⁵ “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David,^(A) says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears;^(B) I will add fifteen years^(C) to your life.

³ “Remember, Lord, how I have walked^(A) before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion^(B) and have done what is good in your eyes.^(C)” And Hezekiah wept^(D) bitterly.

Manasseh King of Judah^(A)(B)

21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah.^(C)

¹⁶ Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood^(A) that he filled Jerusalem from end to end—besides the sin that he had caused Judah^(B) to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

¹⁰ The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.

Envoys From Babylon^(A)(B)

¹² At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness. ¹³ Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine olive oil—his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.

¹⁴ Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, “What did those men say, and where did they come from?”

“From a distant land,” Hezekiah replied. “They came from Babylon.”

¹⁵ The prophet asked, “What did they see in your palace?”

“They saw everything in my palace,” Hezekiah said. “There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.”

¹⁶ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: ¹⁷ The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon.^(C) Nothing will be left, says the Lord. ¹⁸ And some of your descendants,^(D) your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”^(E)

¹⁹ “The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?”

²⁰ As for the other events of Hezekiah’s reign, all his achievements and how he made the pool^(F) and the tunnel^(G) by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?