Commentaria in IV Regum
Chapter 20. Synopsis of the Chapter
Ezechias, being sick, calling on God, is healed by Isaias through a fig plaster, and receives a sign, the return of the shadow on the dial; v. 12, Merodach king of Babylon sends ambassadors to Ezechias, to whom he himself shows all his treasures, and therefore hears from Isaias that all of them will be carried off by Babylon.
1. In those days Ezechias was sick unto death; and Isaias the son of Amos the prophet came and said to him: Thus saith the Lord God: Give charge concerning thy house, for thou shalt die, and not live. 2. And he turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying: 3. I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is pleasing in thy sight. And Ezechias wept with much weeping. 4. And before Isaias was gone out of the middle of the court, the word of the Lord came to him, saying: 5. Return, and tell Ezechias the captain of my people: Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears: and behold I have healed thee, on the third day thou shalt go up to the temple of the Lord. 6. And I will add to thy days fifteen years: and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect this city for my own sake, and for David my servant’s sake. 7. And Isaias said: Bring me a lump of figs. And when they had brought it, and laid it upon his boil, he was healed. 8. And Ezechias had said to Isaias: What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the temple of the Lord the third day? 9. And Isaias said to him: This shall be the sign from the Lord, that the Lord will do the word which he hath spoken: Wilt thou that the shadow go forward ten lines, or that it go back so many degrees? 10. And Ezechias said: It is an easy matter for the shadow to go forward ten lines: I do not desire that this be done, but let it return back ten degrees. 11. And Isaias the prophet called upon the Lord, and he brought the shadow ten degrees backwards by the lines by which it had already gone down in the dial of Achaz. 12. At that time Berodach Baladan the son of Baladan king of the Babylonians sent letters and presents to Ezechias: for he had heard that Ezechias had been sick. 13. And Ezechias rejoiced at their coming, and showed them the house of his aromatical spices, and the gold and silver, and divers precious spices, and ointments, and the house of his vessels, and all that he had in his treasures. There was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominions, that Ezechias showed them not. 14. And Isaias the prophet came to king Ezechias, and said to him: What said these men? or from whence came they to thee? And Ezechias said: From a far country they came to me, from Babylon. 15. And he said: What did they see in thy house? Ezechias said: They saw all the things that are in my house: there is nothing among my treasures that I have not showed them. 16. And Isaias said to Ezechias: Hear the word of the Lord: 17. Behold the days shall come, that all that is in thy house, and that thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.
18. And of thy sons also that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, they shall take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. 19. Ezechias said to Isaias: The word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken, is good: let peace and truth be in my days. 20. And the rest of the acts of Ezechias, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought waters into the city, are they not written in the book of the words of the days of the kings of Juda? 21. And Ezechias slept with his fathers, and Manasses his son reigned in his stead.
This chapter also is transcribed from Isaias chapters 37 and 39, where I explained it. Much is added of the piety of Ezechias and his zeal for religion in 2 Paralipomenon chapters 29, 30 and 31. Whence he deserved to obtain from God victory over Sennacherib, and a miraculous healing, in which God added to him 15 years of life.
12. AT THAT TIME BERODACH BALADAN, THE SON OF BALADAN, SENT.—“Baladan” was the first prince of the Babylonians: for their name we have not heard until now, but only that of the Assyrians. Wherefore it seems that Baladan, governor of Babylon, or rather his son Merodach Baladan, seeing Sennacherib (to whom he was subject and tributary) and the forces of the Assyrians slain by an Angel in Judea, and their strength worn down, shook off the yoke, and made himself absolute prince and king of the Babylonians, and even deprived Asarhaddon of kingdom and life about the twenty-sixth year of Ezechias, as Salianus will have it; and then the kingdom of the Assyrians failed: hence thereafter in Scripture no kings of the Assyrians are named, but all of the Babylonians, of whom the first was Baladan. Whence “Baladan” in Hebrew is the same as without the Lord, says Pagninus. Further, that Baladan’s father was not Salmanasar king of the Assyrians, as Genebrard will have it, but Nabonassar, who is placed by Ptolemy in the Almagest as the first prince of the Babylonians, Scaliger, Serarius, Bellarmine, Tornielli and Salianus in his Chronology hold from Eusebius, Berosus and Josephus; whence from him was established the Nabonassarean era, from which the Babylonians and others thenceforth reckon their years, as the Persians from Cyrus, the Greeks from Alexander, the Romans from Augustus. Hence in Chaldee he is called Baladan from Bal and Haddon. For Bal or Bel and Baal was Nemrod or Jupiter, Belus, the first builder, after the flood, of the tower of Babel, as I said on Genesis 10, who (or whose companion) was called by another name Nabo, that is, prophecy or divination, as I said on Isaias 46:1 on the words: “Bel is broken, Nabo is destroyed.” For as Tertullian says, Apologeticus, ch. 20: “The truth of divination is the testimony of divinity.” For it is proper to God to divine, to foreknow, and to foretell