1 In those days Hezekiah became ill to the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: 'Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.'"
2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD:
3 "I beg you, LORD, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and with my whole heart and have done what is good in your eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Isaiah had not yet left the middle court when the word of the LORD came to him:
5 "Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, 'This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the LORD's house.
6 I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and this city from the power of the king of Assyria, and I will shield this city for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.'"
7 Then Isaiah said, "Get a lump of pressed figs." They got it and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.
8 Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, "What sign will there be that the LORD will heal me and that I will go up to the LORD's house on the third day?"
9 Isaiah answered, "This is the sign from the LORD that the LORD will do what he has promised: Is the shadow to go forward ten steps, or back ten steps?"
10 "It is easy for the shadow to stretch forward ten steps," said Hezekiah. "No, have the shadow go back ten steps."
11 Isaiah the prophet called out to the LORD, and the LORD made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.
12 At that time Merodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah's illness.
13 Hezekiah listened to the envoys and showed them his whole treasure house: the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil, his armory and everything in his storehouses. 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 him, "What did those men say, and where did they come to you from?" "They came from a distant land," Hezekiah said, "from Babylon."
15 "What did they see in your palace?" he asked. Hezekiah answered, "They saw everything in my palace. There is nothing in my storehouses I did not show them."
16 Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the LORD:
17 'The time is surely coming when everything in your palace, and everything your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.
18 And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood whom you will father, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.'"
19 "The word of the LORD you have spoken is good," Hezekiah told Isaiah. For he thought, "Is it not so, if only there is peace and security in my days?"
20 As for the rest of the deeds of Hezekiah and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
21 Hezekiah lay down with his fathers, and his son Manasseh became king in his place.