Isaiah 37.36-38.21 describes the demise of the Assyrian army near Jerusalem followed by the near fatal illness of Hezekiah. Both the city and the king are saved. Two other accounts, in 2 Kings 19-20 and in 2 Chronicles 32, are broadly similar, and there have been various suggestions as to the significance of these passages, their relationship to each other, whether or not they record actual events and how they relate to the so-called Zion traditions. In each case, the demise of the Assyrian army precedes the account of the king’s illness, and yet in Isaiah and 2 Kings (and by implication in 2 Chronicles), the king’s recovery from illness is linked to the deliverance of the city. ‘I will deliver you and this city’ (Isa.38.6). In other words, the king’s sickness must have occurred before the enemy army was destroyed, and not immediately afterwards, as the present order of these texts implies. This close link of the ruler and the fate of his city is found elsewhere, Ezekiel 28.12-19 being the obvious example, but in Isaiah 43.28 we read that the princes of the sanctuary have been profaned (hll) and so Jacob has been utterly destroyed.

I want to explore another aspect of these stories. Both Isaiah and 2 Kings mention that Hezekiah had a boil for which Isaiah prescribed a fig poultice, and the king recovered. To be given such a detail suggests that the fig poultice was an important part of the story. There are several opacities in the texts, for example what was meant by the sign of the sun and the shadow (see below), but the sequence of these particular events is clear. Isaiah visited the king and told him that he would die. The prophet then changed his mind and returned to tell the king that he would live. It is this change of mind that is important.

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Hezekiah’s illness and recovery, together with Isaiah’s interpretations of the affliction, are recorded in the Fourth Servant Song. Hezekiah’s illness did not give rise to the idea of a ‘suffering servant’, a sin bearer, a wrath interceptor like Aaron, but rather Isaiah’s second interpretation of the king’s illness was understood in the light of such a belief. In other words, the suffering figure, the wrath interceptor, was part of the ancient understanding of atonement and the role of the royal high priest. The fourth Servant Song contains not only elements of the underlying ideology which enabled Isaiah to make the second interpretation of the king’s illness, but also elements which reflect the actual circumstances of Hezekiah’s situation.

The clearest link between the Hezekiah incident and the fourth Servant Song is the fact that Isaiah gave two interpretations of the suffering. At first he deemed the plague a punishment and then he saw it as the sign of salvation. In the Song the suffering figure is at first despised because he is deemed to be punished by God, ‘smitten by God and afflicted’, ‘a man of pain and sickness’ (Isa.53. 3-4). Then the poet realises that the suffering figure is not being punished for his own sins, but for the sins of others ‘has borne our sicknesses and pains’. The change in the Song is exactly the change in Isaiah’s interpretation of Hezekiah’s illness.