2 Kings 20:17, commentary and pictures

After Hezekiah showed his riches and stored possessions to the Babylonian ambassadors and visitors, the days were to come when all that was in his house and all that his fathers had laid up in store unto that day, including the wealth stored by earlier generations and the treasures in God's house and the sacred treasures of the temple, would be carried into Babylon with nothing left behind. The display that drew this word was a grievous sin and a serious, unwise mistake, for which was pronounced a curse of total loss. What he showed was the nation's riches and all his treasures and advantages, and thereby he gave the Babylonians knowledge of what they could later take for themselves.

He failed to use the visit to honor God and left God out of the matter, acting from pride and self-exaltation and from the thought that displaying his resources would give him influence. The showing of the riches was a test and part of a trial that revealed and exposed what was in his heart. The ambassadors returned with a report that would lead Babylon's rulers to seek Jerusalem's treasures, and they went away and began to lay plans to possess those resources and advantages for themselves.

Displaying wealth and advantages to outsiders invites them to plot to take them, and exposing the prosperity of God's people to an enemy is a sin bringing grave consequences. Displaying entrusted resources in a way that dishonors God, while leaving God out, reveals what is in the heart. The harm is like exposing an institution's private affairs to outsiders, like opening its books to them.

The same danger comes from entertaining foreigners in Oakland and San Francisco and from mingling with unbelievers and admitting them to councils without discernment of what will break upon the world. The warning reaches those who betray sacred trusts by joining themselves to unbelievers and relying on them instead of God, thereby losing God's favor and weakening their Christian example to others.