Isaiah

Recourse to Isaiah

When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went to the house of the Lord.

He sent Eliakim, Shebna, and the elders among the priests, all dressed in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz.

And they told Isaiah: This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace, as when children come to birth, but there is no strength to deliver them.

May your God 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, pray for the few of us that are left.

When King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah,

he said to them: “Tell your master this message from the Lord: Do not be afraid of what you heard when the servants of the king of Assyria insulted me. Listen!

I will let him be upset by certain news, so he will return to his country, where I will have him killed by the sword.”

Second Version of the Envoys

The field commander returned and saw the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah because he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

This was because King Sennacherib had learned that Tirhakah, the Cushite king of Egypt, was coming out to fight him. Once again, Sennacherib sent messengers to Hezekiah with these words:

“Tell Hezekiah, king of Judah, that his God in whom he trusts could deceive him by saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.

Have you not heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands they have destroyed? And will you be spared?

Did the gods save the nations my ancestors destroyed—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the descendants of Eden in Telassar?

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

Hezekiah’s Prayer

Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, and after reading it, he went to the house of the Lord, where he unrolled the letter

and prayed, saying:

“O Lord, God of Hosts and God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim! You alone are God Over all the kingdoms of the earth; give ear, 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, 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 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, Lord, are God.”

Isaiah’s Response

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 brow? Against the Holy One of Israel!

Through your servants you have insulted the Lord. For you have said: With my numerous chariots, I have climbed the heights of the mountains, the topmost recesses of Lebanon. I have felled its tallest cedars and its choicest fir trees. I have reached the remotest heights of its border, the best of its forests.

I have dug wells and drunk waters; I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.

But have you not heard how I decreed it long ago? I have just brought to pass what I planned from days of old: to lay waste fortified cities, to turn them into heaps of ruins.

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, as grain scorched before it blooms.

I know whenever you rise or sit, whenever you come or go.

Because of your rage against me and of your arrogance that has reached my ears, 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.

Sign for Hezekiah

This will be a sign for you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat The gleaning of the fields and next year the self-sown grain, but in the third year sow and reap, plant vines and eat the fruit.

Those who remain in Judah will take root in the ground and bear fruit.

A remnant will leave Jerusalem; survivors will come out of Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.

So this is what the Lord says about 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 he shall not enter the city, says the Lord.

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

Outcome

That night the angel of the Lord went and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people rose early next morning, there lay 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 then escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon, his son, succeeded him as king.