1. In those days Hezekiah fell mortally ill. This chapter replicates 2 Kings 20, though with more extensive abridgment than in the preceding replication of Kings and with the interpolation of a psalm of supplication not in 2 Kings 20.

5. the LORD God of David your forefather. This epithet serves as a reminder of God’s commitment to preserve the Davidic dynasty, and Hezekiah is presented as a king who does what is right in the eyes of the LORD, like David his forefather.

6. from the hand of the king of Assyria I will save you. This clause could be an indication that Hezekiah’s illness preceded the siege of Jerusalem, but the inference is not entirely certain because even after the lifting of the siege, Assyria would have remained a potential threat.

7. And this is the sign. At this point in the text in 2 Kings, Isaiah carries out what looks like an act of folk medicine by applying a clump of figs to Hezekiah’s rash. Here that act is moved to the end of the chapter, where it appears to be out of place.

8. I am about to turn back the shadow on the steps. What is evidently in question is a kind of sundial, but one that is not a horizontal disk but rather a series of steps set into a wall, ten on the left side to show the shadow of the ascending sun and ten on the right side for the descending sun. A device of this sort has been found in Egypt. The King James Version and modern Hebrew understand maʿa lot as “degrees,” but these were probably actual steps, which is what the word usually means in biblical Hebrew.

the Steps of Ahaz. The sundial in question proves to be a well-known marker in Jerusalem commissioned by King Ahaz.

9. A writ for Hezekiah. What follows is actually a psalm of supplication. Inserting poems from different sources was a common practice in biblical narrative or in the hands of the editors. The intention here is to give dramatic expression to the desperation of the king at death’s door. While this psalm exhibits many of the formulaic features of supplications, the text that has come down to us is manifestly damaged, especially in its second half, sometimes reducing translation to guesswork, as will be duly noted at the relevant points.

10. I will pass away. Literally, “I will go,” sometimes a euphemism for dying in biblical Hebrew.

12. I have rolled up. The verb qiped occurs only here, and so one is obliged to guess from the context what it might mean.

You finish me. The verb, derived from a root that means “whole,” looks as though it should have a positive connotation, but here it has to be negative.

13. I cried out. The received text reads shiviti, “I imagined,” “I depicted,” but the Targum reads shivaʿti, “I cried out,” as does this translation.

14. I am oppressed. The received text has an imperative, “oppress me,” which does not make sense.

15. What can I speak, and He has said to me and done it? Each of the Hebrew words here is understandable, but how they fit together is not entirely unclear.

16. O Master, for them who will live / and all among them is my spirit’s life. The translation frankly mirrors the stubborn unintelligibility of both these clauses, which defy reconstruction.

18. For Sheol will not acclaim You. The declaration in this verse and the next is one that appears with some frequency in Psalms: only the living have the capacity to praise God, and so the speaker entreats God to sustain him in the land of the living.

20. The LORD is here to rescue us. The Hebrew says merely “The LORD to rescue us.”

let us play music. Given that the music is to be played in the house of the LORD, this would be the music accompanying the singing of psalms of thanksgiving that would recount God’s beneficence in rescuing the speaker from death.

21. Let them fetch a clump of figs. In Kings, this act of folk healing is performed immediately after Isaiah comes to visit the ailing Hezekiah. The fact that a textual displacement has occurred is reflected in the king’s asking what the sign will be in the next verse. In the present chapter, this question should have occurred just before Isaiah’s response to it in verse 7, “And this is the sign for you.” That is precisely the order in 2 Kings 20.

22. that I will go up to the house of the LORD. Hezekiah is bedridden, so what he means by this question is: what is the sign that I will recover and again be able to participate in worship at the Temple? The version in 2 Kings 20:8 in fact makes this perfectly explicit: “What is the sign that the LORD will heal me and I will go up on the third day to the house of the LORD?”