Hezekiah’s Illness

¹In those days Hezekiah was mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord : Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.”[#2Ch 32:24; #2Sa 17:23]

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

³and said, “Remember now, O Lord , I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.[#Ne 13:14; #1Ch 29:19]

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

⁵“Go, 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 days fifteen years.[#2Ki 18:2]

⁶I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.[#Isa 37:35]

⁷“This shall be a sign to you from the Lord , that the Lord will do this thing that He has spoken:[#Jdg 6:37–39; Isa 37:30]

⁸Behold, I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, to go back ten steps.” So the sun’s shadow returned ten steps on the sundial by which it had gone down.[#Jos 10:12–14]

⁹This is the writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery:

¹⁰I said: In the middle of my days,

I shall go to the gates of Sheol;

I am to be deprived of the rest of my years.

¹¹I said, I shall not see the Lord ,

even the Lord , in the land of the living;

I shall see man no more

with the inhabitants of the world.

¹²My dwelling is pulled up

and removed from me as a shepherd’s tent;

I rolled up my life like a weaver.

He cuts me off from the loom;

from day even to night You make an end of me.

¹³I composed my soul until morning,

like a lion, so He breaks all my bones;

from day even to night You make an end of me.

¹⁴Like a crane or a swallow, so I twitter;

I mourn as a dove;

my eyes look wistfully upward.

O Lord , I am oppressed; undertake for me.

¹⁵What shall I say?

For He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done it.

I shall wander about all my years

in the bitterness of my soul.

¹⁶O Lord, by these things men live,

and in all these things is the life of my spirit;

O restore me to health

and make me live!

¹⁷Behold, it was for my own peace

that I had great bitterness;

but You have kept my soul

from the pit of corruption,

for You have cast all my sins

behind Your back.

¹⁸For Sheol cannot thank You,[#Ps 6:5; Ecc 9:10]

death cannot praise You;

those who go down into the pit

cannot hope for Your faithfulness.

¹⁹It is the living who give thanks to You,

as I do this day;

a father explains to his sons

about Your faithfulness.

²⁰The Lord shall surely save me;

therefore, we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments

all the days of our lives

in the house of the Lord .

²¹For Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and lay it on the boil, and he shall recover.”

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