Hezekiah

I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is pleasing before thee. And Ezechias wept with much weeping.

Go back, and tell Ezechias, the captain of my people: Thus saith the Lord, the God of David, thy father: I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears: and behold I have healed thee: on the third day thou shalt go up to the temple of the Lord.

And Ezechias had said to Isaias: What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I will go up to the temple of the Lord the third day?

And Ezechias said: It is an easy matter for the shadow to go forward ten lines: and I do not desire that this be done, but let it return back ten degrees.

At that time Berodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of the Babylonians, sent letters and presents to Ezechias: for he had heard that Ezechias had been sick.

And Ezechias rejoiced at their coming, and he shewed them the house of his aromatical spices, and the gold, and the silver, and divers precious odours, and ointments, and the house of his vessels, and all that he had in his treasures. There was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominions, that Ezechias shewed them not.

And Isaias, the prophet, came to king Ezechias, and said to him: What said these men? or from whence came they to thee? And Ezechias said to him: From a far country, they came to me out of Babylon.

And he said: What did they see in thy house? Ezechias said: They saw all the things that are in my house: There is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them.

And Isaias said to Ezechias: Hear the word of the Lord.

Ezechias said to Isaias: The word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken, is good: let peace and truth be in my days.

And the rest of the acts of Ezechias, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought waters into the city, are they not written in the book of the words of the days of the kings of Juda?

And Ezechias slept with his fathers, and Manasses, his son reigned in his stead.

And he turned, and built up the high places, which Ezechias, his father, had destroyed: and he set up altars to Baal, and made groves, as Achab, the king of Israel, had done: and he adored all the host of heaven, and served them.

Begot Achaz, the father of Ezechias, of whom was born Manasses.

And these whose names are written above, came in the days of Ezechias king of Juda: and they beat down their tents, and slew the inhabitants that were found there, and utterly destroyed them unto this day: and they dwelt in their place, because they found there fat pastures.

And Achaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of Jerusalem: for they received him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel. And Ezechias his son reigned in his stead.

Now Ezechias began to reign, when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem: the name of his mother was Abia, the daughter of Zacharias.

And they went in to king Ezechias, and said to him: We have sanctified all the house of the Lord, and the altar of holocaust, and the vessels thereof, and the table of proposition with all its vessels,

And king Ezechias rising early, assembled all the rulers of the city, and went up into the house of the Lord:

And Ezechias commanded that they should offer holocausts upon the altar: and when the holocausts were offered, they began to sing praises to the Lord, and to sound with trumpets, and divers instruments which David the king of Israel had prepared.

And Ezechias and the princes commanded the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David, and Asaph the seer: and they praised him with great joy, and bowing the knee adored.

And Ezechias added, and said: You have filled your hands to the Lord, come and offer victims, and praises in the house of the Lord. And all the multitude offered victims, and praises, and holocausts with a devout mind.

And Ezechias, and all the people rejoiced because the ministry of the Lord was accomplished. For the resolution of doing this thing was taken suddenly.

And Ezechias sent to all Israel and Juda: and he wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasses, that they should come to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, and keep the phase to the Lord the God of Israel,

For a great part of the people from Ephraim, and Manasses, and Issachar, and Zabulon, that had not been sanctified, ate the phase otherwise than it is written: and Ezechias prayed for them, saying: The Lord who is good will shew mercy,