O sovereign master, your decrees can give men life; may years of life be restored to me. ¹  Restore my health ²  and preserve my life.’

This is the prayer of King Hezekiah of Judah when he was sick and then recovered from his illness:

At that time ¹  a man will keep alive a young cow from the herd and a couple of goats.

¹  Isaiah ordered, “Let them take a fig cake and apply it to the ulcerated sore and he will get well.”

For this is what the high and exalted one says, the one who rules ¹  forever, whose name is holy: “I dwell in an exalted and holy place, but also with the discouraged and humiliated, ²  in order to cheer up the humiliated and to encourage the discouraged. ³ 

The dead do not come back to life, the spirits of the dead do not rise. ¹  That is because ²  you came in judgment ³  and destroyed them, you wiped out all memory of them.

¹ Your dead will come back to life; your corpses will rise up. Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground! ²  For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew, ³  and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits. ⁴ 

Pay attention and come to me! Listen, so you can live! ¹  Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ²  you, just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ³ 

In those days Hezekiah was stricken with a terminal illness. ¹  The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz visited him and told him, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Give instructions to your household, for you are about to die; you will not get well.’”