Hezekiah Seeks Isaiah
1When king Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh. 2He sent Eliakim, who was over the palace, Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, all covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace — children are ready to be born, but there is no strength to deliver them. 4Perhaps Yahweh your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria sent to taunt the living God, and will punish him for the words Yahweh your God has heard. So offer a prayer for the remnant that still remains.” 5When the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah, 6Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master this: This is what Yahweh says — Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. 7I am about to put a spirit in him, and he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, and there I will make him fall by the sword.” 8The Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. 9Now the king had heard it said of Tirhakah, king of Cush, “He has set out to fight against you.” So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10“Tell Hezekiah king of Judah this: Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands — destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? 12Did the gods of the nations my fathers destroyed deliver them — Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the Edenites in Telassar? 13Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena and Ivvah?” 14Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the house of Yahweh and spread it out before Yahweh. 15And Hezekiah prayed before Yahweh: “Yahweh, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 16Incline your ear, Yahweh, and hear; open your eyes, Yahweh, and see. Hear the words Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God. 17It is true, Yahweh, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, 18and have thrown their gods into the fire — for they were no gods, only wood and stone, the work of human hands. That is why the Assyrians destroyed them. 19Now, Yahweh our God, save us, please, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Yahweh, are God.”
Isaiah’s Answer to Sennacherib
20Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: “This is what Yahweh, God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.” 21This is the word Yahweh has spoken against him: “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind your back. 22Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes so proudly? Against the Holy One of Israel! 23Through your messengers you have taunted the Lord, saying: ‘With my many chariots I have climbed the heights of the mountains, to the far reaches of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I have reached its farthest heights, its densest forest. 24I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters; with the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.’ 25Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it, in days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass — that you should turn fortified cities into piles of rubble. 26Their people, drained of strength, are dismayed and put to shame; they are like plants of the field, like tender green shoots, like grass on the rooftops, scorched before it grows. 27But I know your sitting down and your going out and your coming in, and your raging against me. 28Because you have raged against me, and your arrogance has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will send you back the way you came. 29This will be the sign for you: this year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from that; but in the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 30The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above. 31For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of Yahweh of Hosts will accomplish this. 32Therefore this is what Yahweh says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with a shield or build a siege ramp against it. 33By the way he came, he will return; he will not enter this city — declares Yahweh. 34I will defend this city and save it, for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant.”
The Angel of Yahweh and the End of Sennacherib
35That night the angel of Yahweh went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the survivors rose the next morning, there lay all the dead bodies. 36So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew; he returned home and lived in Nineveh. 37One day, as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. Esarhaddon his son became king in his place.
