What does Isaias Chapter 39 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 39 describes Merodach Baladan, son of Baladan and king of Babylon, sending letters and a present after hearing of Ezechias's illness and recovery. Ezechias rejoices and shows aromatic spices, silver, gold, sweet odors, precious ointment, furniture and treasures. Nothing in his house or dominion remains unshown.

Isaias asks what the visitors said and where they came from. The king answers that they came from distant Babylon. Asked what they saw, he says everything in his house and nothing withheld from his treasures. The visitors' purpose and the king's private motives are not supplied; furniture is not rewritten as an armory or ointment as medicine.

The prophet announces that all the house's possessions and ancestral stores will be taken to Babylon, leaving nothing. Some of Ezechias's children will be taken as eunuchs in the Babylonian king's palace. Ezechias calls the Lord's word good and says only let peace and truth remain in his days. That wish is not rewritten as a guaranteed peaceful lifetime, and the announcement concerning children is not expanded to every descendant.

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 81737–81742
39:2. And Ezechias rejoiced at their coming, and he shewed them the storehouses of his aromatical spices, and of the silver, and of the gold, and of the sweet odours, and of the precious ointment, and all the storehouses of his furniture, and all things that were found in his treasures. There was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion that Ezechias shewed them not.
Lines 81754–81756
39:6. Behold the days shall come that all that is in thy house, and that thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried away into Babylon: there shall not any thing be left, saith the Lord.