Hezekiah's Song of Thanksgiving

After God healed him from a mortal sickness and added fifteen years to his life, King Hezekiah wrote down his experience. He remembers thinking he would go to the gates of the grave, his age removed from him as a shepherd's tent, mourning like a dove. Then he praises the God who in love delivered his soul from the pit and cast all his sins behind His back. 'The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day,' he sings, and he resolves to sing his songs in the house of the LORD all the days of his life.

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Strongest connections in Scripture

Isaiah 38

Key Passages

The Living Shall Praise Thee

Isaiah 38:9-20

Hezekiah turns his brush with death into a song of praise for the God who heals and forgives.

T⁹he writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness:

¹⁰ I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. ¹¹ I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. ¹² Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. ¹³ I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. ¹⁴ Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me. ¹⁵ What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. ¹⁶ O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live. ¹⁷ Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. ¹⁸ For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. ¹⁹ The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth. ²⁰ The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.