A sovereign serves God one way as man, another way as king; he serves him as man by living according to faith, he serves him as king by exerting the necessary strength to sanction laws that command goodness and prohibit its opposite. It was thus that Hezekiah served him by destroying the groves and temples of idols and the high places that had been set up contrary to the commandments of God.

But because he goes on to add of this man’s seed God, according to his promise, has raised up to Israel a Savior, Jesus,^[1] he indicates that that testimony must have a deeper meaning in the Lord Jesus, who truly does all the will of God the Father, rather than in the great King David, who, even though according to the previous discussion his sins had been remitted and not imputed and also because of the holy penitence mentioned, could not unjustly be said to have been found according to the heart of God. Yet, how did he do all the will of God? Even if he was exceptionally praised when Scripture relates his times and his deeds, he is marked because he did not destroy the high places where the people of God used to sacrifice contrary to the command of God, who had ordered that sacrifices be offered to him only in the tabernacle of the testament, although in these same high places sacrifice is offered to the same God. The king Hezekiah, himself sprung from the seed of David, afterwards destroyed these places, accompanied by the testimony of his great praise.

Then there were the miracles . . . of the deadly bites of serpents, inflicted as just punishment for sin, and healed when a brazen serpent was raised on a wooden pole in sight of all,^[1] so that not only did relief come to an afflicted people but also the destruction of death by death was symbolized by this image of the crucifixion. This serpent was preserved intact in memory of the miracle but afterwards was worshiped as an idol by the unfaithful people until King Hezekiah, religiously using his power in the service of God, destroyed it and thus gained great renown for his piety.

Of Hezekiah it is written, And he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He destroyed the high places, and broke the statues in pieces, and burned the groves and broke the brazen serpent that Moses had made. And again, He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel, and after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah who were before him. He stuck to the Lord, and departed not from him and kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses, and the Lord was with him, and in all things to which he went forth, he behaved himself wisely. And, when Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, had taken all the cities of Judah, Hezekiah sent messengers to him, to Lachish, saying, ‘I have sinned, depart from me, and all that you shall command of me, I will give.’ And the king of the Assyrians put a tax on Hezekiah, king of Judah, of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the money that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasure houses of the king. At that time, he broke the doors of the temple of the Lord and the plates of gold and gave them all to the king of the Assyrians. Although such great demands were placed on him, Hezekiah did not hesitate, in the face of stern necessity, to give the Assyrian king all that he had consecrated to the Lord, and it is said to him, I will protect this city for my own sake and for David my servant’s sake.^[1] Not for your sake, for you had already performed a noble deed when 185,000 soldiers of the Assyrian army were laid low and slaughtered by an angel.^[2]

As I have already said, Sennacherib is a type of the devil, and this hypothesis is perfectly confirmed by the words that in this passage the Rabshakeh boastfully speaks against God when he makes false promises to the people, trying to take away from [God] the praise of his supreme power and giving assurance of a land of fertile soil and abundant crops in order to persuade them to abandon the region given to them by God and to move to the new dwelling places promised by the Assyrian. With a very similar artifice the accomplices and envoys of the devil endeavor to seduce a simple soul. And for this reason, in the first place, they try to uproot all the opinions that are inspired by divine providence.