The Daily Audio Bible

Hezekiah’s illness

20 Around that same time, Hezekiah became deathly ill. The prophet Isaiah, Amoz’s son, came to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your affairs in order because you are about to die. You won’t survive this.”

² Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying, ³ “Please, Lord, remember how I have walked before you in truth and sincerity. I have done what is right in your eyes.” Then Hezekiah cried and cried.

⁴ Isaiah hadn’t even left the middle courtyard of the palace when the Lord’s word came to him: ⁵ Turn around. Say to Hezekiah, my people’s leader: This is what the Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and have seen your tears. So now I’m going to heal you. Three days from now you will be able to go up to the Lord’s temple. ⁶ I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and this city from the power of the Assyian king. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.

⁷ Then Isaiah said, “Prepare a bandage made of figs.” They did so and put it on the swelling, at which point Hezekiah started getting better.

⁸ Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What is the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I’ll be able to go up to the Lord’s temple in three days?”

⁹ Isaiah said, “This will be your sign from the Lord that he will make his promise come true: Should the shadow go forward ten steps or back ten steps?”

¹⁰ “It’s easy for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” Hezekiah said, “but not for the shadow to go back ten steps.” ¹¹ So the prophet Isaiah called on the Lord, who made the shadow go back ten steps, down the flight of stairs built by Ahaz.^[a]

¹² At that time Merodach-baladan, son of Babylon’s King Baladan, sent messengers to Hezekiah with letters and a gift. This was because he had heard that Hezekiah was sick. ¹³ Hezekiah granted them an audience and showed them everything in his treasury—the silver, the gold, the spices, and the fine oil. He also showed them his stock of weaponry and everything in his storehouses. There wasn’t a single thing in his palace or his whole kingdom that Hezekiah didn’t show them. ¹⁴ Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and said to him, “What did these men say? Where have they come from?”

Hezekiah said, “They came from a distant country: Babylon.”

¹⁵ “What have they seen in your palace?” Isaiah asked.

“They have seen everything in my palace,” Hezekiah answered. “There’s not a single thing in my storehouses that I haven’t shown them.”

¹⁶ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Listen to the Lord’s word: ¹⁷ The days are nearly here when everything in your palace and all that your ancestors collected up to now will be carried off to Babylon. Not a single thing will be left, says the Lord. ¹⁸ Some of your children, your very own offspring, will be taken away. They will become eunuchs in the palace of Babylon’s king.”

¹⁹ Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The Lord’s word that you’ve spoken is good,” because he thought: There will be peace and security in my lifetime.

²⁰ The rest of Hezekiah’s deeds and all his powerful acts—how he made the pool and the channel and brought water inside the city—aren’t they written in the official records of Judah’s kings? ²¹ Hezekiah lay down with his ancestors. His son Manasseh succeeded him as king.

Manasseh rules Judah

21 Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he ruled for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. ² He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. ³ He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars for Baal, and made a sacred pole,^[b] just as Israel’s King Ahab had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshipped them. ⁴ He even built altars in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple—the very place the Lord was speaking of when he said: “I will put my name in Jerusalem.” ⁵ Manasseh built altars for all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord’s temple. ⁶ He burned his own son alive, consulted sign readers and fortune-tellers, and used mediums and diviners. He did much evil in the Lord’s eyes and made him angry.

⁷ Manasseh set up the carved Asherah image he had made in the temple—the very temple the Lord had spoken about to David and his son Solomon, saying, In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all Israel’s tribes, I will put my name forever. ⁸ I will never again remove Israel from the land I gave to their ancestors, provided they carefully do everything I have commanded them—keeping all the Instruction my servant Moses commanded them. ⁹ But they wouldn’t listen. Manasseh led them into doing even more evil than the nations the Lord had wiped out before the Israelites.

