2 Kings

When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went to the house of the Lord.

He sent Eliakim, the overseer of the palace, Shebnah, the secretary, and the elders among the priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz.

And they said to Isaiah: “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace, as when children are at the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them.

Would that your God might hear the words of the field commander, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent. May the Lord your God rebuke him for his words, insulting the living God. Therefore, offer a prayer for the few of us that are left.’”

When King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah,

he said to them: “Tell your master this word of the Lord: ‘Do not fear because of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have insulted me.

Listen! I will let him be frightened. Then he will return to his country, and there I will have him slain by the sword.’”

The field commander returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

This was because King Sennacherib had heard that Tirhakah, the Cushite king of Egypt, was going out to fight him. Again, Sennacherib sent messengers to Hezekiah with these words:

“Say to Hezekiah, king of Judah that his God in whom he trusts may be deceiving him in saying that Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands they have destroyed! And will you be spared?

Have their gods saved the nations that my fathers destroyed? Gozan and Haran, Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?

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

Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, and when he had read it, he went to the house of the Lord, where he unrolled the letter

and prayed, saying: “O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim! You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made the heavens and the earth.

Give ear, the Lord, and hear! Open your eyes and see! Listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who has sent men to insult the living God!

It is true, the Lord, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries of the earth.

They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not true gods but gods made of wood and stone by human hands.

Now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that you alone, the Lord, are God.”

Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent word to Hezekiah: “You have called upon the Lord, and he has heard your prayer regarding Sennacherib, king of Assyria.

This is what the Lord has spoken against him:‘The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises and scorns you;the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you.

Whom have you insulted and blasphemed?Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up your eyes in arrogance?Against the Holy One of Israel!

Through your servants, you have insulted the Lord.For you have said:“With the enormous number of my chariots,I have ascended the heights of the mountains,the topmost recesses of Lebanon.I have cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest fir trees.I have climbed its remotest heights to the densest of its forests.

I have dug wells and drunk waters;I have dried up with the soles of my feet all the streams of Egypt.”

Have you not heard how I decreed it long ago, how I planned from days of old what now I have brought to pass?Your ordained role was to lay waste fortified cities,to turn them into ruinous heaps.

Shorn of power, their inhabitants have been dismayed and confounded; they have been as the grass and green plants in the field, as the grass on the housetops, scorched before it has grown.

I know whenever you rise or sit, go out or come in, and I know your rage against me.

Because you raged against me and your arrogance that I have heard of, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your mouth,and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.’

This will be a sign for you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat the after-growth grain,and next year what grows from that,but in the third year, sow and reap, plant vines and eat the fruit.

A remnant of the house of Judah shall take root below and produce fruit above.

For a remnant will come from Jerusalem and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.

That is why the Lord has said this concerning the king of Assyria: ‘He shall not enter this city nor shoot his arrows. He shall not raise a shield to oppose it nor build a siege ramp against it.

He shall leave by the way he came and shall not enter the city, word of the Lord.

I will protect this city and so save it for my own sake and the sake of David, my servant.’”

It happened that the angel of the Lord went out that night and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people rose early the next morning, there were all the corpses.

So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, returned home, and lived in Nineveh.

While he was worshiping in the temple of his god, Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer slew him with the sword and escaped to Ararat’s land. And Esarhaddon, his son, succeeded him as king.