6. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.” ’
7. Then Isaiah said, ‘Prepare a poultice of figs.’ They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.
8. Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, ‘What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the temple of the Lord on the third day from now?’
9. Isaiah answered, ‘This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?’
10. ‘It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,’ said Hezekiah. ‘Rather, let it go back ten steps.’
11. Then the prophet Isaiah called on the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.
12. At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness.
13. Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses – the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil – his armoury and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.