April 28, 2022: Day 91 – Isaiah 36-39 and Matthew 8-9

We have in Isaiah a retelling of a number of events in the life of the king of Judah, Hezekiah.  He is threatened by the Assyrian king and allies himself to the king of Egypt and at the end we see him allying himself with the king of Babylon, which will come to bite him later on.  But we begin with Senaccherib, king of Assyria, threatening to overtake Jerusalem, Hezekiah prays to God and beseeches deliverance and it is provided.  I loved seeing how God provided deliverance.  He went into the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 men in the evening and when Senaccherib woke up he saw the slaughter before him and decided to pack up and go home.  

Hezekiah is about to die and God tells him to put his affairs in order, but Hezekiah asks God to spare him.  God does, for another 15 years, so he had that going for him.  Then we have this strange account of the envoys from Babylon coming in and Hezekiah opening the doors and showing them everything that he has.  When God tells him that one day he will have children born in Babylon he thinks this is a promise of peace and detente with Babylon.  I’m thinking it means that Babylon is going to invade and take the people into exile, but let’s see.

The Matthew Scripture has a lot of healings which is a standard for Jesus in this Gospel.  We also have the calling of the disciple Matthew, the tax collector, which is interesting since it is thought that the Gospel was written by this very same Matthew as we see in the next chapter where we find the list of disciples in Matthew 10:3.