We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

What is the significance of 2 Kings 20:1–7?

The Lord tells Hezekiah “[Y]ou shall die: you shall not recover” (vs. 1). Hezekiah pleads with God and God says, “I will add fifteen years to your life” (vs. 6).

If everything about the future was exhaustively settled and known by God as such, his prophecy to Hezekiah that he was going to die would have been manipulative and his declaration that he was now adding years to his life inaccurate. The prophecy is straightforward only if it expresses God’s true intention at the time he gave it. And for this to be possible it could not have been an eternally foregone conclusion that he was going to spare Hezekiah’s life.

Category:
Tags: ,
Topics:
Verse:

Related Reading

How do you respond to Genesis 3:15?

The Lord promises that he will “put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” This is commonly considered the first messianic prophecy of the Bible. What a glorious and gracious picture of God we are given here!…

God’s Moral Immutability

Classical theologians from the fourth and fifth centuries on were very concerned with protecting their understanding of the metaphysical attributes of God—like timelessness, immutability, impassibility—by assessing biblical portraits that conflicted with these attributes to be accommodations. However, once we resolve that all our thinking about God must be anchored in the cross, our primary concern…

What is the significance of Numbers 14:12–20?

In response to Israel’s bickering the Lord says “I will strike them with pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you [Moses] a nation greater and mightier than they” (vs. 12). Moses asks the Lord to forgive the people, and the Lord eventually responds, “I do forgive, just as you have asked” (vs.…

Topics:

How do you respond to Matthew 26:36?

At the last supper Jesus said to Peter, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” This is probably the most frequently quoted verse by defenders of the classical understanding of God’s foreknowledge against the open view. How, they ask, could Jesus have been certain Peter…

Topics:

Doesn’t the open view demean God’s sovereignty?

The Open view demeans God’s sovereignty only if one assumes that “sovereignty” means “meticulous control.” By why think this is the way God wants to rule the world? The biblical narrative presents a God who gives humans (and apparently angels) free will, who is flexible and creative in running the world, and who relies at…

Topics:

Do you believe God is pure actuality?

The basis of the classical view of God as pure actuality (actus purus) is the Aristotelian notion that potentiality is always potential for change and that something changes only because is lacks something else. So, a perfect being who lacks nothing must be devoid of potentiality, which means it must be pure actuality. I think…