Isaiah 38 - Christian Standard Bible Anglicised

Hezekiah’s Illness and Recovery

¹ In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill.  The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: “Set your house in order,  for you are about to die; you will not recover.” ’

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

³ He said, ‘Please, Lord, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly,  and have done what pleases you.’  And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

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 upwards. 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? ’