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: 'Put your affairs 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 is good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4. Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah:
5. "Go and tell Hezekiah that 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 15 years to your life.
6. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city.
7. This is the sign to you from the LORD that the LORD will do what He has promised:
8. I am going to make the sun's shadow that goes down on Ahaz's stairway return by 10 steps." So the sun's shadow went back the 10 steps it had descended.
9. A poem by Hezekiah king 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. You make an end of me from day until night.
13. I thought until the morning: He will break all my bones like a lion; You make an end of me day and night.
14. 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.
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, because of these [promises] people live, and in all of them is the life of my spirit as well; You have restored me to health and let me live.
17. Indeed, it was for [my own] welfare that I had such great 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 will 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 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?"