Isaiah 38:1-22

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.’ ”  Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. He said, “Please, Lord, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly,  and have done what pleases you.”  And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: “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.  , And I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city.  This is the sign to you  from the Lord that he will do what he has promised: 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. A poem by King Hezekiah of Judah after he had been sick and had recovered from his illness: 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. 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.  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.  I thought until the morning: He will break all my bones like a lion. By nightfall you make an end of me. 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.  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.  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.  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.  For Sheol cannot thank you; Death cannot praise you.  Those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, only the living can thank you, as I do today; a father will make your faithfulness known to children.  The Lord is ready to save me; we will play stringed instruments all the days of our lives at the house of the  Lord.  Now Isaiah  had said, “Let them take a lump of pressed figs and apply it to his infected skin, so that he may recover.” And Hezekiah had asked, “What is the sign that I will go up to the Lord’s temple? ”