Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Hezekiah, being sick, invoking God through Isaiah is healed by a fig poultice, and receives a sign: the reversal of the shadow on the sundial. Then, in verse 12, Merodach king of Babylon sends envoys to Hezekiah, to whom he shows all his treasures, and therefore hears from Isaiah that all of them will be plundered by the Babylonians.
Vulgate Text: 4 Kings 20:1-21
1. In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death: and Isaiah the son of Amoz the prophet came to him and said to him: Thus says the Lord God: Set your house in order: for you shall die and not live. 2. And he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying: 3. I beseech You, O Lord, remember, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is pleasing before You. And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping. 4. And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle part of the court, the word of the Lord came to him, saying: 5. Return, and say to Hezekiah the leader of My people: Thus says the Lord God of David your father: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears: and behold, I have healed you; on the third day you shall go up to the temple of the Lord. 6. And I will add to your days fifteen years: and I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect this city for My sake and for the sake of David My servant. 7. And Isaiah said: Bring a lump of figs. And when they had brought it and placed it upon his sore, he was healed. 8. And Hezekiah had said to Isaiah: What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up on the third day to the temple of the Lord? 9. And Isaiah said to him: This will be the sign from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing which He has spoken: Do you wish the shadow to advance ten lines, or to go back the same number of degrees? 10. And Hezekiah said: It is easy for the shadow to advance ten lines: I do not wish that to happen, but that it go back ten degrees. 11. So Isaiah the prophet called upon the Lord, and He brought back the shadow through the lines by which it had already descended on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. 12. At that time Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of the Babylonians, sent letters and gifts to Hezekiah: for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick. 13. And Hezekiah rejoiced at their coming, and showed them the house of his spices, and the gold and silver, and various pigments, and ointments, and the house of his vessels, and all that he had in his treasuries. There was nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in his house and in all his dominion. 14. And Isaiah the prophet came to king Hezekiah and said to him: What did these men say? Or where have they come to you from? And Hezekiah said to him: They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon. 15. And he replied: What did they see in your house? Hezekiah said: Everything that is in my house they have seen: there is nothing that I have not shown them in my treasuries. 16. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah: Hear the word of the Lord; 17. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have laid up to this day, shall be carried away to Babylon: nothing shall remain, says the Lord. 18. And of your sons who shall proceed from you, whom you shall beget, they shall be taken away and shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. 19. Hezekiah said to Isaiah: The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good: let there be peace and truth in my days. 20. And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool and the aqueduct and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? 21. And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and Manasseh his son reigned in his place.
This chapter likewise is transcribed from Isaiah chapters 38 and 39, where I explained it. Many things about the piety and religious zeal of Hezekiah are added in 2 Chronicles chapters 29, 30, and 31. Hence he merited to obtain from God the victory against Sennacherib, and the miraculous healing, in which God added fifteen years to his life.
Verse 12: Berodach-Baladan Sent Letters and Gifts to Hezekiah
12. AT THAT TIME BERODACH-BALADAN, THE SON OF BALADAN, SENT. "Baladan" was the first prince of the Babylonians: for we have not heard their name until now, but only that of the Assyrians. Therefore it seems that Baladan, prefect of Babylon, or rather his son Merodach-Baladan, seeing that Sennacherib (to whom he was subject and tributary) and the Assyrian forces had been slain by an Angel in Judea, and his power weakened, threw off the yoke and made himself absolute prince and king of the Babylonians, and even deprived Esarhaddon of his kingdom and life around the twenty-sixth year of Hezekiah, as Salianus holds; and then the kingdom of the Assyrians ended: hence from then on in Scripture no kings of the Assyrians are named, but all are kings of the Babylonians, of whom the first was Baladan. Hence "Baladan" in Hebrew means the same as "without a lord," says Pagninus. Moreover, that Baladan's father was not Shalmaneser king of the Assyrians, as Genebrardus holds, but Nabonassar, who is placed by Ptolemy in the Almagest as the first prince of the Babylonians, is the opinion of Eusebius, Berosus, Josephus, Scaliger, Serarius, Bellarmine, Torniellus, Salianus in their Chronology, from whom the Nabonassarean era was established, from which the Babylonians and others reckoned their years thenceforth, just as the Persians from Cyrus, the Greeks from Alexander, the Romans from Augustus. Hence in Chaldean he was called Baladan from Bal and Haddon. For Bal or Bel and Baal was Nimrod or Jupiter Belus, the first builder of the tower of Babel after the flood, as I said in Genesis 10, who (or whose companion) was called by another name Nebo, that is, prophecy or divination, as I said on Isaiah chapter 46, verse 1, on the words: "Bel is broken, Nebo is crushed." For as Tertullian says, Apology chapter 20: "The testimony of divinity is the truth of divination." For it is proper to God to divine, foreknow, and predict the future, according to that saying of Isaiah chapter 41, verse 23: "Tell what is to come... and we shall know that you are gods." Hence from the god Nebo and Assar was formed and called Nabonassar. Again, the son of Baladan, or Nabonassar, was this "Merodach" or Berodach, who first called himself king of Babylon and sent envoys to Hezekiah. Merodach was succeeded by his son Ben-Merodach, as Eusebius asserts, book IX of the Preparation, Berosus as cited by Josephus, the Metasthenes of Annius, Josephus, Scaliger, book V of the Correction of the Times, Torniellus, Salianus, and others, who assign to Baladan 27 years, to Merodach 52, to Ben-Merodach 44, which combined make 123; hence the chronologists from Nabonassar to Nabopolassar, whom Berosus calls Nabolassar, who succeeded Ben-Merodach and was Nebuchadnezzar the Elder, as Eusebius, Berosus, Scaliger, Bellarmine, Torniellus, Salianus and others assert, count 123 years. To Nebuchadnezzar the Elder, after nineteen years of reign, succeeded Nebuchadnezzar the Younger, surnamed the Great, who took Jerusalem, and led the Jews to Babylon, and transferred the monarchy from the Assyrians to the Babylonians, and reigned forty-five years, and was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach, called by another name Belshazzar, for thirty-four years, as I said on Daniel 5:1. This chronology of the learned men is probable, although others assign a different one in some respects. For nothing certain can be established about times so ancient and lacking certain history. See what was said on Ezekiel chapter 1, at the beginning. Finally, he who as a private citizen was called Baladan, upon assuming power was called Nabonassar-Baladan; and his son was called Merodach-Baladan.
