2 Kings 19

¹And when King Hezekiah heard, he tore his garments and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD.

²And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered in sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz.

³They said to him: Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and contempt; for children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to give birth.

⁴Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master sent to taunt the living God, and the LORD your God will rebuke the words he has heard. So lift up a prayer on behalf of the remnant that is left.

⁵And the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶And Isaiah said to them, Thus you shall say to your lord: Thus says the LORD: Do not be afraid because of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

⁷Behold, I am putting a spirit in him, and he will hear a report and return to his land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his land.

⁸And the Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish.

⁹When he heard concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, Look, he has come out to fight against you, he returned and sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying:

¹⁰Thus you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, 'Do not let your God, in whom you are trusting, deceive you, saying, Jerusalem 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 the lands, devoting them to destruction; and will you be delivered?

¹²Have the gods of the nations rescued them -- those whom my fathers destroyed: Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden, who were in Telassar?

¹³Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?

¹⁴And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and went up to the house of the Lord, and Hezekiah spread it out before the Lord.

¹⁵Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said, O LORD God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.

¹⁶Incline, O Lord, your ear and hear; open, O Lord, your eyes and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he sent to taunt the living God.

¹⁷Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands,

¹⁸And they put their gods into the fire, for they are not gods, but only the work of human hands, wood and stone, and so they destroyed them.

¹⁹And now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.

²⁰Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: what you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard."

²¹This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: 'She has despised you, she has mocked you — the virgin daughter of Zion; behind you she has shaken her head — the daughter of Jerusalem.'

²²Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!

²³By the hand of your messengers you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains, to the far reaches of Lebanon; I cut down its tallest cedars, its choicest pines; I came to its remotest height, its forest of garden land.

²⁴I dug and drank foreign waters, and with the sole of my feet I will dry up all the streams of Egypt.

²⁵Have you not heard? Long ago I did it; from ancient days I formed it; now I have brought it to pass, so that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins.

²⁶And their inhabitants were short of hand, dismayed and ashamed; they became like plants of the field and green growth, like grass on rooftops, and scorching before the standing grain.

²⁷I know your dwelling and your going out and your coming in, and your raging against me.

²⁸Because your raging against me and your complacency have come up into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle on your lips, and I will turn you back by the way by which you came.

²⁹And this shall be the sign for you: this year you will eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that; but in the third year sow, and harvest, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.

³⁰And the remnant of the house of Judah that is left shall take root downward and bear fruit upward.

³¹For from Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and an escaped company from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.

³²Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with a shield, nor pour out a siege ramp against it.

³³By the way he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not enter this city, declares the LORD.

³⁴And I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant.

³⁵And it came to pass in that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck in the camp of Assyria one hundred eighty-five thousand; and when they rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead corpses.

³⁶So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went back and dwelt in Nineveh.

³⁷And it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat; and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.