Hezekiah Shows His Treasures

After Hezekiah had been sick, the king of Babylon sent letters and a gift to him. The visitors came from far away. Hezekiah welcomed them and showed them his storehouses, his silver and gold, his spices and oil, his armour, and all his treasures. There was nothing in his house or in all his dominion that he did not show them.

Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and asked what the men had said and where they had come from. Hezekiah answered that they had come from Babylon, a distant country. Isaiah asked what they had seen, and Hezekiah replied that he had shown them everything. Nothing among his treasures had been hidden.

Isaiah then told Hezekiah to hear the word of the Lord. The days were coming when everything in his house, and everything stored up by his fathers until that time, would be carried away to Babylon. Nothing would be left behind.

Isaiah also said that some of Hezekiah's own sons, born from his family in days to come, would be taken away and would become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. This was not praise for Hezekiah's actions. It was a warning that the treasures and the royal family would not remain secure forever.

Hezekiah answered that the word of the Lord was good. He also said that there would be peace and truth in his own days. The passage ends there, leaving readers to feel the weight of God's warning and the sadness of what would one day happen. What should a king have valued more than showing his riches?