Moreover, many with Ptolemy assign the first year of Nabonassar to the first or second year of the eighth Olympiad, or the thirtieth year from the beginning of the Olympiads, which Torniellus contends was the thirteenth year of king Ahaz; and the sixth year of the founding of Rome. Scaliger and Serarius hold it was the ninth year of Ahaz, Salianus the fourteenth of Ahaz; others prefer it to be the ninth year of Jotham. For nothing certain can be established in so uncertain a matter. Again, Ptolemy from the first year of Nabonassar counts 123 years to the first year of Nabopolassar, whom Eusebius, Berosus, Josephus, Scaliger, Salianus, and others think was Nebuchadnezzar the Elder. But others think it was the Younger, surnamed the Great, who led the Jews to Babylon. For it does not seem that Ptolemy would have omitted so powerful a monarch. For it is difficult and sometimes impossible to adapt the profane historians and make them correspond in every detail to the history of Sacred Scripture, though shortly I will make them correspond.
Moreover Merodach, beginning his reign in Babylon, sent envoys to Hezekiah, because he had heard that he had thrown off the same yoke of the king of the Assyrians that he himself had thrown off, in order to make an alliance with him, and united in strength resist the Assyrian.
Finally, these limits and, as it were, canons of chronology from Ptolemy and others are established and fixed by Scaliger, Serarius, Salianus, and others. First, the first year of Nabonassar falls in the first year of the eighth Olympiad, or in the twenty-ninth year from the beginning of the Olympiads. This is clear from the fact that Ptolemy asserts that Alexander the Great died in the year 424 of Nabonassar. Now it is established that Alexander died in the first year of the 114th Olympiad; going back from that year, the first year of Nabonassar necessarily falls in the first year of the eighth Olympiad. For 113 Olympiads make 452 years, from which if you subtract the seven Olympiads already elapsed, that is 28 years, the remainder will be 424, which flowed from the first year of Nabonassar to the death of Alexander.
Secondly, from this it follows that the first year of Nabonassar is the sixth from the founding of Rome: for Rome was founded at the end of the sixth Olympiad, or in the twenty-third year from the beginning of the Olympiads; from this beginning the first year of Nabonassar is the twenty-ninth; now twenty-nine is six years later than twenty-three, as is evident.
Thirdly, the year 151 from the beginning of the Olympiads is the first year of Nabopolassar, that is, Nebuchadnezzar the Elder, who was the father of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, or the first monarch of the Chaldeans. Fourthly, the 122nd year of Nabonassar is the first year of Nabopolassar; so Scaliger and Serarius; however Salianus and Torniellus deny this, who assign the first year of Nabonassar to the 13th or 14th year of Ahaz, and the first year of Nabopolassar to the 13th year of Josiah; now from the 14th year of Ahaz to the 13th of Josiah only one hundred and one years elapsed, not one hundred and twenty-two.
According to these canons, the years of all these should be assigned and combined with the years of the kings of Judah as follows: we assign the beginning of the Olympiads to the 40th year of Azariah; the founding of Rome to the 10th or 11th year of Jotham; the first year of Nabonassar to the 15th year of Jotham; the first year of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadnezzar the Elder to the 18th year of Josiah. For from the 40th year of Uzziah to the 10th of Jotham there are 23 years. Thence to the 15th of Jotham there are six years, thence to the 18th of Josiah there elapsed 122 years, thence to the fifth year from the captivity of Jehoiachin there are thirty years, when Ezekiel began to prophesy, as he himself says in chapter 1, verse 1. For it seems that Nebuchadnezzar the Elder began to build his kingdom in Babylon in the 13th year of Josiah, but absolutely reigned in the 18th year of Josiah, and then together with Cyaxares king of the Medes besieged Nineveh, to overthrow the Assyrian monarchy, which shortly afterward Nebuchadnezzar the Younger, the elder's son, actually took and overthrew, and thus transferred the monarchy from the Assyrians to himself and the Chaldeans, as I showed in Nahum 2:1.