2 Kings 20:1-11

Living Bible

20 Hezekiah now became deathly sick, and Isaiah the prophet went to visit him.

“Set your affairs in order and prepare to die,” Isaiah told him. “The Lord says you won’t recover.”

² Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.

³ “O Lord,” he pleaded, “remember how I’ve always tried to obey you and to please you in everything I do. . . . ” Then he broke down and cried.

⁴ So before Isaiah had left the courtyard, the Lord spoke to him again.

⁵ “Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people, and tell him that the Lord God of his ancestor David has heard his prayer and seen his tears. I will heal him, and three days from now he will be out of bed and at the Temple! ⁶ I will add fifteen years to his life and save him and this city from the king of Assyria. And it will all be done for the glory of my own name and for the sake of my servant David.”

⁷ Isaiah then instructed Hezekiah to boil some dried figs and to make a paste of them and spread it on the boil. And he recovered!

⁸ Meanwhile, King Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, “Do a miracle to prove to me that the Lord will heal me and that I will be able to go to the Temple again three days from now.”

⁹ “All right, the Lord will give you a proof,” Isaiah told him. “Do you want the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten points or backward ten points?”

¹⁰ “The shadow always moves forward,” Hezekiah replied; “make it go backward.”

¹¹ So Isaiah asked the Lord to do this, and he caused the shadow to move ten points backward on the sundial of Ahaz!^[a]