The Divided Kingdom

And before Isaias was gone out of the middle of the court, the word of the Lord came to him, saying:

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 I will add to thy days fifteen years: and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect this city for my own sake, and for David, my servant's sake.

And Isaias said: Bring me a lump of figs. And when they had brought it, and laid it upon his boil, he was healed.

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 Isaias said to him: This shall be the sign from the Lord, that the Lord will do the word which he hath spoken: Wilt thou that the shadow go forward ten lines, or that it go back so many degrees?

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.

And Isaias, the prophet, called upon the Lord, and he brought the shadow ten degrees backwards by the lines, by which it had already gone down on the dial of Achaz.

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.

Behold the days shall come, that all that is in thy house, and that thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.

And of thy sons also that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, they shall take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

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.

Manasses was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned five and fifty years in Jerusalem: the name of his mother was Haphsiba.

And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the idols of the nations, which the Lord destroyed from before the face of the children of Israel.

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.

And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said: In Jerusalem I will put my name.

And he built altars for all the host of heaven, in the two courts of the temple of the Lord.

And he made his son pass through fire: and he used divinations, and observed omens, and appointed pythons, and multiplied soothsayers, to do evil before the Lord, and to provoke him.

He set also an idol of the grove, which he had made, in the temple of the Lord: concerning which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son: In this temple, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name for ever.