Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Writing of Hezekiah
Isaiah 38:9-22
9 The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had recovered of his sickness: · WEB
A king writes down what dying felt like, and his reason for wanting to live is that the dead do not praise.
The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had recovered of his sickness Isaiah 38:9.
A psalm, composed afterward, and it is the only place in Scripture where a man who was told he would die writes up the experience.
In the middle of my life I go into the gates of Sheol. I am deprived of the residue of my years Isaiah 38:10.
He was about thirty-nine. The complaint is specifically about the unlived remainder.
My dwelling is removed, and is carried away from me like a shepherd's tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver. He will cut me off from the loom Isaiah 38:12.
Two images of a thing ending before it is finished. A shepherd's tent comes down in minutes and leaves nothing; and cloth cut from the loom is removed by someone else, at a moment the cloth does not choose.
I chattered like a swallow or a crane. I moaned like a dove. My eyes weaken looking upward Isaiah 38:14.
Bird noises for the sounds a very ill man makes, and none of them is speech.
Behold, for peace I had great anguish, but you have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for you have cast all my sins behind your back Isaiah 38:17.
The recovery is described as forgiveness, which the illness narrative never mentioned. And the image is of something thrown where the thrower cannot see it — deliberately put out of view.
For Sheol can't praise you. Death can't celebrate you. Those who go down into the pit can't hope for your truth Isaiah 38:18.
The reason he wanted to live, and it is the same argument the psalms make Psalms 6:5 Psalms 115:17. Three clauses, and each denies to the dead an activity of the living: praise, celebration, hope.
The argument only works if death is what this book consistently says it is. A king who believed he would be conscious and worshiping elsewhere could not have offered this as a reason to be spared, and would not have wept. What he wanted was not release but the residue of my years, and the hope that finally answers this fear is resurrection rather than survival Isaiah 26:19.
The living, the living, he shall praise you, as I do today. The father shall make known your truth to the children Isaiah 38:19.
The repetition is emphatic and the second half gives the use he intends to make of the fifteen years: telling his children. Manasseh was born three years into them, and grew up to be the worst king Judah had.
Now Isaiah had said, "Let them take a cake of figs, and lay it for a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover" Isaiah 38:21.
The note is appended at the end, out of sequence. A miracle and a fig poultice, in the same account, with no suggestion that either made the other unnecessary.
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