“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.”
My Notes
What Does Isaiah 38:17 Mean?
Hezekiah sings after being healed — and his song contains one of the most intimate descriptions of forgiveness in the Old Testament. "Behold, for peace I had great bitterness" — the margin reads: "on my peace came great bitterness." Hezekiah expected peace and got a death sentence (v. 1). The bitterness (mar mar — doubled for intensity: bitter, bitter) invaded the space where shalom should have been. The expectation of peace made the bitterness sharper.
"But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption" — literally: You loved my soul from the pit. The Hebrew (chashaqta nafshi mishshachat beli) means You desired my soul away from the pit of destruction. God's love was the mechanism of the rescue. The pit (shachat — corruption, decay, the grave) had Hezekiah's name on it. And God's love — chashaq, the word for passionate desire, the same word used in Deuteronomy 7:7 for God's love choosing Israel — pulled him out.
"For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back" — the final image is stunning. God takes Hezekiah's sins — all of them (kol chata'ai) — and throws them behind His back. Behind — where He can't see them. Where they're out of His line of sight. The God who sees everything chooses not to see the sins He's forgiven. He doesn't file them. He doesn't store them for later reference. He throws them behind Him — into the one place in the universe where God deliberately doesn't look.
The verse connects healing to forgiveness: the body was saved from the pit, and the sins were cast behind God's back. Hezekiah received physical rescue and spiritual clearance in the same act of divine love.
Reflection Questions
- 1.God cast your sins 'behind his back.' Are you dragging forgiven sins back into His line of sight — reminding Him of what He's already relocated?
- 2.The rescue came through love — chashaq, passionate desire. How does knowing God's love was the mechanism of your rescue change how you experience salvation?
- 3.Hezekiah expected peace and got bitterness. Where has the gap between expectation and reality produced bitterness in your life — and how did God meet you in it?
- 4.God creates a voluntary 'blind spot' for your forgiven sins. How does that deliberate choosing not to see change your understanding of divine forgiveness?
Devotional
God threw your sins behind His back. That's the one place in the universe He chooses not to look.
Hezekiah's song is the overflow of a man who was dying and then wasn't. The death sentence was real (38:1). The bitterness was intense — mar mar, double-bitter. And then God intervened. Not with a medical treatment. With love. "Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit." The rescue wasn't clinical. It was passionate. God desired Hezekiah's soul away from the grave. Chashaq — the same longing-love that chose Israel. God wanted Hezekiah alive. And the wanting was the power behind the saving.
"Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back." All. Not some. Not the small ones. Not the ones that are easy to forgive. All. And the destination is behind God's back — the only blind spot the omniscient God has. He created it voluntarily. The God who sees everything chose to create a place where He doesn't see — and that's where your forgiven sins live. Behind Him. Out of sight. Not because He forgot. Because He decided.
The image is more personal than "blotted out" or "washed away." It's physical. God has a back. And your sins are behind it. He'd have to turn around to see them again. And He won't. The forgiveness isn't just a legal declaration. It's a positional act: God relocates your sins to the one place He's committed to never looking.
If you've been dragging forgiven sins back into God's line of sight — reminding Him of what He threw behind His back, feeling guilty about what He's already relocated — Hezekiah's verse says: stop. God put them there on purpose. The casting was deliberate. The behind-the-back placement was intentional. And the God who threw them there isn't going to turn around and pick them up.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee,.... That is, they that are in the grave, and under the…
Behold, for peace - That is, instead of the health, happiness, and prosperity which I had enjoyed, and which I hope…
We have here Hezekiah's thanksgiving-song, which he penned, by divine direction, after his recovery. He might have taken…
Behold, for peace … bitterness) (lit. "it was bitter to me, bitter"), i.e. the bitterness of affliction was mercifully…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture