2 Chronicles 31:21

Hezekiah came to the throne after his father Ahaz, who had led Judah deep into idolatry. Ahaz brought in foreign altars and shut up the doors of the house of the LORD (2 Chronicles 28:24), and he burnt his children in the fire (2 Chronicles 28:3, compare 2 Kings 16:3). He had also made Judah a servant to Assyria, the great empire that had already struck the northern kingdom of Israel and pressed hard on every small nation around it. Hezekiah reigned from about 715 to 686 BC, and from his first days he set about turning the nation back to the LORD alone. In those years that took courage and faith in God’s covenant promises.

2 Chronicles 29 tells how he opened, cleansed and consecrated the temple his father had defiled. 2 Chronicles 30 tells of the Passover he restored after long neglect, kept by a great company with great joy. 2 Chronicles 31 tells how idolatrous altars were broken down throughout Judah and Israel, how Hezekiah set the priests and Levites in their courses, and how the people brought tithes and offerings so freely that the temple service could go on. “And thus did Hezekiah” gathers all of that up. The account of Sennacherib’s invasion follows at once in 2 Chronicles 32, so this verdict is given over Hezekiah’s reign before its great trial comes.

A king in Israel was to keep the covenant, uphold God’s law and lead his people in righteousness (Deuteronomy 17:18–20). Hezekiah did this, and that sets him apart from many of the kings before him.

Verse 20 describes Hezekiah’s work by three qualities held together, and each adds its own part to the picture.

“Good” is ṭôwb (also written ṭōḇ), the broad Hebrew word for what is excellent and pleasing in God’s sight. It speaks of the worth of what Hezekiah did, and of the good it brought to his people and his kingdom. “Right” is yāšâr, a word rooted in the idea of being straight. It means upright, just and fair, and it describes actions that agree with God’s law. “Truth” is ‘ĕmet, the word for stability, certainty and truth, what is firm and can be relied on. So Hezekiah’s deeds were good in themselves, straight by the measure of God’s law, and true and steady before God, in his inner life as well as in his rule.

Moses had told Israel, “thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:18), and Hezekiah’s reign is that command carried out by a king. The psalm that asks who may abide in the LORD’s tabernacle answers with the one who walks uprightly, works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart (Psalm 15:1–2). Micah gathers what the LORD requires into “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).

The verb “wrought” is ‘āśāh, to do or to make. Hezekiah put these things into practice with care and diligence.

Verse 21 turns from what Hezekiah did to the way he did it. “Every work” uses maʻăseh, a deed, work or occupation. Each task he took up, large or small, had the whole of his devotion.

The verse names three fields of that work. “The service of the house of God” covers the temple: its cleansing, the ordering of priests and Levites, and the sacrifices and offerings restored. “The law” (torah) is the instruction God gave Israel through Moses, and “the commandments” (mitzvot) are its particular precepts. Hezekiah’s reforms were guided by God’s revealed word, and his worship and his obedience belonged together.

The verse ends with one word in English, “prospered”. The Hebrew verb is tsâlach, to push forward, succeed, advance or be profitable, and it often speaks of God giving success to a work. The order of the verse is plain: Hezekiah sought God with his whole heart, and God made his work succeed.

His prosperity took in the success of his reforms, the return of true worship in Judah, and the flourishing of his kingdom under God’s favour. It reached the battlefield too, when God delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrian army (2 Chronicles 32:20–22). Scripture speaks of prospering the same way elsewhere. The LORD was with Joseph and made all that he did prosper (Genesis 39:2–3). God told Joshua that keeping and meditating on the book of the law would make his way prosperous (Joshua 1:8), and the man who delights in God’s law is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, of whom the psalm says “whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (Psalm 1:3). Prosperity in this sense is a whole flourishing under God’s hand, with effectiveness in the work God gives, and wealth is only one small part of it.

Hezekiah was a good king and still a fallible man. His reforms could change the worship of a kingdom, yet they could not change every heart in Judah or keep the nation from turning away again in later years. His reign is a shadow of a greater King.

Jesus Christ is good and right and true in all that he is and does. He is the truth itself (John 14:6), and he lived without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He alone kept the command to love God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30), and he did always the things that please his Father (John 8:29). He came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17), so his life was the law and the commandments lived out perfectly.

Hezekiah cleansed a temple. Christ spoke of his own body as the temple that would be raised in three days (John 2:19), his blood cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), and believers are built up as living stones into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5). Hezekiah’s work reached throughout all Judah, while Christ has been given all power in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18), and every knee shall bow to him (Philippians 2:9–11). Hezekiah prospered for the years of his reign, and Christ’s perfect obedience has brought eternal life, peace with God and the gift of the Spirit to all who believe in him.

These verses show us what God values in his servants. He looks on what is done before him, he cares about the heart it comes from, and he calls good, right and true what is done with a whole heart for his sake. Hezekiah served in a hard age, under the shadow of an empire and after years of his father’s idolatry, and God gave him success in the very work he had begun to seek God.

The same God sees the work of his people now, in their homes, their callings and their churches, and he still delights in those who seek him with all their heart. His promise through Jeremiah stands, that those who seek him so will find him. Above all, these verses point us to Christ, whose devotion to his Father was whole and whose reign has no end, and in him our own imperfect seeking is accepted.