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1 About this time Hezekiah fell very sick and was about to die. The prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your affairs in order, because you are going to die. You won't recover.”
2 When Hezekiah heard this, he went to pray privately* “Privately”: literally, “turned his face to the wall.” to the Lord, saying 3 “Please remember Lord how I have followed you faithfully with all my heart. I have done what is good in your sight.” Then Hezekiah cried and cried.
4 Before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard, the Lord spoke to him, saying, 5 “Go back in and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, This is what the Lord, the God of your forefather David, says: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Look! I am going to heal you. In three days time you will go to the Lord's Temple. 6 I will add fifteen years to your life. I will save you and this city from the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
7 Then Isaiah said, “Prepare a dressing from figs.” Hezekiah's servants did so and put it on the skin sores, and Hezekiah got better.
8 Hezekiah had previously asked Isaiah, “What is the sign to confirm that the Lord is going heal me and that I will go to the Lord's Temple in three days time?”
9 Isaiah replied, “This is the sign from the Lord to you that the Lord will do what he promised: Do you want the shadow to go forward ten steps, or back ten steps?”
10 “It's easy enough for the shadow to go forward ten steps, but not to go back ten steps,” Hezekiah answered. 11 So Isaiah the prophet asked the Lord, and he moved the shadow back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.
12 At the same time Merodach-baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah was sick. 13 Hezekiah welcomed the visitors and showed them everything in his treasury—all the silver, the gold, the spices, and the expensive oils. He also showed them his armory and all that he had in his storehouses. In fact there wasn't anything in his palace or in the whole of his kingdom that Hezekiah didn't show them.
14 Then the prophet Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked him, “Where did those men come from, and what did they tell you?”
“They came from a long way away, from Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.
15 “What did they see in your palace?” Isaiah asked.
“They saw everything in my palace,” replied Hezekiah. “There wasn't anything in all my storehouses I didn't show them.”
16 Isaiah told Hezekiah, “Listen to what the Lord says: 17 You can be certain that the time is coming when everything in your palace, and everything that your forefathers have saved up until now, will be taken away to Babylon. There will be nothing left, says the Lord. 18 Some of your sons, your own offspring, will be taken to serve as eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
19 Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The message from the Lord that you have told me is fine.” For he said to himself, “Why not, if there'll be peace and safety in my lifetime.”
20 The rest of what happened in Hezekiah's reign, all he did, and how he made the pool and the tunnel to bring water into the city, are recorded in the Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. 21 Hezekiah died, and his son Manasseh succeeded him as king.

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*20:2 “Privately”: literally, “turned his face to the wall.”

© 2018 Dr. Jonathan Gallagher