¹IN THOSE days King Hezekiah of Judah became ill and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said, Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live. [II Kings 20:1-11; II Chron. 32:24-26.]

²Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord

³And said, Remember [earnestly] now, O Lord, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in faithfulness and in truth, with a whole heart [absolutely devoted to You], and have done what is good in Your sight. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

⁴Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying,

⁵Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add to your life fifteen years.

⁶And I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city [Jerusalem].

⁷And this will be the sign to you from the Lord that the Lord will do this thing that He has spoken:

⁸Behold, I will turn the shadow [denoting the time of day] on the steps or degrees, which has gone down on the steps or sundial of Ahaz, backward ten steps or degrees. And the sunlight turned back ten steps on the steps on which it had gone down.

⁹This is the writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:

¹⁰I said, In the noontide and tranquillity of my days I must depart; I am to pass through the gates of Sheol (the place of the dead), deprived of the remainder of my years.

¹¹I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living; I shall behold man no more among the inhabitants of the world.

¹²My [fleshly] dwelling is plucked up and is removed from me like a shepherd's tent. I have rolled up my life as a weaver [rolls up the finished web]; [the Lord] cuts me free from the loom; from day to night You bring me to an end.

¹³I thought and quieted myself until morning. Like a lion He breaks all my bones; from day to night You bring me to an end.

¹⁴Like a twittering swallow or a crane, so do I chirp and chatter; I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary and dim with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; take my side and be my security [as of a debtor being sent to prison].

¹⁵But what can I say? For He has both spoken to me and He Himself has done it. I must go softly [as in solemn procession] all my years and my sleep has fled because of the bitterness of my soul.

¹⁶O Lord, by these things men live; and in all these is the life of my spirit. O give me back my health and make me live!

¹⁷Behold, it was for my peace that I had intense bitterness; but You have loved back my life from the pit of corruption and nothingness, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.

¹⁸For Sheol (the place of the dead) cannot confess and reach out the hand to You, death cannot praise and rejoice in You; they who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness [to Your promises; their probation is at an end, their destiny is sealed].

¹⁹The living, the living–they shall thank and praise You, as I do this day; the father shall make known to the children Your faithfulness and Your truth.

²⁰The Lord is ready to save (deliver) me; therefore we will sing my songs with [my] stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord.

²¹Now Isaiah had said, Let them take a cake of figs and lay it for a plaster upon the boil, that he may recover.

²²Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?