What does Isaias Chapter 38 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The account retains the chapter’s particular images, requests and conditions. The speaker’s claims and the edition’s interpretations remain attributed. Unstated motives and general guarantees are not supplied as source facts.

Chapter breakdown

Isaias 38 begins in those days with Ezechias sick unto death. Isaias tells him to put his house in order because he will die. Turning toward the wall, he prays about truth, a perfect heart and doing good, and weeps greatly. The Lord's word announces that prayer and tears have been heard, fifteen years added and king and city defended from Assyria. The sign involves Achaz's sundial: its shadow returns ten lines, and the text also says the sun returns those lines.

Ezechias's writing after recovery recalls the gates of hell, lost remaining years and separation from the living. The edition explains hell here as Sheol or Hades, the dead's region. A shepherd's tent, a weaver's cutting, morning and night, a lion breaking bones, a young swallow's cry and a dove's meditation express his distress. Raised eyes ask for an answer to violence. He recounts years in bitterness and asks correction and life, retaining the conditional wording about human life.

He recalls most bitter bitterness in peace, deliverance from perishing and sins cast behind God's back. His writing says hell and death cannot praise, the pit cannot await truth, while the living praise and fathers teach children. He asks the Lord to save him and looks to psalms throughout life. The closing verses recall Isaias's instruction to apply a lump of figs as a plaster to the wound and Ezechias's question about a sign for going to the Lord's house. The account does not specify dried figs, an inflamed boil, a clinical mechanism or the time Isaias had travelled.

The story inside

Opening: The account retains the chapter’s particular images, requests and conditions. Development: The speaker’s claims and the edition’s interpretations remain attributed. Conclusion: Unstated motives and general guarantees are not supplied as source facts.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The account retains the chapter’s particular images, requests and conditions.
2
The speaker’s claims and the edition’s interpretations remain attributed.
3
Unstated motives and general guarantees are not supplied as source facts.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 81650–81659
38:1. In those days Ezechias was sick even to death, and Isaias the son of Amos the prophet came unto him, and said to him: Thus saith the Lord: Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die, and not live. 38:2. And Ezechias turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, 38:3. And said: I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Ezechias wept with great weeping.
Lines 81663–81676
38:5. Go and say to Ezechias: Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears: behold I will add to thy days fifteen years: 38:6. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect it. 38:7. And this shall be a sign to thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this word which he hath spoken: 38:8. Behold I will bring again the shadow of the lines, by which it is now gone down in the sun dial of Achaz with the sun, ten lines backward. And the sun returned ten lines by the degrees by which it was gone down.
Lines 81681–81682
38:10. I said: In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell: I sought for the residue of my years.
Lines 81684–81684
Hell.... Sheol, or Hades, the region of the dead.
Lines 81689–81699
38:12. My generation is at an end, and it is rolled away from me, as a shepherd’s tent. My life is cut off, as by a weaver: whilst I was yet but beginning, he cut me off: from morning even to night thou wilt make an end of me. 38:13. I hoped till morning, as a lion so hath he broken all my bones: from morning even to night thou wilt make an end of me. 38:14. I will cry like a young swallow, I will meditate like a dove: my eyes are weakened looking upward: Lord, I suffer violence, answer thou for me.
Lines 81708–81719
38:17. Behold in peace is my bitterness most bitter: but thou hast delivered my soul that it should not perish, thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. 38:18. For hell shall not confess to thee, neither shall death praise thee: nor shall they that go down into the pit, look for thy truth. 38:19. The living, the living, he shall give praise to thee, as I do this day: the father shall make thy truth known to the children. 38:20. O Lord, save me, and we will sing our psalms all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.
Lines 81721–81725
38:21. Now Isaias had ordered that they should take a lump of figs, and lay it as a plaster upon the wound, and that he should be healed. 38:22. And Ezechias had said: What shall be the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?