Isaiah
37
- When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his
clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the LORD.
- He sent Eliakim the palace administrator,
Shebna the secretary, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the
prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
- They told him, "This is what Hezekiah
says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children
come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them.
- It may be that the LORD your God will hear
the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has
sent to ridicule the living God, and that he will rebuke him for the words
the LORD your God has heard. Therefore pray for the remnant that still survives."
- When King Hezekiah's officials came to Isaiah,
- Isaiah said to them, "Tell your master,
'This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard--those
words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
- Listen! I am going to put a spirit in him
so that when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own country,
and there I will have him cut down with the sword.'"
- When the field commander heard that the king
of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against
Libnah.
- Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah,
the Cushite king of Egypt, was marching out to fight against him. When he
heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word:
- "Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not
let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, 'Jerusalem will not be
handed over to the king of Assyria.'
- Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria
have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be
delivered ?
- Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed
by my forefathers deliver them--the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph and the people
of Eden who were in Tel Assar ?
- Where is the king of Hamath, the king of
Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena or Ivvah
?"
- Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers
and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before
the LORD.
- And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD:
- "O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned
between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.
You have made heaven and earth.
- Give ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes,
O LORD, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the
living God.
- "It is true, O LORD, that the Assyrian
kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.
- They have thrown their gods into the fire
and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned
by human hands.
- Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his
hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
- Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to
Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you
have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria,
- this is the word the LORD has spoken against
him: "The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises and mocks you. The Daughter
of Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee.
- Who is it you have insulted and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against
the Holy One of Israel !
- By your messengers you have heaped insults
on the Lord. And you have said, 'With my many chariots I have ascended the
heights of the mountains, the utmost heights of Lebanon. I have cut down its
tallest cedars, the choicest of its pines. I have reached its remotest heights,
the finest of its forests.
- I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk
the water there. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams
of Egypt.'
- "Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained
it. In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass, that you have
turned fortified cities into piles of stone.
- Their people, drained of power, are dismayed
and put to shame. They are like plants in the field, like tender green shoots,
like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.
- "But I know where you stay and when
you come and go and how you rage against me.
- Because you rage against me and because your
insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit
in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.
- "This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah:
"This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what
springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and
eat their fruit.
- Once more a remnant of the house of Judah
will take root below and bear fruit above.
- For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant,
and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will
accomplish this.
- "Therefore this is what the LORD says
concerning the king of Assyria: "He will not enter this city or shoot
an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp
against it.
- By the way that he came he will return; he
will not enter this city," declares the LORD.
- "I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant !"
- Then the angel of the LORD went out and put
to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When
the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies
!
- So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp
and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
- One day, while he was worshiping in the temple
of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the
sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded
him as king.
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