Read 2 Kings 20 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraphs:
20:1-3 {s} Hezekiah’s sickness and prayer for remembrance before YHVH
20:4-11 {p} Isaiah’s word: YHVH will heal you on the third day/ the sign of the sundial
20:12-21 {p} Hezekiah received the embassy from Babylon/ prophecy of future conquest by them/ his death
The Strong theme:
20:1-11 {s+p} Healing asked, and miraculously accomplished
2 Kin 20:1-21 Chiastic structure:
The unusual central axis of the structure puzzled me. I always ask myself, “Why is this the axis? Why are there neon-flashing lights around this particular passage?”
The text reads as if God changed His mind. The axis highlights the change. But we know God does not change His mind (Num 23:19, Mal 3:6). Yet notice what comes to light:
Hezekiah’s death is certain (vs. 1).
God’s response signals a change in the outcome (axis, vs. 5).
Hezekiah’s life is certain (vs. 7).
2 Kings is proclaiming the Gospel, not only in the theme of Resurrection Life, but doubly so since after Three Days Hezekiah will go up.
Secularists say that the text was deliberately framed by man to convey the message of three days to resurrection, fudging the details of history to make it fit.
But there are two concrete proofs that this cannot be the case.
1)
The Pharisees, preeminent scholars of the Hebrew Bible in the 1st century, were confounded when Yeshua told them, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah (Mat 16:4).”
Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, before being “raised to new life.” They did not know what He was talking about! If the sign of three days to resurrection was known well-enough among the elite scholar class to have deliberately framed the text in such a way, it would have been common knowledge among them.
2)
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 1 Cor 2:7-8
Neither human scholars nor the rulers of this age (spiritual powers and rulers of wickedness in heavenly places, Eph 6:12) possessed the knowledge of the resurrection proclaimed by the Hebrew Bible’s foreshadowing of the Gospel, or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
The only option left: it must be that the human writers of the biblical text wrote what they wrote because that is what happened, and the Spirit of God put His own thumbprint on their work, through Chiastic structures, Signs of Messiah, Prophetic Types, and the other Teaching Tools which proclaimed the Gospel far in advance.
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