When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?

“Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”

But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.”

The watchman replies, “Morning is coming, but also the night. If you would ask, then ask; and come back yet again.”

Hezekiah had asked, “What will be the sign that I will go up to the temple of the Lord?”

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 to me from Babylon.”

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.”

I look but there is no one— no one among the gods to give counsel, no one to give answer when I ask them.

For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.

Judgment and Salvation

“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’