Added Years and an Exposed Treasury

Fifteen added years (verse 6) out of a twenty nine year reign place the illness in his fourteenth year, the year of Sennacherib's invasion (18:13), which fits the promise in verse 6 that the city will still be delivered. “Set thine house in order” means give final instructions, the phrase used of Ahithophel before he died (2 Samuel 17:23).

Turning to the wall gave a bedridden king the only privacy available in a crowded royal chamber. Ahab once turned his face away in sulking (1 Kings 21:4); Hezekiah turns to pray.

“A perfect heart” is shalem, whole or undivided, the phrase used of David's loyalty and denied to Solomon and Abijam (1 Kings 11:4; 15:3). Hezekiah's hymn written after this illness is preserved in Isaiah 38:9–20, though not in Kings.

The Hebrew text written in the scrolls has “the middle city”, and the Jewish scribes' reading has “court”; the King James follows the scribes. Either way Isaiah had barely left the palace precinct before being turned back.

“Captain” is nagid, leader or prince, the title Samuel used when anointing Saul and David (1 Samuel 9:16; 13:14). Going up to the temple on the third day was also a return to ritual cleanness: a man with a festering sore would not enter the sanctuary.

This is the only time in the Old Testament that a person is told the exact number of years left to live. The promise about the city repeats 19:34 almost word for word, which is one reason many readers place the illness before the Assyrian withdrawal.

A poultice of pressed figs was a known remedy in the ancient world; a tablet from Ugarit prescribes figs for a horse's ailment. The Hebrew for “boil” is shechin, the word used of the Egyptian plague (Exodus 9:9) and of Job's sores.

In Isaiah's version the request for a sign comes after the psalm (Isaiah 38:22). Hezekiah's father Ahaz had refused a sign when Isaiah offered one (Isaiah 7:10–12); the son asks for one.

“Degrees” is ma'aloth, steps. The choice offered, forward or back, is unusual: elsewhere signs are given rather than chosen, as with Gideon's fleece (Judges 6:36–40), where the one asking set the terms.

Hezekiah reasons that a shadow going forward is only what shadows do, just faster. He asks for movement against the course of the day, the one thing no one could fake by waiting.

The dial of Ahaz was probably a stairway built by Hezekiah's father, down which a shadow crept step by step as the sun rose; the great Isaiah scroll from Qumran reads “the steps of the upper chamber of Ahaz”. The sign fittingly takes place on the father's own building.

Berodach is a scribal slip for Merodach, as Isaiah 39:1 spells it; the Babylonian name is Marduk-apla-iddina. He ruled Babylon twice in revolt against Assyria, around 721–710 and again briefly in 703 BC, and was hunting allies. Get-well wishes gave diplomatic cover.

“Hearkened unto them” is more naturally read, with Isaiah 39:2, as “was glad of them”, a difference of one Hebrew letter. The armoury is probably the House of the Forest of Lebanon, where Solomon hung his gold shields (1 Kings 10:17).

Isaiah asks two questions and Hezekiah answers only the second. “A far country” was the phrase the Gibeonites used to trick Joshua (Joshua 9:6, 9), a claim of distance meant to flatter and disarm.

The word “all” and the double negative “nothing that I have not shewed” repeat verse 13 in Hezekiah's own mouth. He hides nothing from the prophet either, which at least is candid.

A one line formula, but this is the only oracle of judgment Isaiah speaks in Kings against a king of Judah. Everything Isaiah said before in chapters 19 and 20 was promise.

“Unto this day” reaches back through every generation that had stored treasure since Solomon. Babylon, still a small rebel state against Assyria, is named more than a century before Nebuchadnezzar fulfils it (24:13; 25:13–17).

Daniel and his companions were youths of royal and noble descent taken into Nebuchadnezzar's palace under the chief of the eunuchs (Daniel 1:3), which is how Jewish tradition read the fulfilment. The Hebrew saris can mean a court official as well as a castrated man.

The Hebrew of the second sentence is compact, perhaps “Is it not so, if there will be peace and truth in my days?” Some read relief, others submission. His own son Manasseh is the next name in the book, and his reign will make the judgment certain (21:11–15).

Hezekiah's tunnel, cut through 533 metres of rock from the Gihon spring to the pool of Siloam, still carries water. An inscription found in it in 1880 describes the two teams of miners hearing each other's picks and breaking through.

Manasseh was twelve at his accession (21:1), so he was born three years into Hezekiah's fifteen extra years. The king whose life was lengthened fathered the king who undid all his work.