Isaiah 38

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Hezekiah's illness and recovery

¹ In those days Hezekiah became sick to the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, "Thus says Yahweh: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not live." ² Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Yahweh. ³ And he said, "Please, Yahweh, remember now how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

⁴ Then the word of Yahweh came to Isaiah, saying, ⁵ "Go and say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says Yahweh, the Elohim of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. See, I will add to your days fifteen years. ⁶ I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city. ⁷ This shall be the sign to you from Yahweh, that Yahweh will do this thing that He has spoken: ⁸ See, I will bring back the shadow on the steps, which has gone down with the sun on the steps of Ahaz, ten steps backward.'" So the sun went back ten steps, by the steps on which it had gone down.

Hezekiah's psalm

⁹ A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:

¹⁰ I said, "In the middle of my days I must go into the gates of Sheol; I am deprived of the rest of my years." ¹¹ I said, "I shall not see Yah, Yah in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world." ¹² My dwelling is pulled up and carried away from me like a shepherd's tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; He cuts me off from the loom; from day to night You bring me to an end. ¹³ I calmed myself until morning; like a lion, so He breaks all my bones; from day to night You bring me to an end. ¹⁴ Like a swallow or a crane, so I chirp; I moan like a dove; my eyes grow weak looking upward. Adonai, I am oppressed; be my surety!

¹⁵ What shall I say? For He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done it. I will walk softly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. ¹⁶ Adonai, by these things people live, and in all of them is the life of my spirit. Restore me to health and make me live! ¹⁷ See, it was for my peace that I had great bitterness; but You in love have drawn my soul out of the pit of destruction, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back. ¹⁸ For Sheol does not give You thanks; death does not praise You; those who go down to the pit do not hope for Your faithfulness. ¹⁹ The living, the living, he gives You thanks, as I do this day; a father makes known Your faithfulness to his children. ²⁰ Yahweh is ready to save me, and we will play my songs on stringed instruments all the days of our life at the house of Yahweh.

²¹ Now Isaiah had said, "Let them take a cake of figs and spread it on the boil, and he will recover." ²² And Hezekiah had said, "What shall be the sign that I shall go up to the house of Yahweh?"

Notes

• 38:1 Chapters 36-39 repeat 2 Kings 18:13-20:19 almost word for word, and the TRB keeps the wording of Kings wherever the Hebrew is the same (see the notes at 2 Kings 20). The real differences in this chapter: Hezekiah is named in verse 2, and verse 3 begins "And he said"; there is no mention of the middle court, Hezekiah is not called "the leader of My people," Isaiah is told "Go" rather than "Turn back" and Yahweh says "See, I will add" (verse 5), and the promise "See, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh" is not given (verses 4-5), though Hezekiah's question in verse 22 assumes it; "for My own sake and for My servant David's sake" is not repeated here (it stands in 37:35). In the sign, Kings has Isaiah offer a choice, Hezekiah ask for the shadow to go back, and Isaiah cry to Yahweh (2 Kings 20:9-11); here Yahweh Himself announces that He will bring the shadow back, and the narrator says that "the sun went back ten steps" (verses 7-8). Hezekiah's writing (verses 9-20) is found only here. The cake of figs and Hezekiah's request for a sign, which Kings tells before the sign (20:7-8), come here at the end (verses 21-22), in shorter form ("Let them take … and spread it"; "What shall be the sign that I shall go up to the house of Yahweh?"), so the TRB renders them "had said"; in the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran these two verses appear to have been added by a later hand. In chapter 39 the differences are small: Merodach for Berodach, and "had recovered" added (39:1), "was glad" for "listened" (39:2), "to me" (39:3), "Yahweh Tsevaot" (39:5), and Hezekiah's last words as a statement rather than a question (39:8).
• 38:9 "Writing" is mikhtav; many scholars think it should be read mikhtam, "Miktam," the word in the titles of Psalms 16 and 56-60, which differs by one letter (see the note at Psalm 16:1). Hezekiah cared for the songs of the temple (2 Chronicles 29:25-30), and Proverbs 25:1 speaks of "the men of Hezekiah king of Judah." His psalm moves from lament (verses 10-14) to thanksgiving (verses 15-20).
• 38:10 "In the middle of my days" is literally "in the stillness of my days," that is, at their noon, when life should be at its fullest; Psalm 102:24 makes the same plea: "do not take me away in the midst of my days." Sheol, the realm of the dead, is pictured as a city with gates (see the note at Job 17:16); the ancient Greek translation has "the gates of Hades," the phrase Yeshua used in Matthew 16:18. In verse 11 the short name of God is repeated, "Yah, Yah," as if Hezekiah could not let go of it.
• 38:11 "The world" follows a reading with two letters exchanged, cheled, the word in "all you inhabitants of the world" (Psalm 49:1), which some Hebrew manuscripts have and many translators adopt. The Masoretic Text reads chadel, "cessation," which may mean "among those who dwell where all has ceased," that is, among the dead; the sense of the verse is much the same either way.
• 38:12 Two pictures of a life ended suddenly: a shepherd's tent, pulled up and moved on in a moment, and a finished cloth that the weaver rolls up and cuts from the loom (dallah, the threads that hold the web to the loom). "From day to night" means before the day is over. The same refrain closes verse 13.
• 38:14 "Be my surety" is arav, to stand as guarantor for another's debt, as Judah did for Benjamin (Genesis 43:9). The same two words, "oppress" and "be surety," meet in Psalm 119:122: "Be surety for Your servant for good; let not the arrogant oppress me." Hezekiah asks Adonai Himself to stand in his place against the creditor, death.
• 38:16 The Hebrew of this verse is difficult, and its sense is uncertain. "These things" may be what Yahweh has spoken and done (verse 15), by which people live. The TRB reads the last words as a prayer, "Restore me to health and make me live," with the imperative that follows; the first verb can also be read as a statement, "You restore me to health."
• 38:17 "Great bitterness" is literally "bitter to me, bitter," a doubled word for deep anguish, which Hezekiah now sees was "for my peace" (shalom). "You in love have drawn" is chashak, to set one's love on, the verb used when Yahweh "set His love on" Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7). To cast sins behind one's back is to put them out of sight and out of mind; compare Psalm 103:12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us," and Micah 7:19.
• 38:19 On the dead who no longer give thanks, see the note at Psalm 6:5: Hezekiah's argument is that only the living can join the praise of Yahweh among His people. A father making known Yahweh's faithfulness to his children recalls Psalm 78:5, where Yahweh "commanded our fathers to make known to their children."

Isaiah 37 · Isaiah 39

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