¹⁰ The Lord spoke through his servants the prophets: ¹¹ Judah’s King Manasseh has done detestable things, things more evil than the Amorites had done before his time. He has caused Judah to sin with his images. ¹² Because of this, the Lord, Israel’s God, has said: I’m about to bring on Jerusalem and Judah such a great disaster that the ears of anyone who hears about it will ring. ¹³ I will stretch out over Jerusalem the same line that I used to measure Samaria and the same mason’s level that I used on Ahab’s family. I will wipe Jerusalem clean the same way someone wipes a plate clean, wiping it clean then turning it facedown. ¹⁴ Whatever survives of my inheritance, I’ll leave behind, handing them over to their enemies. They will be nothing but plunder and loot for every one of their enemies. ¹⁵ This will happen because they have done what is evil in my eyes, making me angry from the day their ancestors left Egypt until this very moment.

¹⁶ Manasseh spilled so much innocent blood that he filled up every corner of Jerusalem with it. And this doesn’t include the sins he caused Judah to commit so that they did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes. ¹⁷ The rest of Manasseh’s deeds, all that he accomplished, and the sin he committed, aren’t they written in the official records of Judah’s kings? ¹⁸ Manasseh lay down with his ancestors. He was buried in his palace garden, the Uzza Garden. His son Amon succeeded him as king.

Amon rules Judah

¹⁹ Amon was 22 years old when he became king, and he ruled for two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Meshullemeth; she was Haruz’s daughter and was from Jotbah. ²⁰ He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, just as his father Manasseh had done. ²¹ He walked in all the ways his father had walked. He worshipped the same worthless idols his father had worshipped, bowing down to them. ²² He deserted his ancestors’ God, the Lord—he didn’t walk in the Lord’s way.

²³ Amon’s officials plotted against him and assassinated the king in his palace. ²⁴ The people of the land then executed all those who had plotted against King Amon and made his son Josiah the next king. ²⁵ The rest of Amon’s deeds, aren’t they written in the official records of Judah’s kings? ²⁶ He was buried in his tomb in the Uzza Garden. His son Josiah succeeded him as king.

Josiah rules Judah

22 Josiah was 8 years old when he became king, and he ruled for thirty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jedidah; she was Adaiah’s daughter and was from Bozkath. ² He did what was right in the Lord’s eyes, and walked in the ways of his ancestor David—not deviating from it even a bit to the right or left.

Meeting the Jerusalem church leaders

¹⁸ On the next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James. All of the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he gave them a detailed report of what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ²⁰ Those who heard this praised God. Then they said to him, “Brother, you see how many thousands of Jews have become believers, and all of them keep the Law passionately. ²¹ They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to reject Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to live according to our customs. ²² What about this? Without a doubt, they will hear that you have arrived. ²³ You must therefore do what we tell you. Four men among us have made a solemn promise. ²⁴ Take them with you, go through the purification ritual with them, and pay the cost of having their heads shaved. Everyone will know there is nothing to those reports about you but that you too live a life in keeping with the Law. ²⁵ As for the Gentile believers, we wrote a letter about what we decided, that they avoid food offered to idols, blood, the meat from strangled animals, and sexual immorality.” ²⁶ The following day Paul took the men with him and went through the purification ritual with them. He entered the temple and publicly announced the completion of the days of purification, when the offering would be presented for each one of them.

Paul seized by the people

²⁷ When the seven days of purification were almost over, the Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul in the temple. Grabbing him, they threw the whole crowd into confusion by shouting, ²⁸ “Fellow Israelites! Help! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, the Law, and this place. Not only that, he has even brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.” (²⁹ They said this because they had seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with him earlier, and they assumed Paul had brought him into the temple.) ³⁰ The entire city was stirred up. The people came rushing, seized Paul, and dragged him out of the temple. Immediately the gates were closed. ³¹ While they were trying to kill him, a report reached the commander of a company of soldiers that all Jerusalem was in a state of confusion. ³² Without a moment’s hesitation, he took some soldiers and officers and ran down to the mob. When the mob saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. ³³ When the commander arrived, he arrested Paul and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Only then did he begin to ask who Paul was and what he had done.

³⁴ Some in the crowd shouted one thing, others shouted something else. Because of the commotion, he couldn’t learn the truth, so he ordered that Paul be taken to the military headquarters. ³⁵ When Paul reached the steps, he had to be carried by the soldiers in order to protect him from the violence of the crowd. ³⁶ The mob that followed kept screaming, “Away with him!”

Psalm 150