38:17 “Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. 1
You delivered me 2 from the pit of oblivion. 3
For you removed all my sins from your sight. 4
38:18 Indeed 5 Sheol does not give you thanks;
death does not 6 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, 7
and we will celebrate with music 8
for the rest of our lives in the Lord’s temple.” 9
38:21 10 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?”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.”
5 tn Or “For” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
6 tn The negative particle is understood by ellipsis in this line. See GKC 483 §152.z.
7 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.
8 tn Heb “and music [or perhaps, “stringed instruments”] we will play.”
9 tn Heb “all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord.”
10 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.