King Hezekiah’s Fig Poultice: An intrusion into the biblical text?
Channel: Galen Currah
Date: 2017-10-24

King Hezekiah’s Fig Poultice
An intrusion into the biblical text?
Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (2016)
www.wordwatchers.link 2017

The following account of King Hezekiah’s illness and healing with a fig poultice in the 8th centure BCE has troubled Bible readers for at least 2000 years.

Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’”
Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying, “Now, O Lord, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: 
I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord, and I will add fifteen years to your life. 
I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.”
And Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.”
And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord on the third day?” 
And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?” 2 Rois 20 : 1-9

For centuries, those who read the Bible have found problematic verses 7 and 8:

And Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.”
And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord on the third day?”

A seal impression dating back to 727–698 BCE, reading "לחזקיהו [בן] אחז מלך יהדה] "Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah"

For several reasons:

1. These verses occur in a wrong sequence, for Hezekiah was already healed before he asked about a sign.
2. Skin diseases treatable with a poultice were common and seldom mortal.
3. The use of a poultice appears very different from other healings operated by Isaiah and his companions.
4. In the parallel account of the same event in the Book of Isaiah, these two verses occur at the end of the story, and are worded differently.
5. Translations require perfect past verb tenses, in order to deal with their unnatural sequence. 

An account of the same events appears in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 38.

The Great Isaiah Scroll found at Qumran in 1947, copied in Hebrew sometime after 350 BCE, apparently did not have the two verses in question. For they were written into the Scroll by another scribe at a section break, trailing vertically into a margin of the manuscript. 

Now Isaiah had said, "Let them take a lump of figs, and apply it to the boil, so that he may recover." Hezekiah also had said, "What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the LORD?" Isaiah 38:21-22

Since there are no Dead Sea manuscripts of 2 Kings 20, it remains impossible to know whether the two verses were in the Hebrew or Greek Bible before the 4th century CE.

Conclusion

The two verses of 2 Kings 20:7-8 seem to be an intrusion into the primitive text of the account of King Hezekiah’s illness and healing.

An ancient Hebrew version of the parallel account in Isaiah 38 did not contain those two verses, which would have been inserted later, as in the case of the Great Isaiah Scroll.

Thus, there seems no firm reason to believe that King Hezekiah was healed of a mortal disease with a fig poultice.

The rest of the account remains ancient, plausible and worthy of trust as Holy Scripture.