2 Kings 20:1 and God's word

[pgwolv]

KJV: In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.

ESV: In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’”

How are we to understand this in light of God's omniscience? I understand the idea of the decreed will vs. the sovereign will of God, but what do we make of the fact that the Lord seems to reveal that Hezekiah would not recover, yet recovered?

Ultimately, the passage teaches about God's patience and forbearance, and how we should pray with boldness to our Father, I just don't understand why the Lord would say something that seems to be untrue. Should we interpret it with an unsaid "you shall not recover (unless you pray)"?

 

[Ed Walsh]

How are we to understand this in light of God's omniscience? I understand the idea of the decreed will vs. the sovereign will of God, but what do we make of the fact that the Lord seems to reveal that Hezekiah would not recover, yet recovered?

Hi PG,

I am so pressed for time right now that I can't give a decent response. But I remind you that things like you pointed out with Hezekiah are extremely common in the Bible. There are probably hundreds of occasions where God says this or that will happen, and then he "changes his mind." So since I have no time, nor perhaps the skill, to answer this question to your satisfaction, I'm just clipping a few paragraphs from something Ligonier posted.


APR 25, 2022
TheologyGod

Does God Change His Mind?​

James Dolezal

“The Glory of Israel will not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind” (1 Sam. 15:29; cf. Num. 23:19, NIV). These words of the prophet Samuel provide a straightforward reply to the question “Does God change His mind?” Yet, in the same chapter, we are told twice that God regretted having made Saul king (1 Sam. 15:11, 35). Indeed, several passages of Scripture describe God as regretting, relenting, or repenting (which fundamentally indicates a change of mind) (e.g., Gen. 6:6–7; Ex. 32:14; 2 Sam. 24:16; Jer. 18:8; Jonah 3:10).
Classical theists understand such passages to be speaking about God anthropomorphically and do not take such descriptions literally. John Gill, for instance, explains Exodus 32:14 in this way:

Not that any of God’s thoughts or the determinations of his mind are alterable; for the thoughts of his heart are to all generations [Ps. 33:11]; but he changes the outward dispensations of his providence, or his methods of acting with men . . . and this being similar to what they do when they repent of anything, who alter their course, hence repentance is ascribed to God, though, properly speaking, it does not belong to him.

This is similar to the non-literal way we understand passages that speak of God having body parts or performing operations proper to bodies (such as smelling, hearing with ears, seeing with eyes, experiencing intestinal disturbance, moving about locomotively in space, etc.). Several theological truths undergird this interpretation and belief that God does not change His mind.
First, Scripture testifies that God is immutable. While God changes the heavens and the earth, He Himself is not among the things He changes: “You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same” (Ps. 102:26–27). God declares, “I, the LORD, do not change” (Mal. 3:6). He is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow” (James 1:17). When God makes a promise, He swears by Himself and so stakes the surety of His word on Himself. It is God’s unchangeableness that guarantees the unchangeableness of His promises and that gives us strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us (Heb. 6:13–18). To whatever extent God could change His mind, our confidence in the unchangeableness of His promises would be destabilized.

 

[alexanderjames]

I’m reading Robert Bruce’s sermons on this story (Banner of Truth’s “the way to true peace and rest”).. will see if I can find what he said later.

 

[Jack K]

Much prophesy in Scripture is conditional. It does not exist chiefly to show off God's foreknowledge, but rather to graciously convince people to turn to him. In some cases, prophesy is conditional even when this goes unstated. Jonah's message to Nineveh may be the best-known example. "Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed" is not really a foregone-conclusion prophesy. It is an invitation to repent that's presented in the form of what surely will be true if the repentance fails to happen. The incident with Hezekiah is similar.

In these cases, God does not change. Rather, the people who receive the prophesy change; they turn to God. God remains the same: punishing those who fail to repent and saving those who do, remaining distant from the king when he has not prayed and blessing him when he does pray. The prophesy was never meant to be a statement about God's unchangeability, but rather an encouragement for Hezekiah to grow closer to his loving Lord.

There are several places in Scripture where God tells his people one thing but really wants them to resist what he has said and instead express their faith by pleading boldly with him. Jacob was told, "Let me go," but the Lord actually wanted Jacob to keep clinging to him for a blessing. Moses was told, "Stand aside and let me destroy these people," but the Lord actually wanted him to keep pleading for the people. And Jesus' own parable on prayer in Luke 11 begins with the character representing God saying, "Don't bother me," when the point is that the needy person should keep pounding on the door.

It is too bad Hezekiah failed to apply this same principle later in the chapter when the Babylonian envoys arrived and Isaiah told of the eventual fall of the kingdom. That time, the king accepted a prophecy of doom rather than pleading with the Lord to bless and make righteous his children who would succeed him. Of course, the king's heart and his decisions are ultimately in God's hands, who brings good for his people out of it all. But amid this is a deep mystery about the effectiveness of prayer and our Father's desire to answer us graciously when we plead with him. We should apply that lesson, and not get too hung up on why God in his wisdom often appears to say no to us at first, only to change that answer in time.