the future, according to that of Isaias 41:23: “Shew the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods.” Hence from the god Nabo and Assar was formed and called Nabonassar. Again, the son of Baladan, or Nabonassar, was this “Merodach” or Berodach, who first called himself king of Babylon and sent ambassadors to Ezechias. To Merodach succeeded his son Ben Merodach, as Eusebius, De Praeparatione, book 9, Berosus in Josephus, the Metasthenes of Annius, Josephus, Scaliger, De emendatione temporum, book 5, Tornielli, Salianus and others assert, who assign to Baladan 27 years, to Merodach 52, to Ben Merodach 44, which together make 123; whence the chronologers from Nabonassar to Nabopolassar, whom Berosus calls Nabolassar, who succeeded Ben Merodach and was Nabuchodonosor the elder, as Eusebius, Berosus, Scaliger, Bellarmine, Tornielli, Salianus and others assert, count 123 years. To Nabuchodonosor the elder, dead after 19 years of reign, succeeded Nabuchodonosor the younger, surnamed the Great, who took Jerusalem, and led the Jews away to Babylon, and transferred the monarchy from the Assyrians to the Babylonians, and reigned 45 years, to whom succeeded his son Evilmerodach, called by another name Baltasar, for 34 years, as I said on Daniel 5:2. This chronology of learned men is probable, although others assign another differing in some points from the one just given. For nothing certain can be had about times so ancient and lacking sure history. See what was said on Ezechiel chapter 1, near the beginning. Finally, he who as a private man was called Baladan, having assumed the empire, was called Nabonassar Baladan; but his son was called Merodach Baladan. Further, many with Ptolemy assign the first year of Nabonassar to the first or second year of the eighth Olympiad, or the thirtieth year from the beginning of the Olympiads, which Tornielli contends to be the 13th year of king Achaz; but Scaliger and Serarius will have the sixth year of the founded Rome be the ninth year of Achaz, Salianus the fourteenth of Achaz; others prefer the ninth of Joatham. For nothing certain can be fixed in so uncertain a matter. Again, Ptolemy counts from the first year of Nabonassar 123 years to the first year of Nabopolassar, whom Eusebius, Berosus, Josephus, Scaliger, Salianus and others hold to be Nabuchodonosor the elder. Others, however, think him to be the younger, who was surnamed the Great, and led the Jews to Babylon. For Ptolemy does not seem to have omitted so powerful a monarch. For it is difficult and sometimes impossible to adapt profane historians and to match them in all points to sacred history; yet I shall presently match it to him.
Further, Merodach, beginning his reign over Babylon, sent ambassadors to Ezechias, because he had heard that he had shaken off the same yoke of the king of the Assyrians which he himself had shaken off, in order to make an alliance with him, and with joined forces resist the Assyrian.
First, the first year of Nabonassar falls in the first year of the eighth Olympiad, or in the twenty-ninth year from the beginning of the Olympiads. This is plain from the fact that Ptolemy asserts that Alexander the Great died in the 424th year of Nabonassar. It is established, however, that Alexander died in the first year of the 114th Olympiad. Going on, the first year of Nabonassar necessarily falls in the first year of the eighth Olympiad. For 113 Olympiads make 452 years, from which if you take away the seven Olympiads already past, that is 28 years, there will remain 424, which flowed from the first year of Nabonassar to the death of Alexander.
Second, hence it follows that the first year of Nabonassar is the sixth from the founding of Rome: for this was founded at the end of the sixth Olympiad, or in the 23rd year from the beginning of the Olympiads; but from this beginning the first year of Nabonassar is the 29th; now the 29th year is later than the 23rd by six years, as is clear.
Third, the 154th year from the beginning of the Olympiads is the first year of Nabopolassar, that is, of Nabuchodonosor the elder, who was the father of Nabuchodonosor the Great, or the first monarch of the Chaldeans.
Fourth, the 122nd year of Nabonassar is the first year of Nabopolassar: so Scaliger and Serarius; Salianus and Tornielli, however, deny this, who assign the first year of Nabonassar to the 13th or 14th year of Achaz, but the first year of Nabopolassar to the 13th year of Josias; now from the 14th of Achaz to the 13th of Josias only one hundred and one years flowed, not one hundred and twenty-two.
According to these canons the years of all these seem to be so assigned and combined with the years of the kings of Juda that we assign the beginning of the Olympiads to the 40th year of Azarias; the founding of Rome to the 10th or 11th of Joatham; the first year of Nabonassar to the 13th of Joatham; the first year of Nabopolassar or Nabuchodonosor the elder to the 18th of Josias. For from the 40th year of Ozias to the tenth of Joatham are 93 years. Thence to the 15th of Joatham are six years, thence to the 18th of Josias 122 years flowed, thence to the fifth year from the captivity of Joachim are thirty years, when Ezechiel began to prophesy, as he himself says in chapter 1, v. 2. At the end, these are the limits of chronology, and as it were the canons which Scaliger, Serarius, Salianus and others fix and establish from Ptolemy and others. For it seems that Nabuchodonosor the elder began his reign in Babylon in the 13th year of Josias, but that he reigned absolutely in the 18th year of Josias, and then with Cyaxares king of the Medes besieged Ninive, to overthrow the monarchy of the Assyrians, which a little after Nabuchodonosor the younger, son of the elder, in fact took and overthrew, and so transferred the monarchy from the Assyrians to himself and the Chaldeans, as I showed on Nahum 2:1.