Text -- Isaiah 38:17-22 (NET)

38:17 “Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. You delivered me from the pit of oblivion. For you removed all my sins from your sight. 38:18 Indeed Sheol does not give you thanks; death does not praise you. Those who descend into the pit do not anticipate your faithfulness. 38:19 The living person, the living person, he gives you thanks, as I do today. A father tells his sons about your faithfulness. 38:20 The Lord is about to deliver me, and we will celebrate with music for the rest of our lives in the Lord’s temple.” 38:21 Isaiah ordered, “Let them take a fig cake and apply it to the ulcerated sore and he will get well.” 38:22 Hezekiah said, “What is the confirming sign that I will go up to the Lord’s temple?”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Isa 38:17

¹ tn Heb “Look, for peace bitterness was to me bitter”; NAB “thus is my bitterness transformed into peace.”

² tc The Hebrew text reads, “you loved my soul,” but this does not fit syntactically with the following prepositional phrase. חָשַׁקְתָּ (khashaqta, “you loved”), may reflect an aural error; most emend the form to חָשַׂכְת, (khasakht, “you held back”).

³ tn בְּלִי (bÿli) most often appears as a negation, meaning “without,” suggesting the meaning “nothingness, oblivion,” here. Some translate “decay” or “destruction.”

⁴ tn Heb “for you threw behind your back all my sins.”

NET Notes: Isa 38:18

¹ tn Or “For” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

² tn The negative particle is understood by ellipsis in this line. See GKC 483 §152.z.

NET Notes: Isa 38:20

¹ tn The infinitive construct is used here to indicate that an action is imminent. See GKC 348-49 §114.i, and IBHS 610 §36.2.3g.

² tn Heb “and music [or perhaps, “stringed instruments”] we will play.”

³ tn Heb “all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord.”

sn Note that vv. 21-22 have been placed between vv. 6-7, where they logically belong. See 2 Kgs 20:7-8.

NET Notes: Isa 38:21

¹ tc If original to Isaiah 38, vv. 21-22 have obviously been misplaced in the course of the text’s transmission, and would most naturally be placed here, between Isa 38:6 and 38:7. See 2 Kgs 20:7-8, where these verses are placed at this point in the narrative, not at the end. Another possibility is that these verses were not in the original account, and a scribe, familiar with the 2 Kgs version of the story, appended vv. 21-22 to the end of the account in Isaiah 38.