 

[iainduguid]

Jack's main point is entirely valid, but I would correct one detail: the Jonah prophesy is often cited as an example of a prophecy that went unfulfilled, but on close inspection that is not the case . Literally, what Jonah says is "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be turned upside down" (see NIV "overturned"; the verb is hapak). This is certainly a threat of potential destruction since the same verb is used to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Gen 19:29), but it can also simply mean "to turn around" (see 1 Kings 22:34), or even a positive transformation (see Zeph. 3:9). Can anybody seriously claim that Nineveh was not "turned around/upside down" in the aftermath of Jonah's prophecy, even though it was not destroyed? There are examples of conditional prophecy, but this is not one of them: the ambiguity is built in from the beginning.

For more, see my book, The Rebel Prophet: the Gospel in the Book of Jonah.

 

[pgwolv]

Jack's main point is entirely valid, but I would correct one detail: the Jonah prophesy is often cited as an example of a prophecy that went unfulfilled, but on close inspection that is not the case . Literally, what Jonah says is "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be turned upside down" (see NIV "overturned"; the verb is hapak). This is certainly a threat of potential destruction since the same verb is used to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Gen 19:29), but it can also simply mean "to turn around" (see 1 Kings 22:34), or even a positive transformation (see Zeph. 3:9). Can anybody seriously claim that Nineveh was not "turned around/upside down" in the aftermath of Jonah's prophecy, even though it was not destroyed? There are examples of conditional prophecy, but this is not one of them: the ambiguity is built in from the beginning.

For more, see my book, The Rebel Prophet: the Gospel in the Book of Jonah.

That is interesting! Thank you for the insight, Prof Duguid

 

[pgwolv]

It is too bad Hezekiah failed to apply this same principle later in the chapter when the Babylonian envoys arrived and Isaiah told of the eventual fall of the kingdom. That time, the king accepted a prophecy of doom rather than pleading with the Lord to bless and make righteous his children who would succeed him. Of course, the king's heart and his decisions are ultimately in God's hands, who brings good for his people out of it all. But amid this is a deep mystery about the effectiveness of prayer and our Father's desire to answer us graciously when we plead with him. We should apply that lesson, and not get too hung up on why God in his wisdom often appears to say no to us at first, only to change that answer in time.

Thank you, this part, especially, brought it home

 

[alexanderjames]

To echo what has been said already, here is Robert Bruce (1554-1631) on the subject, since I said I would share;

“To answer this charge the principal must be laid down attach that attached to all God’s warnings and promises there is always a condition; The condition is either secretly enclosed or is later made clear. Scripture gives us evidence of this in Ezekiel 18 (footnote references 18:23) and Daniel 4:27.

This then being the nature of God’s ominous warnings, Isaiah’s terrible words, for terrible they appear to be, nevertheless they contained within them a condition: namely, the king would die unless he turned the Lord, sought His face and had recourse to prayer. It was the same as with Nineveh: the Lord fully intended to punish the city unless they stayed his hand by their repentance. So I repeat, all God’s promises and threatenings have a condition attached, which is either explicitly stated or secretly implied. Therefore the king lived because those terrible words contained a secret condition. The directness of the message was not intended to drive him to despair, but rather to bring him urgently to seek grace and recovery at the hands of the living God.”

- “The Way to True Peace and Rest” (Banner of Truth, 2017) - p.12-13

 

[Jack K]

Jack's main point is entirely valid, but I would correct one detail: the Jonah prophesy is often cited as an example of a prophecy that went unfulfilled, but on close inspection that is not the case . Literally, what Jonah says is "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be turned upside down" (see NIV "overturned"; the verb is hapak). This is certainly a threat of potential destruction since the same verb is used to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Gen 19:29), but it can also simply mean "to turn around" (see 1 Kings 22:34), or even a positive transformation (see Zeph. 3:9). Can anybody seriously claim that Nineveh was not "turned around/upside down" in the aftermath of Jonah's prophecy, even though it was not destroyed? There are examples of conditional prophecy, but this is not one of them: the ambiguity is built in from the beginning.

For more, see my book, The Rebel Prophet: the Gospel in the Book of Jonah.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I now recall that I may have learned this from you at some point (and apparently forgotten it).

 

[Von]

Just to add to the conversation:
But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
(Gen 20:3-7)

 

[itsreed]

Possibly the if/then pattern in Dt 28-31 forms the (covenantal) context for this conditional prophecy, and others like it. (At least in the OT; the NT appears to be a bit different, grounded in a shift from Moses old covenant, to Jesus new covenant.)