Hezekiah

And this very patience of the Creator will be unto Marcion's judgment — that patience which awaits the sinner's repentance rather than his death, and prefers mercy to sacrifice, already turning aside the destruction destined for the Ninevites, and lavishing space of life upon Hezekiah's tears, and restoring the state of his kingdom to the tyrant of Babylon feigning repentance:

" Just as he assails Hezekiah too, a king puffed up with treasures and glorying in them rather than in God, before those who had come from Persia, through Isaiah:

They say, then, that this psalm sang of Hezekiah, because he sat at the right hand of the temple, and God turned away and consumed his enemies;

Thus Hezekiah when he had not stood to the engagements made by his ancestors, being threatened with an attack from the King of Assyria on that account, acknowledged his fault, and left it to the King to assign what penalty he should pay for the offence.

In the third place, there may be sufficient grounds for refusing to admit an ambassador, if the object of his mission be of a suspicious kind, as was the case with that of Rhabshakeh the Assyrian, whom Hezekiah had reason to suspect of coming with a design to excite his people to rebellion.

To this man, for his holiness, near the end of his life, God grants through Isaiah to live another fifteen years, by the going-back of the sun.

Isaiah too remembers that he commanded something medicinal for the ailing Hezekiah.

And after that, what else but the humiliation of king Hezekiah consumed by an angel a hundred and eighty-four thousand of his army?