Isaiah Reassures Hezekiah

¹uAs soon as King Hezekiah heard it, the tore his clothes and vcovered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. ²And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, vcovered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz. ³They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace; children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth. ⁴wIt may be that the Lord your God heard all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent xto mock the living God, and will rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for ythe remnant that is left.” ⁵When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, ⁶Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which zthe servants of the king of Assyria have areviled me. ⁷Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that bhe shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him cfall by the sword in his own land.’”

Sennacherib Defies the Lord

⁸The Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against dLibnah, for he heard that the king had left eLachish. ⁹fNow the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, “Behold, he has set out to fight against you.” So he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰“Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God gin whom you trust deceive you by promising that hJerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. ¹¹Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? ¹²iHave the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, jGozan, kHaran, Rezeph, and the people of lEden who were in Telassar? ¹³mWhere is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”

Hezekiah's Prayer

¹⁴Hezekiah received nthe letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. ¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: “O Lord, the God of Israel, oenthroned above the cherubim, pyou are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. ¹⁶qIncline your ear, O Lord, and hear; ropen your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent sto mock the living God. ¹⁷Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands ¹⁸and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, tbut the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. ¹⁹So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, uthat all the kingdoms of the earth may know that pyou, O Lord, are God alone.”

Isaiah Prophesies Sennacherib's Fall

²⁰Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria vI have heard. ²¹This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

“She despises you, she scorns you—

wthe virgin daughter of Zion;

she xwags her head behind you—

the daughter of Jerusalem.

²²“Whom have you ymocked and zreviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and lifted your eyes to the heights?

Against athe Holy One of Israel!

²³bBy your messengers you have mocked the Lord,

and you have said, c‘With my many chariots

I have gone up the heights of the mountains,

to the far recesses of dLebanon;

I felled its tallest cedars,

its choicest cypresses;

I entered its farthest lodging place,

its most efruitful forest.

²⁴I dug wells

and drank foreign waters,

and I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams fof Egypt.’

²⁵“Have you not heard

that gI determined it long ago?

I planned from days of old

what hnow I bring to pass,

that you should turn fortified cities

into heaps of ruins,

²⁶while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded,

and have become ilike plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops,

blighted before it is grown.

²⁷“But I know your sitting down

jand your going out and coming in,

and your raging against me.

²⁸Because you have raged against me

and your complacency has come into my ears,

I will kput my hook in your nose

and my bit in your mouth,

and lI will turn you back on the way

by which you came.

²⁹“And this shall be mthe sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. ³⁰nAnd the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. ³¹For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion oa band of survivors. pThe zeal of the Lord will do this.

³²“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or qcast up a siege mound against it. ³³rBy the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. ³⁴sFor I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake tand for the sake of my servant David.”

³⁵And that night uthe angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁶Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at vNineveh. ³⁷And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, wAdrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.