Isaiah 38:9-22 - Hezekiah's Poem Of Praise

⁹ A thanksgiving, which Hezekiah king of Judah wrote, when he had been sick, and was recovered.

¹⁰ "I thought I should have gone to the gates of hell in my best age, and have wanted the residue of my years. ¹¹ I spake within myself, 'I shall never visit the LORD God in this life: I shall never see man among the dwellers of the world. ¹² Mine age is folden up together, and taken away from me, like a shepherd's cottage: my life is hewn off, like as a weaver cutteth off his web. While I was yet taking my rest, he hewed me off, and made an end of me in one day.' ¹³ I thought I would have lived unto the morrow, but he bruised my bones like a lion, and made an end of me in one day. ¹⁴ Then chattered I like a swallow, and like a crane, and mourned as a dove. I lift up mine eyes to the height: 'O LORD,' say I, 'violence is done unto me, be thou surety for me.'

¹⁵ What shall I say? The Lord hath made a promise to me. Yea, and he himself hath performed it. I shall therefore, as long as I live, remember bitterness of my life. ¹⁶ O LORD, men may live beyond their years, and I will declare to all men that even in those years, it was thou that causedest me to sleep, and again thou hast given me life. ¹⁷ Behold, bitter as gall was my pensiveness: so sore longed I for health. And it was thy pleasure to deliver me from the filthy pit: for thou it is, O Lord, that hath cast all my sins behind thy back. ¹⁸ For hell praiseth not thee, death doth not magnify thee. They that go down into the grave, praise not thy truth: ¹⁹ but the living, yea the living acknowledge thee, like as I do this day. The father telleth his children of thy faithfulness. ²⁰ Deliver us, O LORD, and we will sing praises in thy house, all the days of our life."

²¹ And Isaiah said, "Take a plaster of figs, and lay it upon the sore, so shall it be whole." ²² Then said Hezekiah, "O what a great thing is this, that I shall go up in to the house of the LORD."