Hezekiah’s Illness and Healing
1In those days Hezekiah became ill and was near death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him and said, “This is what Yahweh says: Set your house in order, for you are going to die; you will not recover.” 2Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Yahweh: 3“Please, Yahweh, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly I have walked before you, and how I have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4Before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard, the word of Yahweh came to him: 5“Go back and tell Hezekiah, leader of my people: This is what Yahweh, the God of David your father, says — I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I am going to heal you. On the third day you will go up to the house of Yahweh. 6I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant.” 7Then Isaiah said, “Bring a poultice of figs.” They brought it and applied it to the boil, and he recovered. 8Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, “What will be the sign that Yahweh will heal me, and that I will go up to the house of Yahweh on the third day?” 9Isaiah replied, “This is the sign to you from Yahweh that he will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?” 10Hezekiah said, “It is easy for the shadow to go forward ten steps. No — let it go back ten steps instead.” 11So the prophet Isaiah called out to Yahweh, and he made the shadow go back the ten steps it had descended on the stairway of Ahaz.
The Envoys from Babylon
12At that time Berodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been ill. 13Hezekiah welcomed the envoys and showed them everything in his storehouses — the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine oil, his armory, and everything found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his palace or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. 14Then the prophet Isaiah came to king Hezekiah and asked him, “What did these men say, and where did they come from?” Hezekiah answered, “They came from a distant land — from Babylon.” 15Isaiah asked, “What have they seen in your palace?” Hezekiah said, “They have seen everything in my palace; there is nothing among my treasures I did not show them.” 16Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of Yahweh: 17The days are coming when everything in your palace, and everything your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says Yahweh. 18Some of your own descendants, your own offspring, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 19Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of Yahweh you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Will there not at least be peace and security in my own days?” 20As for the rest of the acts of Hezekiah — all his might, and how he made the pool and the tunnel and brought water into the city — are they not written in the Annals of the Kings of Judah? 21Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and Manasseh his son became king in his place.
