Assyrians, and much increascd with their spoil. Josephus (Antiq. x, 2, 2) says that one of the objects of the em bassy was to form an alliance with Hezekiah against the Assyrian empire; and, if so, his readi ness to enter into an alliance adverse to the theo cratical policy, and his desire to magnify his own importance in the eyes of the king of Babylon, probably furnished the ground of the divine dis approbation with which his conduct in this matter was regarded. He was reprimanded by the proph et Isaiah, who revealed to him the mysteries of the future, so far as to apprise him that all these treasures should hereafter be in the possession of the Babylonians, and his family and people exiles in the land from which these ambassadors came (see ISAIAH). The intimation was received by the king with his usual submission to the will of God, and he was content to know that these evils were not to be inflicted in his own days. He has sometimes been blamed for this seeming indiffer ence to the fate of his successors; but it is to be borne in mind that at this tiine he had no children.
This was in the fourteenth year of his reign, and Manasseh, his successor, was not born till three years afterwards (2 Kings xx 19; 2 Chron. xxxii :31; Is. xxxix).
(8) Death. The rest of Hezekiah's life appears to have been peaceable and prosperous. No man before or since ever lived under the certain knowl edge of the precise length of the span of life before him. When the fifteen years had expired Heze kiah was gathered to his fathers, after a reign of twenty-nine years. He died sincerely lamented by all his people, and the public respect for his character and memory was testified by his corpse being placed in the highest niche of the royal sepulcher (2 Kings EX:20, 21; 2 Chron. xxxii 32, 33). Dean Stanley, Hist. of the Jewish Ch. ii. 505-540.
2. Son of Neariah, of the royal family of Judah (1 Chron. iii:23). B.C. after 536.
3. A person mentioned in connection with Ater (Neh. B. C. before 536.
4. An ancestor of the prophet Zephaniah (Zeph_ i:1; in A. V. Hizkiah), B. C. before 63o.
=ZION (he'zi-6n), (Heb. 1111:1, khez-yone vision), a king of Aram and father of Tabrimon Kings xv :t8). It is probable that he is identical with Rezon (1 Kings xi :23), as the naines in the original are very similar. (B. C. before 928.)