The Living Bible (229 page)

Isaiah
38

It was just before all this that Hezekiah became deathly sick, and Isaiah the prophet (Amoz’ son) went to visit him and gave him this message from the Lord:

    
“Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die; you will not recover from this illness.”

    
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 When Hezekiah heard this, he turned his face to the wall and prayed:

    
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 “O Lord, don’t you remember how true I’ve been to you and how I’ve always tried to obey you in everything you said?” Then he broke down with great sobs.

    
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 So the Lord sent another message to Isaiah:

    
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 “Go and tell Hezekiah that the Lord God of your forefather David hears you praying and sees your tears and will let you live fifteen more years.
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 He will deliver you and this city from the king of Assyria. I will defend you, says the Lord,
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 and here is my guarantee:
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 I will send the sun backwards ten degrees as measured on Ahaz’s sundial!”

    
So the sun retraced ten degrees that it had gone down!

    
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 When King Hezekiah was well again, he wrote this poem about his experience:

    
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 “My life is but half done and I must leave it all. I am robbed of my normal years, and now I must enter the gates of Sheol.
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 Never again will I see the Lord in the land of the living. Never again will I see my friends in this world.
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 My life is blown away like a shepherd’s tent; it is cut short as when a weaver stops his working at the loom. In one short day my life hangs by a thread.

    
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 “All night I moaned; it was like being torn apart by lions.
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 Delirious, I chattered like a swallow and mourned like a dove; my eyes grew weary of looking up for help. ‘O God,’ I cried, ‘I am in trouble—help me.’
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 But what can I say? For he himself has sent this sickness. All my sleep has fled because of my soul’s bitterness.
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 O Lord, your discipline is good and leads to life and health. Oh, heal me and make me live!

    
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 “Yes, now I see it all—it was good for me to undergo this bitterness, for you have lovingly delivered me from death; you have forgiven all my sins.
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 For dead men cannot praise you.
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They cannot be filled with hope and joy.
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 The living, only the living, can praise you as I do today. One generation makes known your faithfulness to the next.
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 Think of it! The Lord healed me! Every day of my life from now on I will sing my songs of praise in the Temple, accompanied by the orchestra.”

    
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 (For Isaiah had told Hezekiah’s servants, “Make an ointment of figs and spread it over the boil, and he will get well again.”

    
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 And then Hezekiah had asked, “What sign will the Lord give me to prove that he will heal me?”)

Isaiah
39

Soon afterwards, the king of Babylon (Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan) sent Hezekiah a present and his best wishes,
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for he had heard that Hezekiah had been very sick and now was well again.
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 Hezekiah appreciated this and took the envoys from Babylon on a tour of the palace, showing them his treasure-house full of silver, gold, spices, and perfumes. He took them into his jewel rooms, too, and opened to them all his treasures—everything.

    
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 Then Isaiah the prophet came to the king and said, “What did they say? Where are they from?”

    
“From far away in Babylon,” Hezekiah replied.

    
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 “How much have they seen?” asked Isaiah.

    
And Hezekiah replied, “I showed them everything I own, all my priceless treasures.”

    
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 Then Isaiah said to him, “Listen to this message from the Lord Almighty:

    
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 “The time is coming when everything you have—all the treasures stored up by your fathers—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left.
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 And some of your own sons will become slaves, yes, eunuchs, in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

    
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 “All right,” Hezekiah replied. “Whatever the Lord says is good. At least there will be peace during my lifetime!”

Isaiah
40

“Comfort, yes, comfort my people,” says your God.
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 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and tell her that her sad days are gone. Her sins are pardoned, and I have punished her in full for all her sins.”

    
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 Listen! I hear the voice of someone shouting, “Make a road for the Lord through the wilderness; make him a straight, smooth road through the desert.
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 Fill the valleys; level the hills; straighten out the crooked paths, and smooth off the rough spots in the road.
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 The glory of the Lord will be seen by all mankind together.” The Lord has spoken—it shall be.

    
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 The voice says, “Shout!”

    
“What shall I shout?” I asked.

    
“Shout that man is like the grass that dies away, and all his beauty fades like dying flowers.
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 The grass withers, the flower fades beneath the breath of God. And so it is with fragile man.
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 The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God shall stand forever.”

    
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 O crier of good news, shout to Jerusalem from the mountaintops! Shout louder—don’t be afraid—tell the cities of Judah, “Your God is coming!”
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 Yes, the Lord God is coming with mighty power; he will rule with awesome strength. See, his reward is with him, to each as he has done.
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 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will carry the lambs in his arms and gently lead the ewes with young.

    
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 Who else has held the oceans in his hands and measured off the heavens with his ruler? Who else knows the weight of all the earth and weighs the mountains and the hills?
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 Who can advise the Spirit of the Lord or be his teacher or give him counsel?
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 Has he ever needed anyone’s advice? Did he need instruction as to what is right and best?
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 No, for all the peoples of the world are nothing in comparison with him—they are but a drop in the bucket, dust on the scales. He picks up the islands as though they had no weight at all.
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 All of Lebanon’s forests do not contain sufficient fuel to consume a sacrifice large enough to honor him, nor are all its animals enough to offer to our God.
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 All the nations are as nothing to him; in his eyes they are less than nothing—mere emptiness and froth.

    
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 How can we describe God? With what can we compare him?
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 With an idol? An idol made from a mold, overlaid with gold, and with silver chains around its neck?
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 The man too poor to buy expensive gods like that will find a tree free from rot and hire a man to carve a face on it, and that’s his god—a god that cannot even move!

    
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 Are you so ignorant? Are you so deaf to the words of God—the words he gave before the world began? Have you never heard nor understood?
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 It is God who sits above the circle of the earth. (The people below must seem to him like grasshoppers!) He is the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them.
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 He dooms the great men of the world and brings them all to naught.
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 They hardly get started, barely take root, when he blows on them and their work withers, and the wind carries them off like straw.

    
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 “With whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One.

    
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 Look up into the heavens! Who created all these stars? As a shepherd leads his sheep,
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calling each by its pet name, and counts them to see that none are lost or strayed, so God does with stars and planets!

    
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 O Jacob, O Israel, how can you say that the Lord doesn’t see your troubles and isn’t being fair?
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 Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlasting God, the Creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding.
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 He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak.
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 Even the youths shall be exhausted, and the young men will all give up.
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 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.