King Hezekiah Brought Down by Empty Glory

So we read that Hezekiah, king of Judah, a man perfectly righteous in all things and approved by the witness of Holy Scripture, was overthrown by a single arrow of empty glory after countless praises for his virtues. He who by a single prayer could bring about the death of a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian army, whom the angel destroyed in one night, is overcome by boasting and vanity. To pass over the long list of his virtues, which would take a long time to unfold, I will say only this one thing about him. After the end of his life had been decreed and the day of his death fixed by the Lord’s sentence, he prevailed by a single prayer to extend the limits set to his life by fifteen years. The sun went back ten steps over which it had already shone on its way toward setting, and by its return it scattered the lines that the shadow following its course had already marked. By this stupendous miracle, against the fixed laws of nature, it gave the whole world two days in one. [a]

Yet after signs so great and so incredible, after such immense proofs of his goodness, hear the Scripture tell how he was destroyed by his very successes. “In those days,” we are told, “Hezekiah was sick to the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and he heard him and gave him a sign.” That is the sign we read of in the fourth book of the Kingdoms, given by the prophet Isaiah through the going back of the sun. “But,” it says, “he did not repay according to the benefits he had received, for his heart was lifted up; and wrath was kindled against him and against Judah and Jerusalem. And afterward he humbled himself because his heart had been lifted up, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and therefore the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.”

How dangerous, how terrible is the sickness of vanity! So much goodness, so many virtues, such faith and devotion, great enough to prevail to change nature itself and the laws of the whole world, perish by a single act of pride! All his good deeds would have been forgotten as if they had never been, and he would at once have fallen under the wrath of the Lord, had he not appeased him by recovering his humility. So the man who had fallen from so great a height of excellence at the prompting of pride could climb back to the height he had lost only by the same steps of humility. Do you want to see another example of a similar downfall?