Jesaja 38:10

Strophe 1 consists indisputably of seven lines: "I said, In quiet of my days shall I depart into the gates of Hades: I am mulcted of the rest of my years. I said, I shall not see Jah, Jah, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more, with the inhabitants of the regions of the dead. My home is broken up, and is carried off from me like a shepherd's tent: I rolled up my life like a weaver; He would have cut me loose from the roll: From day to night Thou makest an end of me." "In quiet of my days" is equivalent to, in the midst of the quiet course of a healthy life, and is spoken without reference to the Assyrian troubles, which still continued. דּמי, from דּמה, to be quiet, lit., to be even, for the radical form דם has the primary idea of a flat covering, of something stroked smooth, of that which is level and equal, so that it could easily branch out into the different ideas of aequabilitas, equality of measure, aequitas, equanimity, aequitas, equality, and also of destruction = complanatio, levelling. On the cohortative, in the sense of that which is to be, see Ewald, 228, a; אלכה, according to its verbal idea, has the same meaning as in Ps. 39:14 and Ch2 21:20; and the construction with בּ (= ואבואה אלכה) is constructio praegnans (Luzzatto). The pual פּקּדתּי does not mean, "I am made to want" (Rashi, Knobel, and others), which, as the passive of the causative, would rather be הפקשׂדתּי, like הנסהלתּי, I am made to inherit (Job 7:3); but, I am visited with punishment as to the remnant, mulcted of the remainder, deprived, as a punishment, of the rest of my years. The clause, "Jah in the land of the living," i.e., the God of salvation, who reveals Himself in the land of the living, is followed by the corresponding clause, הדל עם־יושׁבי, "I dwelling with the inh…

This chapter proceeds in the history of Hezekiah. Here is, I. His sickness, and the sentence of death he received within himself (Isa 38:1). II. His prayer in his sickness (Isa 38:2, Isa 38:3). III. The answer of peace which God gave to that prayer, assuring him that he should recover, that he should live fifteen years yet, that Jerusalem should be delivered from the king of Assyria, and that, for a sign to confirm his faith herein, the sun should go back ten degrees (Isa 38:4-8). And this we read and opened before, Kg2 20:1, etc. But, IV. Here is Hezekiah's thanksgiving for his recovery, which we had not before (Isa 38:9-20). To which are added the means used (Isa 38:21), and the end the good man aimed at in desiring to recover (Isa 38:22). This is a chapter which will entertain the thoughts, direct the devotions, and encourage the faith and hopes of those that are confined by bodily distempers; it visits those that are visited with sickness.

38:10 enter the place of the dead? (literally enter the gates of Sheol?): This image comes from an ancient idea that people enter death through gates (see 14:9). Old Testament believers did not understand the afterlife as the New Testament reveals it. It was a shadowy place where all the dead were together and where no praise of God existed (see 38:18; Pss 88:10; 115:17).