2 Kings 20 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
20:1–19 These verses are a “flashback” to the period around 713/712 BC (see note on v. 12).
20:3 Remember . . . I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion. Kings in the ancient world would be likely to offer prayers to deity when their health or kingdom were threatened, as Hezekiah does here. A prayer of Ashurbanipal is preserved in which he asks for healing on the basis of faithfulness to Ishtar. He speaks of his humility, reverence, his tears and anxiety, the many rituals he has carried out and himself as beloved of the deity.
20:7 poultice of figs. Figs had long been cultivated in Palestine, and as well as being eaten fresh, they could be dried and made into cakes or fermented and made into wine. However, it is specifically their medicinal use that is in view here: A fig poultice is applied to what may have been an abscess. The belief that figs had medicinal qualities is also attested later in Rome and earlier at Ugarit. Sweet substances such as figs and dates were used to combat infection in the ancient world, and they do have antibacterial properties.
20:9 Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps? It has often been assumed that this refers to a device designed to tell time, but if so this is the only mention of such a device in the OT. Scholars refer in this context to ancient sundials in general (dating back to fifteenth-century BC Babylonia and Egypt) and in particular to the model of a house excavated in Egypt that contained two flights of stairs used for telling time. This is, however, to read a considerable amount into the Biblical text. It may be a device used in the worship of astral deities, or it may simply be a flight of steps on which shadows can be observed.
20:12 Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon. When Sargon II ascended the Assyrian throne in 722 BC, Marduk-Baladan (Marduk-apla-iddina II) had himself crowned king in Babylon, and there ensued a period of ongoing if intermittent conflict in Mesopotamia that lasted until Esarhaddon’s reign (see notes on 17:24; 19:37). The visit of Marduk-Baladan’s envoys to Jerusalem is best set during the period in which he was still enjoying his first spell of kingship in Babylon (722–710 BC), before Sargon II reconquered Babylonia after 710 BC and drove Marduk-Baladan into exile.
2Ki 20:1–19 as a whole, in fact, represents a “flashback” to the period around 713/712 BC, 15 years before Hezekiah’s death (cf. v. 6). The visit suggests that the anti-Assyrian resistance that arose after Sargon’s death in different parts of the empire was coordinated rather than coincidental and had its roots in long-term prior contacts between the different groups involved. Hezekiah may have been involved at this time in a revolt against Assyria spearheaded by the Philistine city of Ashdod (see the article “Hezekiah and Assyria”).
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