Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 165 · June 14
Fifteen Years
“Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.”
Of all the verses we carry into a hospital corridor, this is one we lean on most: "I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears." Few of us have read to the end of the chapter before quoting it.
Nothing in this story is soft. Earlier that same day Isaiah had brought King Hezekiah the opposite word from the same God: "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live." Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, prayed, and "wept sore." Before Isaiah had even gone out into the middle court, the LORD sent him back with a new word. God heard, God saw, and God healed him. He added fifteen years to his life, and He brought the shadow on the dial of Ahaz ten degrees backward as a sign, so that the king would know the healing came from Him.
Be careful not to turn this into a rule, though. Isaiah's first message came from the LORD just as surely as his second, and it was true when he spoke it. The chapter gives us no way of telling ahead of time which word we are living under, and the sign on the dial was given to Hezekiah alone.
Then read on, because the fifteen years are written down too. Messengers came from the king of Babylon, "for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick," and Hezekiah showed them everything in his treasure house. Isaiah told him that all of it would be carried off to Babylon, and that some of his own descendants would be made eunuchs in the palace there. Hezekiah's reply is the coldest thing he says: "Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?" The next chapter opens with his son: "Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign." So Manasseh was born during the added years, and he "shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another." Scripture sets these events down in order, passes no verdict on the prayer, and leaves us to weigh them.
Hear our prayer, Lord, and see our tears. We have prayed the way Hezekiah prayed, and we would do it again. When Your answer comes, and we cannot see past the end of the time we asked for, be God over the years we did not know how to ask about, and over the children who will live in them. You heard Hezekiah, and You hear us. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 165 is Meat in Due Season (Psalm 145:15).