Isaiah 38:4

"Then came the word of Jehovah unto Isaiah, saying, Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city."

The parallel account in 2 Kings 20:4 reveals that Isaiah left Hezekiah and was on the way to departing from the palace, being as far as the middle court, when the Word of God came to Isaiah again, instructing him to reveal that the Lord had heard his prayers and was extending his life by some fifteen years. "So swiftly does God answer the prayer of faith!"[9] From this we may conclude that God approves of our prayers for health, for life and for strength.

As Douglas commented, this great prayer of Isaiah, "May be ranked with Abraham's intercession for Sodom, with Elijah's prayer for rain, and with the Syrophoenician's pleading with the Saviour for her daughter."[10]

Notice that the disease that threatened Hezekiah was a fatal malady; yet Hezekiah did not fail to pray. We believe that Christians today, due to the increase of knowledge, appear to settle such matters without regard to God, much in the same manner that a deacon in Bakersfield, California, once prayed for a patient diagnosed as being terminally with cancer, praying, in substance, as follows: "God, we know there's nothing you can do for him, but if possible help him to be easy in his last days!" To us, such a prayer approaches blasphemy. This writer has definite knowledge of a man from Moundsville, West Virginia, who was diagnosed as having "inoperable cancer of the trachea" by seven of the leading surgeons in Washington, D.C., whose principal physician was Dr. James Jerry McFarland, a noted surgeon in that city. That man was given a maximum life expectancy of six months, but eight years later he walked into Dr. McFarland's office completely whole. He said that God healed him. This report, incidentally was reported in the American Medical Journal (approximately 1955).

As Jamieson correctly commented: "At this point, Isaiah 38:21,22 would normally have appeared in the narrative; but Isaiah placed them later in order not to interrupt the message of God."[11]