2 Chronicles 32:26 Meaning Notwithstanding Hezekiah Humbled Himself for the Pride

There was pride in his heart, and the remarkable thing is that he saw it. Most people never notice the ego at work in them, so they mistake its demands for their own will. To humble yourself is not to grovel but to recognize the false self that has been running you, and to loosen your grip on it.

The moment he did this, the suffering his pride had been gathering did not arrive. This is not a change in God's mood. When you see through the ego and stop feeding it, you step out of the cycle of reaction and consequence it was creating, and the gathering storm never breaks.

Success had swollen the king's heart, and pride that grows quietly is the hardest to catch. The mercy here is that he caught it. Honest self-examination let him see the swelling for what it was, and he bent, and the whole city bent with him. The gathering wave of wrath stayed its hand.

God was present not only in the danger but in the small mercy of a warning heeded in time. The One who could have let the wave fall made room instead for a bowed head to turn it aside.