Isaiah 38 explained: A King Faces Death and Lives

A death sentence and a prayer (vv. 1-3)

Isaiah tells Hezekiah, king of Judah, to settle his affairs because his illness will kill him, and the king turns to the wall, perhaps for privacy, and weeps as he prays. He points to his sincere, wholehearted loyalty to God, which in his world was a natural reason to ask for a longer life.

Fifteen more years (vv. 4-6)

God then sends Isaiah back to say the prayer and the tears have been noticed, and fifteen years are added to the king's life. The promise also covers Jerusalem, threatened by the powerful Assyrian empire, so the king's recovery and the city's safety are tied together.

The shadow goes back (vv. 7-8)

As proof, the sun's shadow moves back ten steps on something built by King Ahaz, Hezekiah's father. Scholars are unsure whether this was a staircase that marked the time by its shadow or a sundial, and the text does not say how it happened.

The king's lament (vv. 9-14)

Hezekiah's poem recalls his despair at dying in the prime of life, picturing his life as a tent pulled down and as cloth cut from a loom. His suffering felt like a lion breaking his bones, and his prayers came out as weak cries like a bird's.

From despair to thanks (vv. 15-20)

The poem turns as he is lost for words, vows to live humbly, and says God has kept him from the grave and put his sins behind his back. He reflects an older Israelite view of the grave as a silent place, so being alive means being able to praise God and pass that story on to the next generation.

Figs and a request (vv. 21-22)

These two verses add details that appear earlier in the story in the parallel account in 2 Kings: Isaiah had a paste of figs, used in ancient medicine, put on the king's boil. Hezekiah had also asked for a sign that he would be well enough to go back to the temple.

Key verse: Isaiah 38:5

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether God truly changed his mind in response to Hezekiah's prayer or whether the first warning was meant all along as a conditional message that invited prayer.

Something to think about

Hezekiah says nearly dying changed how he wanted to live the rest of his years; has a close call or a loss ever changed the way you see the time you have?