Isaiah 38:4-22 ▼

4 Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah:

5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I am going to add fifteen years to your life.

6 And I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city.

7 This is the sign to you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised:

8 I am going to make the sun’s shadow that goes down on the stairway of Ahaz go back by ten steps.’ ” So the sun’s shadow went back the ten steps it had descended.

9 A poem by King Hezekiah of Judah after he had been sick and had recovered from his illness:

10 I said: In the prime of my life I must go to the gates of Sheol; I am deprived of the rest of my years.

11 I said: I will never see the LORD, the LORD in the land of the living; I will not look on humanity any longer with the inhabitants of what is passing away.

12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; he cuts me off from the loom. By nightfall you make an end of me.

13 I thought until the morning: He will break all my bones like a lion. By nightfall you make an end of me.

14 I chirp like a swallow or a crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak looking upward. Lord, I am oppressed; support me.

15 What can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk along slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

16 Lord, by such things people live, and in every one of them my spirit finds life; you have restored me to health and let me live.

17 Indeed, it was for my own well-being that I had such intense bitterness; but your love has delivered me from the Pit of destruction, for you have thrown all my sins behind your back.

18 For Sheol cannot thank you; Death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.

19 The living, only the living can thank you, as I do today; a father will make your faithfulness known to children.

20 The LORD is ready to save me; we will play stringed instruments all the days of our lives at the house of the LORD.

21 Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a lump of pressed figs and apply it to his infected skin, so that he may recover.”

22 And Hezekiah had asked, “What is the sign that I will go up to the LORD’s temple? ”