5 ‘Go and tell Hezekiah, “This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.
6 And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city.
7 ‘ “This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised:
8 I will make the shadow cast by the sun go back the ten steps it has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.” ’ So the sunlight went back the ten steps it had gone down.
9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery:
10 I said, ‘In the prime of my lifemust I go through the gates of deathand be robbed of the rest of my years?’
11 I said, ‘I will not again see the Lord himselfin the land of the living;no longer will I look on my fellow man,or be with those who now dwell in this world.