Isaiah 38:18

"For Sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee:

They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day:

The father to the children shall make known thy truth.

Jehovah is ready to save me.

Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments

All the days of our life in the house of Jehovah."

The theme here is rejoicing over the recovery which came from the special blessing of the Lord. The language used in portions of this little hymn suggests that it was used in the temple services, or at least, that Hezekiah might have composed it with such a usage in view.

The final two verses here have the same information that appears in the narrative in 2Kings, only there, it appears in a different sequence. We have already noted that Isaiah's probable reason for this different arrangement was that of avoiding an interruption of the message of God. We like Douglas' comment on this. he wrote:

"Ingenious scholars, whose aim is to present us with the text as they think Isaiah should have written it, are pretty well agreed that there is a dislocation here, and that these last two verses ought to have come earlier, perhaps between Isaiah 38:6-7; and they compare the order in the book of Kings."[17]

It has been almost a century since Douglas wrote this; but he here pointed squarely to the great passion of countless critical commentators of our own times, whose comments are much preoccupied with telling us what they believe the prophet thought, or what he meant. We care absolutely nothing for any of that kind of "guessing" on the part of men who have absolutely nothing on earth to go by except their own imaginations. The text is what God has given us; if we learn anything at all from the Bible, it must be found in the text, not in the imaginations of men who, at their very best are ignorant, and who at the worst are servants of Satan himself.

There is no reason whatever for denying that Isaiah wrote both accounts, the one in 2Kings, and the one here. Why should Isaiah have consulted any other person, or writing, except himself and his own notes on what happened. Was he not the one who prescribed the poultice of figs?