the night." " These things will he do to you, and not forsake you," till " he has turned your mourning into dancing, and put off your sackcloth, and girded you with gladness : " for " never yet failed he any one who trusted in him;" " nor said to any of the seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in vain."]
Isai. xxxviii. 17. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from, the pit of cor- ruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.
IN all the Scriptures there is not any thing more tender and pathetic than this " writing of Hezekiah after he had recovered from his sickness." In it he delineates all his feelings in the view of his expected dissolution. He could appeal to God that he had " walked before God with truth and with a perfect heart3;" and yet in the prospect of death was more alarmed and agitated than any other person of whom we read. To account for this, commentators have supposed that he had respect only to the welfare of his Church and people, who by his removal would lose the benefit of all his past exertions for their good, and of those which he yet contemplated. But whilst we agree in ascribing much of his grief to this, we yet think that it by no means sufficiently accounts for many of his expressions, which evidently refer to his own personal concerns. In our text he complains that " for peace he had had great bitterness ;" though from it he was now mercifully relieved. His " anguish being now changedb," he returned thanks to God, say- ing, " Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption : for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back."
These words of his I shall, I. Explain —
They may not unfitly be considered as referring to,
1 . The recovery of his body —
a 2 Kings xx. 2, 3.
b So Bishop Lowth translates the first clause.