2 Kings 20:2-5

20:2 He turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 20:3 “Please, Lord. Remember how I have served you 1  faithfully and with wholehearted devotion, 2  and how I have carried out your will.” 3  Then Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 

20:4 Isaiah was still in the middle courtyard when the Lord told him, 5  20:5 “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people: ‘This is what the Lord God of your ancestor David says: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. The day after tomorrow 6  you will go up to the Lord’s temple.

1 tn Heb “walked before you.” For a helpful discussion of the background and meaning of this Hebrew idiom, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 254.

2 tn Heb “and with a complete heart.”

3 tn Heb “and that which is good in your eyes I have done.”

4 tn Heb “wept with great weeping.”

5 tc Heb “and Isaiah had not gone out of the middle courtyard, and the word of the Lord came to him, saying.” Instead of “courtyard” (חָצֵר, khatser), the marginal reading, (Qere), the Hebrew consonantal text (Kethib) has הָעִיר (ha’ir), “the city.”

6 tn Heb “on the third day.”