Isaiah 38

38 ¹ In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him and said, "This is what our Father says: Put your house in order, for you are going to die; you will not recover."

² Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to our Father, ³ and said, "Please, my Father, remember how I have lived faithfully before you with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

⁴ Then the word of our Father came to Isaiah:

⁵ "Go and say to Hezekiah, 'This is what our Father says, the Father of your ancestor David: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I am adding fifteen years to your life. ⁶ I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city. ⁷ And this will be the sign to you from our Father, that he will do this thing he has promised:

⁸ Look, I will turn back the shadow ten steps — the very steps the sun has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz." So the sun turned back the ten steps by which it had gone down.

⁹ A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: ¹⁰ I said, "In the middle of my days I must go through the gates of the grave; I am robbed of the rest of my years." ^a a v10 Sheol (also verse 18): the Hebrew word for the realm of the dead — the place all the dead were thought to go. ¹¹ I said, "I will not see our Father, our Father in the land of the living; I will look on humanity no longer, among those who dwell in this passing world." ¹² My dwelling is pulled up and carried off from me like a shepherd's tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end. ¹³ I waited quietly until morning, but like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. ¹⁴ Like a swift or a crane I chirp; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weary looking upward. O Sovereign Father, I am hard-pressed; be my guarantee of safety! ¹⁵ What can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I will walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. ¹⁶ O Sovereign Father, by such things people live, and in all of them is the life of my spirit. So restore me to health and let me live! ¹⁷ Surely it was for my own good that I suffered such bitterness. In your love you held back my life from the pit of destruction, for you have thrown all my sins behind your back. ¹⁸ For the grave cannot praise you; death cannot sing your praise. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. ¹⁹ The living, the living — they praise you, as I do this day; the father makes your faithfulness known to the children. ²⁰ Our Father will save me, and we will play my songs on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, in the house of our Father.

²¹ Now Isaiah had said, "Let them take a lump of figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover." ²² And Hezekiah had asked, "What is the sign that I will go up to the house of our Father?"