Isaiah Chapter 39 verse 3 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - Then came Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah comes, unsent for, to rebuke the king (comp. 2 Samuel 12:1-12; 2 Samuel 24:11-14; 1 Kings 12:22-24; 1 Kings 13:2-5; 2 Chronicles 12:5-8; 2 Chronicles 16:7-9; 2 Chronicles 19:2, 3, etc.). This bold attitude was one which prophets were entitled to take by virtue of their office, which called upon them to bear testimony, even before kings, and to have no respect of persons. A similar fearlessness is apparent in Isaiah 7:1-17, where the king with whom Isaiah has to deal was the wicked Ahaz. What said these men? "These men" is contemptuous. The demand to know what they said is almost without parallel. Diplomacy, if it is to be successful, must be secret; and Isaiah can scarcely have been surprised that his searching question received no answer. But he was zealous of God's honour, and anxious that Hezekiah should rely on no "arm of flesh," whether it were Egypt or Babylon. Such dependence would straiten God's arm, and prevent him from giving the aid that he was otherwise prepared to give. The desire of the prophet is to warn the king of the danger which he runs by coquetting with human helpers. From whence came they? Isaiah does not ask this question for the sake of information, Doubtless all Jerusalem was agog to see the strange envoys "from a far country," who had now for the first time penetrated to the city of David. All knew whence they had come, and suspected why. Isaiah asks, to force the king to a confession, on which he may base a prophecy and a warning. And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country. Embassies from distant lands to their courts are made a con-slant subject of boasting by the Assyrian monarchs (see 'Records of the Past,' vol. 1. pp. 28, 68, 95; vol. 7. pp. 49, 51, etc.). Hezekiah, perhaps, is "lifted up" (2 Chronicles 32:25) by the honour paid him, and intends to impress Isaiah with a sense of his greatness - "The men are come all the way from Babylon to see me!"

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) Then came Isaiah . . .--The words that follow, like those in Isaiah 7:3, are spoken with the authority at once of age and of a Divine mission, perhaps also of a master speaking to one who had been his pupil. No sooner does the arrival of the embassy from Babylon reach his ear than he goes straight to the king to ask him what it all meant. The king's answer seems to plead that they came "from a far country" as an excuse. Could he refuse to admit those who had taken so long a journey in his honour? Could intercourse with a land so distant bring any moral or political danger? It was not like the alliance with Egypt, to which Isaiah was so strenuously opposed.