Isaiah 38 · a question people ask
The LORD said, "you will die, and not live" (38:1), and then added fifteen years (38:5). Did the LORD change his mind?
The chapter tells both words and doesn't explain how they fit. First: "The LORD says, ‘Set your house in order, for you will die, and not live.’" (38:1). Then, after the prayer and the tears (38:2-3): "I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life" (38:5). Elsewhere the Bible says both that "God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them" (Jonah 3:10), and that "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent" (Numbers 23:19). Christians read the two words of this chapter in two main ways, each resting on verses. Both agree on what the chapter says: the first word was the LORD's (38:1), Hezekiah prayed and wept (38:2-3), the LORD said, "I have heard your prayer" (38:5), and Hezekiah "had recovered of his sickness" (38:9). The chapter on 2 Kings 20 asks the same question of the same story.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A warning that left room for prayer; his purpose didn't change
Those who read it this way take 38:1 as a true word that, like other warnings in the Bible, left room for a turning the words don't spell out. Jonah cried, "In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4), with no condition stated, and when the people "turned from their evil way", "God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it" (Jonah 3:10). Through Jeremiah the LORD says that when he speaks against a nation, "if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do to them" (Jeremiah 18:8). On this reading, the LORD's answer in 38:5-6 is what he had said he would do when people turn to him, and his purpose did not change: "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent" (Numbers 23:19).
Jonah 3:4 · Jonah 3:10 · Jeremiah 18:7-8 · Numbers 23:19
He truly changed course in answer to prayer
Those who read it this way take the chapter's words at their plainest: the LORD said Hezekiah would die (38:1), then said, "I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears" (38:5), and added fifteen years (38:5). They set it beside Moses, who "begged the LORD his God" (Exodus 32:11), after which "the LORD turned away from the evil which he said he would do to his people" (Exodus 32:14). On this reading, what does not change is who the LORD is: "For I, the LORD, don’t change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed" (Malachi 3:6).
Isaiah 38:1 · Isaiah 38:5 · Exodus 32:11 · Exodus 32:14 · Malachi 3:6
The verses
“The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and had recovered of his sickness:”
“God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it.”
“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and he won’t do it? Or has he spoken, and he won’t make it good?”