Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus (B;

[4]In the parallel account in the Second Book of Kings, Hezekiah is given a choice of whether to see the shadow move forward ten degrees or move backward ten degrees, and he chooses the more challenging backward option.

[5] Verses 10 to 20 are also known as the Song of Hezekiah or Canticle of Ezechias, with the incipit ego dixi ("I said"), appearing in the Roman Breviary for Lauds on Tuesdays, and also in the Office of the Dead.

[6][7][8][9][10] One of the salient features of this chapter is found in verse 21 (repeated in 2 Kings 20:7), where the prophet Isaiah instructs physicians to take-up a fig-cake and to rub it over Hezekiah's boil (וַיֹּאמֶר יְשַׁעְיָהוּ יִשְׂאוּ דְּבֶלֶת תְּאֵנִים וְיִמְרְחוּ עַל הַשְּׁחִין וְיֶחִי‎ = Now Isaiah had said, 'Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.').

The rabbis, in their homiletical explanations, explain the action of taking a fig-cake and rubbing it over a boil as being a "miracle within a miracle," since the act of rubbing a boil with figs has the ordinary effect of aggravating a skin-condition, and, yet, Hezekiah was cured of his skin-condition.