God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 32:30-33 Siloam Tunnel

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, June 7, 2025

30 It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and directed the water down to the west side of the City of David. Hezekiah succeeded in everything he undertook.

There is good reason to think that this tunnel of Hezekiah, also described in 2 Kings 20:20 and Isaiah 22:11, is the Siloam Tunnel, rediscovered in 1625 and explored by Robinson in 1838 and by Warren in 1865. In 1880 a schoolboy named Jacob Eliyahu Spafford found an inscription in the wall of the tunnel while exploring it with a friend. He told his teacher, Conrad Schick, about it, who followed him into the tunnel and made a plaster replica. When an antiquities dealer tried to chisel out the inscription to sell it, it was badly damaged, and the plaster replica became the best reference source for the inscription. Recently some scholars have questioned whether the tunnel might be a little older than the one Hezekiah dug, which is either one of the more common waterways under the city (so frequently widened and re-surfaced that its antiquity has been forgotten) or that it collapsed long ago. The tunnel inscription is difficult to read in the first line but continues this way:

“...the tunnel. Now this is the matter of the tunnel. While the stone-cutters were lifting the axe one man towards his neighbor, and while there remained three cubits to be cut, the voice of a man could be heard calling out to his neighbor, for there had been only its side deviation in the rock-face [where they were supposed to meet up], on the right and on the left. And on the day when the tunnel was being cut out, the stone-cutters struck each man in front of his neighbor, axe against axe and the waters from the source flowed into the pool for 1,200 cubits. One hundred cubits was the height over the head of the stone-cutters.”

31 And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to test him and to know everything that was in his heart. 32 Now the other acts of Hezekiah, and his good deeds, are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz, in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 33 Then Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him on the hill of the tombs of the sons of David; and all Judah and everyone who lived in Jerusalem honored him at his death. And Manasseh his son succeeded him as king.

An historian would be interested in many things in this passage. The author synchronizes Hezekiah’s later lifetime with envoys from Babylon (which we have already mentioned), the ministry of the prophet Isaiah, the mention of “the hill of the tombs of the (kings),” the accession of Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, and even the document known as “The Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.” And all of those are useful for us and worthy of being included in the Holy Scripture. But there are two other items here that have a theological importance that we want to look at. Both of these are in verse 31.

First, there is the curious and even surprising statement that the envoys from Babylon had been sent “to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land.” Many commentaries sneak past this point without any comment or explanation. Study Bibles with secondary marginal notes, the kind that only refer to other passages in Scripture, point us to verse 24 of this chapter, and I agree with this reference. This is the matter of the miraculous sign when the sun went backward ten steps. The interest of the Babylonians seems to show that this miracle was observed in other places in the Middle East. Since envoys were sent to Hezekiah, it must have become known that the sign had to do with King Hezekiah personally, and they wanted to hear about it. Since the author of Kings and Isaiah both give a full account of the event, we can easily say that this was the answer given to questions about it, and since such an answer would prove the supremacy of the LORD over all other gods, including the Babylonian gods, it isn’t difficult to notice what the response of unbelief was. The matter went past unrecorded by other nations, since it would have meant declaring that the LORD, the God of Israel, was truly the one and only God of the universe. The same silent response followed the Ten Plagues of Egypt and the exodus of the Israelites in 1446. Thutmose III doesn’t say a thing about it, nor even record the loss of a brigade of chariots in the Red Sea. The unbeliever closes his eyes as if he is doing nothing more than blinking at the sunrise, and when he finally opens them again, he changes the subject like a defeated bully always does.

The second matter in verse 31 is the hard statement: “God left him to test him and to know everything that was in his heart.” The crosses that believers carry are sometimes very hard. In this case, God left Hezekiah to himself. His protection was gone for a time. Did the king turn back to the Lord? Did he recognize that he was on his own? Uncertainty comes when this happens. Why is there something different in my life? Why don’t I seem to struggle over temptations or sins all of a sudden? But then the realization comes: Oh no! I’ve left the path of faith. It’s not that I don’t remember who God is, but I went off by myself for a while, and I’m not right with him—and where is he now? The believer repents. The law works fear or terror, and only the gospel brings faith back into the heart. The believer remembers: I have a Savior from my sins, and I’m so very sorry about my sins. Forgive me, Lord! Rescue me, Jesus! When the Lord hides his face and leaves us to ourselves, it is a terrible proclamation of the law. The coming and the working of God in our lives is not easy to see. Jesus told Nicodemus that it’s like the wind. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In just a few words, in the same statement about the wind, Jesus has carried us from the Law to the Gospel. For we are the ones born of the Spirit, and he reminds us of this so quietly, so gently, yet with such firm truth. “You are mine, my little wandering sheep. Listen to my voice and come back to me. I will take care of you.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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