Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 39:2

"And Hezekiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armor, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah showed them not." — Isaiah 39:2 (ASV)

Showed them the house of his precious things. —This fixes the date of the embassy at a time prior to the payment to Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:15–16), unless we were to assume that the treasury had been replenished by the gifts that followed the destruction of Sennacherib’s army; but this, as we have seen, is at variance with both the received and the rectified chronology. The display was obviously something more than the ostentation of a Croesus showing his treasures to Solon (Herod. i. 3). It was practically a display of the resources of the kingdom, intended to impress the Babylonian ambassadors with a sense of his importance as an ally.

The spices, and the precious ointment ... —The mention of these articles as part of the king’s treasures is characteristic of the commerce and civilisation of the time. “Spices”—probably myrrh, gumbenzoin, cinnamon—had from a very early period been among the gifts offered to princes (Genesis 43:11; 1 Kings 10:10). The “ointment,” or perfumed oil, finds its parallel in the costly unguent of the Gospel history (Matthew 26:7; John 12:3). Esarhaddon’s account of the magnificence of his palace (Records of the Past, iii., 122) supplies a contemporary instance of similar ostentation.