November 30, 2003. ת Jonah and Hezekiah.

Today Pastor Whitaker's sermon was on patience until the Second Coming. He read from several places in Isaiah, and I was struck by how similar Hezekiah's prayer in Isaiah 38 is to Jonah's in Jonah 2. Here they are, for comparison. Jonah 2:1-9 says

Then Jonah prayed unto Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly. And he said,

I called by reason of mine affliction unto Jehovah,
And he answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol cried I,
Thou heardest my voice.

For thou didst cast me into the depth,
in the heart of the seas,
And the flood was round about me;
All thy waves and thy billows passed over me.

And I said, I am cast out from before thine eyes;
Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
The deep was round about me;
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The earth with its bars upon me for ever:

Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, O Jehovah my God.
When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Jehovah;
And my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple.

They that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that which I have vowed.

Salvation is of Jehovah.

and Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:9-20 says

The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness.

I said,
In the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of Sheol:
I am deprived of the residue of my years.

I said,
I shall not see Jehovah, Jehovah in the land of the living:
I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

My dwelling is removed, and is carried away from me as a shepherd's tent:
I have rolled up, like a weaver, my life;
he will cut me off from the loom:
From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

I quieted until morning; as a lion, so he breaketh all my bones:
From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

Like a swallow, a crane, so did I chatter;
I did moan as a dove;
Mine eyes fail upward:
O Lord, I am oppressed, be thou my surety.

What shall I say?
he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it:
I shall go softly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

O Lord, by these things men live;
And wholly therein is the life of my spirit:
Wherefore recover thou me, and make me to live.

Behold, for peace I had great bitterness:
But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption;
For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

For Sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee:
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day:
The father to the children shall make known thy truth.

Jehovah is to save me:
Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments
All the days of our life in the house of Jehovah.

Both of these are salvation psalms, beginning with a lament on the psalmist's peril and ending with thanks to God for salvation, a progression from despair to exultation, as the psalmist realizes that God is with him. Both acknowledge that the peril is from God, and is a going down from comfort to something like death.

For references, I've put the same passages below with verse numbers and [added] words from the translation, which is the 1901 American Standard Version. Note, too, that the line breaks are mine; the original, of course, does not even have punctuation or capitalization, much less verse numbers and line breaks.

Jonah 2:1-9 is

1Then Jonah prayed unto Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly. 2And he said,

I called by reason of mine affliction unto Jehovah,
And he answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol cried I,
[And] thou heardest my voice.

3For thou didst cast me into the depth,
in the heart of the seas,
And the flood was round about me;
All thy waves and thy billows passed over me.

4And I said, I am cast out from before thine eyes;
Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

5The waters compassed me about, even to the soul;
The deep was round about me;
The weeds were wrapped about my head.
6I went down to the bottoms of the mountains;
The earth with its bars [closed] upon me for ever:

Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, O Jehovah my God.
7When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Jehovah;
And my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple.

8They that regard lying vanities Forsake their own mercy.
9But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that which I have vowed.

Salvation is of Jehovah.

and Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:9-20.

9The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness.

10I said,
In the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of Sheol:
I am deprived of the residue of my years.

11I said,
I shall not see Jehovah, [even] Jehovah in the land of the living:
I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

12My dwelling is removed, and is carried away from me as a shepherd's tent:
I have rolled up, like a weaver, my life;
he will cut me off from the loom:
From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

13I quieted [myself] until morning; as a lion, so he breaketh all my bones:
From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

14Like a swallow [or] a crane, so did I chatter;
I did moan as a dove;
mine eyes fail [with looking] upward:
O Lord, I am oppressed, be thou my surety.

15What shall I say?
he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it:
I shall go softly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

16O Lord, by these things men live;
And wholly therein is the life of my spirit:
Wherefore recover thou me, and make me to live.

17Behold, [it was] for [my] peace [that] I had great bitterness:
But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption;
For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

18For Sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee:
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

19The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day:
The father to the children shall make known thy truth.

20Jehovah is [ready] to save me:
Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments
All the days of our life in the house of Jehovah.

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